One of the Thai women meditating here had an insight into the quickness of the mind. Even meditating with the wholesome desire to bring the mind to a place of peace, tranquility, and clarity, she could see the mind go out to the sound of a dog barking. Then there was some other sound or distraction and the mind went out to that. The mind doesn’t stay still, even when we have the intention to train…

I would like to offer some thoughts on the cultivation of asubha kammaṭṭhāna or ‘Reflection on The Unattractive’. We have a standard practice in the monastery of regularly reciting the asubha chant. This is recommended particularly for all samanas, all renunciates, but I would encourage everyone to consider it…Like any practice, however, it requires repeated application of effort to be effectiv…

As long as you’re on the path, you have to hold on to things. Hold on to your strategies. It’s simply a matter of replacing unskillful ones with more skillful ones and being very clear about what your choices are. When you think about yourself, learn to think about it as a process, something you do, something you make. It is a whole series of strategies. One of the reasons why the mind is so diffi…

Luang Por did not consider a drastically simplified lifestyle to be liberating in itself; he knew well enough that the tendency towards attachment is far too strongly embedded in the unenlightened mind to be so simply bypassed. But a life pared back to essentials did play an important part in the training he was providing. Firstly, because it was a key element in sustaining the distinctive culture…

The Middle Land, other than being the area of the Ganges Valley that the Buddha frequented in the course of his forty years of wandering, is that present awareness that stands between impressions and their designation. But it’s dynamic, it’s not purely internal, and it keeps shifting. Travelling this fluid country is the theme of Dhamma practice. As meditators know, the nature of this Land depends…

A lot of big decisions we make in life are dictated by the many small decisions we make on a daily basis. That can be a very powerful reflection, and one to keep in mind. In the book Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky, the main character offhandedly fantasizes about killing a certain woman and stealing her money. He’s not really serious about it, but he asks himself, “What if I were serious?” He…

Not up in the air, nor in the middle of the sea, nor going into a cleft in the mountains –nowhere on earth– is a spot to be found where you could stay & not succumb to death. —Dhammapada 128 At Savatthi. “Monks, remain with your minds well-established in the four establishings of mindfulness. Don’t let the deathless be lost for you. “In which four? There is the case where a monk remains focused on…

Traditionally the very diverse array of beings [which inhabit the cosmos] is divided into five gati or “destinations of rebirth” (DN 33). From lowest to highest, these are: The niraya beings which live in great misery, in a world of fire and cruelty, The peta beings which exist as wretched shades, The animals, The humans, and The devas, beings of splendid subtle forms who enjoy long lives of bliss…

When you deal with pain, you’re told don’t think about how long the pain has been in the past or how long it’s going to be in the future. It weighs the present moment down unnecessarily. It places restrictions on how much freedom you have in the present moment. The same applies to all your other old habits. No matter how long you’ve been a lazy person, you don’t have to keep on being a lazy person…

The most important breakthrough is the uprooting of personality view. Recognizing that the self is really just an artificial creation and not an ultimate entity is the first really profound insight. It’s a very significant insight into impersonality. The self is interpreted in different ways, but one primary interpretation is that it has control. This is my body, I can tell it what to do. This is…