As we reflect on the traditional explanation of anicca—how things are impermanent, inconstant, always changing—it is especially useful to also reflect on anicca as a sense of uncertainty, or as Ajahn Chah would say, “It’s not a sure thing.” We tend to deny or gloss over the fact that we don’t know things for sure. We feel uncomfortable with uncertainty or uncomfortable with not knowing something.…

We received news yesterday from Koṇḍañña’s partner that he’s fading rapidly. He’s in a hospice in San Francisco. Jay passed away a few days ago. Ajahn Karuṇadhammo is having surgery today. While we were sitting this morning after doing the paritta chanting for Ajahn Karuṇadhammo and Koṇḍañña, an image came to mind of different waves coming in from the ocean and moving toward the shore. T…

There’s a discourse where the Buddha says that, for the ordinary, unenlightened person, the only escape from dukkha-vedanā is to try to immerse themselves in sukha-vedanā in some way: some kind of pleasure or gratification to take the edge off the dissatisfaction. (S 36.6) It’s important to recognize and reflect on this in terms of the culture we have, which conditions all of us: the amount of d…

Tsoknyi Rimpoche, a Tibetan Lama I first met back in 1992, has a very neat phrase to describe this approach to mind training: ‘undistracted non-meditation’. ‘Non-meditation’ is an expression of not doing any ‘thing’. We tend to make meditation into a task or some ‘thing’ that ‘I’ am doing. Instead we let go of the doing-ness and the thing-ness. That said, it is not a matter of letting the mind dri…

On mornings like this—when it’s pouring down with rain, when it’s not comfortably warm, and we have been assigned a wet and inconvenient job working outside—in this situation, the mind may rebel or complain. It was quite a cold morning and pouring down rain during the first work meeting I attended at Abhayagiri. Everybody was going to be working outside because of last-minute preparations for the…

A skillful reflection is: ‘This is the way it is.’ Venerable Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, the renowned Thai sage, said, ‘If there was to be a useful inscription to put on a medallion around your neck, it would be, “This is the way it is.” This reflection helps us to contemplate: wherever we happen to be, whatever time and place, good or bad, ‘This is the way it is.’ It is a way of bringing an acceptance in…

Q: Is it possible to have fear of awakening? A: Yes, it is possible to have fear of awakening. Usually it’s a matter of your defilements. They don t want you to be awakened. There’s also fear of abandoning your sense of who you are, which is why the Buddha has you focus not on what you are but on what you’re doing. When you focus on your actions, then the fear of awakening gets weaker because you…

Another image Ajahn Chah used for practicing meditation is the leaves in the trees and the forest. Quite naturally, the leaves in the forest are quite still. Only when the wind blows will the leaves vibrate or shake, be blown back and forth. In the same way, our mind, our actual mind, our real mind, is always still and steady. It’s the moods of the mind that shake it. When the winds of our moods,…

Don’t allow yourself to hate one another. It’s only normal that when people live together, their behavior isn’t going to be on an equal level. Some people have good manners, some people have coarse manners — not evil, mind you, just that their manners are coarse. Physically, some people are energetic, industrious, and strong; others are weak and sickly. Verbally, some people are skilled at speakin…

Sometimes the act of compassion may be just in recognising one’s own fear and anxiety, those things which come up in relationship to people we meet. Often we sweep such anxieties under the rug for the sake of being able to smile and put on a polite social act; but is this really giving something of value to the other person? It’s difficult sometimes to convince ourselves otherwise, but I think it’…