The essential teaching of the Lord Buddha is the Four Noble Truths. There are four truths and three aspects of each truth, which make twelve insights. Three times four is twelve. And if you have all twelve insights, you are an arahant (a fully enlightened person). So the three aspects of each Noble Truth: dukkha is the first aspect, and this is the first Noble Truth – there is dukkha. It’s a state…

When we look after the mind continually with meditation, it will gradually become more and more calm. When it’s calm, it will begin to develop radiance along with its calm. And once it’s calm, then when we contemplate anything we can penetrate into the workings of cause and effect so as to understand in line with the truths that appear both within us and without. But if the mind is clouded and con…

We know when we know; we know when we don’t know. It’s much more simple than it sounds in one sense but it’s also quite difficult to do. Our nature is that we like to speculate, rather than to just be aware. Rather than to just simply know. “A feeling is a feeling,” or “a thought is a thought.” It’s so simple it’s difficult to do, to not proliferate. The mind has a proliferating nature. Desire dri…

If you get the mind to grow still in equanimity without focusing on gaining insight, it’s simply a temporary state of concentration. So you have to focus on gaining clear insight either into inconstancy, into stress, or into not-selfness. That’s when you’ll be able to uproot your attachments. If the mind gets into a state of oblivious equanimity, it’s still carrying fuel inside it. Then as soon as…

For people in the modern world facing the issue of how to practice the Dhamma in daily life, the ten perfections provide a useful framework for how to do it. When you view life as an opportunity to develop these ten qualities–generosity, virtue, renunciation, discernment, persistence, endurance, truth, determination, good will, and equanimity–you develop a fruitful attitude toward your daily activ…

If at any time one can’t cultivate goodness through introspective sitting, this doesn’t mean that there’s no hope; it means that you should practise other skilful kamma. So there’s always some possibility. There is always some act of generosity that you can do, some act of calming, some act of service; and the result of that will be that it will increase the sense of confidence and trust in onesel…

In one of the scriptures (AN 1.11) the Buddha is quoted as saying that he does not see anything which causes the arising and increase of sensual desire so directly as ‘inappropriate attention’ to the ‘sign of the beautiful’. Basically this is giving excessive and unwise attention to attractive perceptions, which then dominate the mind, leading to the desire to enjoy them and hold on to them for fu…

M.G. (Dr Matei Georgescu): We are living a losing game of impermanence. So, what to do? A.A.: The Buddha maintained that it is possible to realize a kind of well-being which is self-sustaining, which is independent of the quality or content of our experience, which doesn’t depend on anything that we can experience through our senses. M.G.: So, no causal conditioning; it’s beyond causation, this is…

The lack of conviction in our own ability to do the practice is a common obstacle, so one of the responsibilities of a teacher is to encourage and uplift people. This was one of the things that Ajahn Chah often did. I remember one time having a few difficulties and going to him. He was chatting, and he turned to me and said, “Tan Ñāṇadhammo, you’ve got very few defilements.” That was at a time…

I have heard that at on one occasion the Blessed One was staying near Vesāli at the Gabled Hall in the Great Forest. Then Mahāpajāpati Gotamī went to the Blessed One and, on arrival, having bowed down to him, stood to one side. As she was standing there she said to him: “It would be good, lord, if the Blessed One would teach me the Dhamma in brief such that, having heard the Dhamma from the Blesse…