Distributing the daily work assignments seemed a bit complicated today. That’s the nature of organizing many people living together. When there is one person living in one place, it’s fairly simple. With two people it’s a little harder, and it gets exponentially more complicated as the number of people increases. For this reason, we need to learn the skills of living together, so that our own inte…

Is there a Buddhist approach to conflict resolution? Every society experiences conflicts of interest and view, both from within and from without. Buddhist teachings emphasize ways of preventing conflicts from arising in the first place and of preventing those that have already begun from escalating. They seek to achieve this by instructing the people involved how best to educate their conduct, emo…

It is not possible, Cunda, that someone stuck in the mud could pull out another who is stuck in the mud. But it is possible that someone not stuck in the mud could pull out another who is stuck in the mud. It is not possible that someone untamed, untrained, not completely calmed, could tame, train or completely calm another. But it is possible that someone tamed, trained, completely calmed could t…

The drawback with the Romantic and Transcendental movements is that, like the Western tradition in general, they referred to the Ideal, and neither nature nor humans are ideal. They interpreted a principle rather than establishing a way of life from living in the natural world. The principle of equality doesn’t fit with unbridled individuality; relational balance is required. And even wonderful ab…

An anthropologist once questioned a native Alaskan shaman about his tribe’s belief system. After putting up with the anthropologist’s questions for a while, the shaman finally told him: “Look. We don’t believe. We fear.” In a similar way, Buddhism starts, not with a belief, but with a fear of very present dangers. As the Buddha himself reported, his initial impetus for leaving home and seeking awa…

Question: We’d like to know about your experiences living together with Luang Pu Chah. Answer: Generally, Luang Pu Chah taught us to conduct ourselves practicing contentment and being of few wishes. Contentment and fewness of wishes, these are words that describe a lifestyle where one isn’t prone to obstructions. It is also called ariyavamsa, to live without ties and fetters. Contentment and fewne…

One night, there was a festival in the village. Sometime after eleven o’clock, while I was practising walking meditation, I began to feel a bit strange. In fact, this feeling – an unusual kind of calmness and ease – had first appeared during the day. When I became weary from walking, I went into the small grass-roofed hut to sit and was taken by surprise. Suddenly, my mind desired tranquillity so…

When people ask: ‘What do you have to do to become a Buddhist?’, we say that we take refuge in Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha. Long ago, I remember superstitious people coming to my teacher, Ajahn Chah, wanting charmed medallions or little talismans to protect them from bullets and knives, ghosts and so on, and he would say: ‘Why do you want things like that? The only real protection is taking refuge in t…

For the past several decades, a growing flood of books, articles, and teachings has advanced two theories about the practice of mindfulness (sati). The first is that the Buddha employed the term mindfulness to mean bare attention: a state of pure receptivity—non-reactive, non-judging, non-interfering—toward physical and mental phenomena as they make contact at the six senses. The second theory is…

Over the centuries the Southern and Northern lineages have developed critiques of each other’s way of practice which have been passed on and adopted as received knowledge. When we can only base our own ideas on information from books or the established outlook portrayed by particular lineages, these critiques seem to be reasonable. Some of the most common Southern points of view argue that the Mah…