The bliss of concentration is an acquired taste. It’s a specific kind of happiness, which the Thais call santi-sukha, which literally means the happiness of peace. This is a basic level of well-being that we tend to overlook because it carries no excitement, no thrills. It’s just a basic sense of ease that’s steady, like the flame of an oil lamp. For most of us, we notice pleasure and pain because…

Back in Chithurst years ago, I was living with a small group of nuns at Āloka Cottage down by the river near the beautiful forest of Hammer Wood. We were just five or six nuns living and practicing together, working hard and giving ourselves to the Path. A short walk up the hill was the monks’ monastery. They were a larger community, and we would join them for meals and evening meditation. One day…

Apaṇṇaka dhammas are ways of practicing that the Buddha described as incontrovertible. By practicing them, we can be sure of being on the right path and that they will lead to awakening. These teachings are: indriya saṃvara, restraint of the senses; bhojane mattaññutā, moderation in eating; and jāgariyānuyoga, devotion to wakefulness. Once we start working with the apaṇṇaka dhammas, we begin to se…

One of the themes in Buddhist practice that I get questioned on by Westerners is that of ‘making merit.’ What they see is people coming to the monastery with bags of food and other requisites, making a formal offering (sometimes with Pali chanting) to the Sangha who then responds with some chanting in Pali. Some of these people will ask that the merit (puñña) of their act of generosity (dāna) be s…

Saddhā is often translated as faith, confidence or conviction. The Buddha said that faith comes from having seen that the human condition is unsatisfactory. It is imperfect, wrought with dissatisfaction, discontentment, pain, grief, fear and anxiety. Having seen that, then the mind naturally seeks a path out of that state. It questions the meaning of life and how to find inner happiness. So this f…

Is there anyone, any person or any condition that is absolutely right or absolutely wrong? Can right and wrong, or good and bad, be absolute? When you dissect it, when you really look at it in terms of the way it is now, there is nothing to it. It’s foam on the sea; it’s soap bubbles. Yet this is how we can get ourselves completely caught up in illusions. We’ll sacrifice our life for an illusion i…

One night I was sitting in meditation outside in the open air–my back straight as an arrow–firmly determined to make the mind quiet, but even after a long time it wouldn’t settle down. So I thought, “I’ve been working at this for many days now, and yet my mind won’t settle down at all. It’s time to stop being so determined and to simply be aware of the mind.” I started to take my hands and feet ou…

The body is something that we are familiar enough with that we can take parts of it in our mind and keep our attention on them, turning them around and thinking about them to see their attributes and their associations and to see their cause-and-effect relationships. Because we know so much about the body already, it’s a very good basic subject for meditation. Body contemplation takes two basic di…

Buddhism takes a familiar American principle–the pursuit of happiness–and inserts two important qualifiers. The happiness it aims at is true: ultimate, unchanging, and undeceitful. Its pursuit of that happiness is serious, not in a grim sense, but dedicated, disciplined, and willing to make intelligent sacrifices. What sorts of sacrifices are intelligent? The Buddhist answer to this question reson…