Every winter at our monasteries two or three months are set aside as quiet retreat time – a time to focus more intensively on our inner work. The encouragement given during this time is towards cultivating a stiller, quieter space within the heart. For it is only through attention to this that we are able to observe all our skilful and less skilful habits, and to train the mind – making it into a…

I was introduced to meditation in 1975 through a systematic approach of maintaining moment-by-moment mindfulness of the sensations associated with breathing. I found that approach to be useful for discipline, but quite intense and demanding, and not conducive to joy and ease. Moreover, when I looked into the original texts, I found that they didn’t mention awareness of physical sensations, nor of…

The agenda of ‘self’ and the agenda of enlightenment are very different. As we develop our meditation and interest in the Dhamma, we keep bumping into the resistances of self. It would be nice to be enlightened and free, and as meditators and dhamma practitioners we put a lot of energy into this. But at the same time we can feel bewildered because there is also a lot of resistance, a lot of forget…

The brahmavihāras, or sublime attitudes, are attitudes of goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity that you spread to all beings, without limit. In other words, there’s no limit to the amount of goodwill, etc., that you spread, and no limit on the number of beings to whom you spread it. Each of these attitudes is an antidote for mental states that can get in the way of training the min…

Although the number of Dhammayut monks was relatively small (it has never exceeded a tenth of the Sangha as a whole), the lineage’s close links to the royal family ensured that within a short time it possessed formidable prestige, influence and resources. King Chulalongkorn, King Mongkut’s son and successor, appointed Dhammayut monks to the top administrative positions in the monkhood throughout t…

Fragmentation of the Sangha into a number of different orders has been a notable feature of Sri Lankan and Burmese Buddhism. In Thailand, however, the creation of new orders has been extremely rare. This anomaly is explained to a large extent by the fact that it is only in Thailand that the Sangha has enjoyed strong and uninterrupted royal support throughout its existence and has been spared the s…

Rain soddens what’s covered & doesn’t sodden what’s exposed. So open up what’s covered up, so that it won’t get soddened by the rain. Attacked by death is the world, surrounded by aging, beset by the arrow of craving, always obscured by desire. Attacked by death is the world, & encircled by aging, constantly beaten, with no shelter, like a thief sentenced to punishment. They encroach like masses o…

Thus it is important to learn how to fail well; to learn how to fail in a good way, to handle our tendency to get lost, be caught up and miss the point. It is important to learn how to work with that in a skilful way. I like to use the phrase: ‘We need to learn how to fail perfectly’ or ‘to know how to be perfect failures’. This doesn’t mean that we don’t try or that we are casual or careless abou…

[Question] And if one has practised to the last step of enlightenment, is it equanimity (upekkhā) that will arise – no matter what one gets into contact with, whether good or bad? If we’ve reached the end of the practice, in terms of the sense spheres or in terms of living with other people, there will be no experience of likes and dislikes anymore. Male and female – these are just aspects of conv…

Vitakka and vicara are two Pali words that mean thinking. They’re classified as verbal fabrication. In other words, you engage in these two activities—thinking of something first and then thinking about it, or directing your thoughts to a topic and then commenting on it—and then you break into speech. Without having had those verbal thoughts in the mind, there would be no external verbal action. T…