Witnessing the mind is not so simple. When we try to be a witness, a knower who watches and observes, it can take a while before we come to the place where the mind settles, where it is relaxed, present and aware enough to actually begin seeing things in the moment. Even then we might still not be skilled in seeing; it can take a long time. I spent years witnessing anger and letting it go, and it…

In his teachings on the foundations for open-heartedness, the Buddha spoke of the four brahmavihāras (sublime states of mind): mettā is the sense of goodwill, of well-wishing to all beings; karuṇā is compassion for the suffering of beings; muditā is joy or gladness for the success or good fortune of other beings; and upekkhā is equanimity or even-mindedness. The brahmavihāras enable us to relate t…

Invigorated by the power of Ajaan Mun’s teaching, I spent the next several months making an all-out effort in every aspect of monastic practice. But when the more temperate climate of the rainy season abruptly ended and the cold, windy nights set in, I struggled to stay warm, and my concentration suffered. I had only thin cotton robes to wrap around me, which left me shivering at the mercy of the…

As for the pain, that also becomes something you can approach with the tools you’ve learned from your technique. Try breathing through the tension around the pain. If the pain is in your knee, you can think of the breath coming in and out right at the knee. Or you can think of it going down the leg and through the pain in the knee and then out through the toes. Or if it’s already coming into the k…

We turn now to consider the practices that facilitate the penetration of Nibbāna. These practices include views – ways of regarding the world of experience. Our view may be unreliable as a means of seeing truth. A part of the path leading to Nibbāna includes the process of reflecting on descriptions of Nibbāna so as to gain clear understanding. The need for this sort of reflection derives from the…

Perhaps a good place to start contemplating the nature of Nibbāna is in the more mundane realm of things since, just as the Buddha opened his expression of the Four Noble Truths with the common and tangible experience of dukkha, unsatisfactoriness, it will be most helpful to begin this investigation within the realm of the familiar and then to work towards the more subtle and abstruse from there.…

For many years I had a kind of subliminal negativity going on; quietly grumbling away, usually about myself: ‘You’re not good enough. You’ve been meditating all these years, and still your mind wanders and you fall asleep. You’re never going to be any good.’ – those kinds of voices. Are they familiar … just quietly there, mumbling away, undermining any sense of well-being? It took me a long time t…

The differentiation between right and wrong is an especially meaningful one for us. With that comes success, failure, praise, blame, reward or punishment: there’s a big charge around getting it right or getting it wrong. Meanwhile direct experience – thoughts, sensations, emotions – is just what happens. It’s not based on right or wrong. Its sole fundamental quality is that it just happens. Our co…

The Pāli Canon has a reputation for being humorless. And it’s easy to see why. In some of its passages, the Buddha seems to regard humor in a bad light. For instance, in the Wailing Discourse (AN 3:107) he refers to “laughing excessively, showing one’s teeth,” as a form of childishness, and counsels that a monk, when feeling joy in the Dhamma, should simply smile. His instructions to Rāhula in (…

A common set of teachings the Buddha gives are the five spiritual faculties: faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration and wisdom: saddhā, viriya, sati, samādhi, paññā. These are things to be working on and cultivating. One can be looking at them as qualities to be working on in a linear way. First you lay a foundation for a sense of faith, confidence, trust, and when one does that there is some e…