What then is the experience of jhāna? The mind’s energy gradually pulls away from its usual dispersion at the various sense doors and gathers internally. Any negative emotions or unwholesome states of mind disappear. The sensation of having a body disappears. One feels light and joyful, and the mind becomes silent without any thinking whatsoever. The mind’s awareness then focuses more and more in…

If we’re experiencing suffering we might find ourselves thinking that we have to do something, that we have to get away from it. But the Buddha said, ‘No, suffering is to be understood.’ We can’t possibly understand the suffering in our lives if we’re constantly trying to run away from it or distracting ourselves from it. So my encouragement…is to really take an interest, to be curious about your…

In one discourse, the Buddha speaks about the great gifts we give to countless beings by keeping the precepts. Through diligence in virtue, using the precepts to guide our conduct, we offer security to other beings—freedom from danger, fear, and animosity. These are great gifts, indeed. Similarly, in terms of our daily lives in the monastery, it’s helpful to reframe what we do and how we approach…

In our practice we are normally working with the core defilements of greed, anger, and delusion. Often when these defilements arise, the way we deal with them is through restraint. When we restrain the defilements it feels different than actually letting them go. With restraint, we continue to experience the defilement; it’s an undercurrent in the mind. By contrast, when we genuinely let something…

Chasing after the requisites of existence, trying to build an identity around them and relying on them as enduring sources of satisfaction, creates suffering. Pressures from the external world make it easy to look for something in the material world for our sense of gratification. We can see that even if it’s not gratification we seek, there is still that sense of longing to search for something n…

I remember as a child wanting a certain toy. I told my mother that if she got that toy, I’d never want anything ever again. It would completely satisfy me. And I believed it – I wasn’t telling her a lie; the only thing that was stopping me from being really happy then was that I didn’t have the toy that I wanted. So my mother bought the toy and gave it to me. I managed to get some happiness out of…

I’m reminded of a teaching that the Buddha gave about puñña, about blessings or merit. It seems to have been given in the context of someone saying: ‘Making good karma doesn’t really matter. If you’re focused on the higher teachings, the only things that are meaningful are wisdom and liberation. Doing good deeds and making good karma is insignificant, unimportant.’ But the Buddha said: ‘Don’t beli…

A lot of our suffering, of dukkha, comes from a feeling of dissatisfaction or discontent because we think: ‘It shouldn’t be this way,’ ‘Life is unfair,’ ‘Why is this happening to me?’ or ‘Not this again – I don’t deserve this!’ Our discontent can easily be caused by a feeling that somehow the universe is out of balance, the world is out of order, and we feel this is unfair; it shouldn’t be like th…

To the extent which (paccaya) the mind has not comprehended (avijja) Truth, habitual drives (sankhara) manifest and condition (paccaya) awareness into a discriminative mode (vinnana) that operates in terms of (paccaya) subject and object (nama-rupa) held (paccaya) to exist on either side of the six sense-doors (salayatana). These sense-doors open dependent (paccaya) on contact (passa) that can aro…

I’m particularly surprised that people so often assume vipāka is always the result of action only in a past life. I ask them: ‘What about things you’ve done in this life? Aren’t they going to have some effect as well?’ It’s bizarre – especially since our everyday world keeps suggesting very strongly that the choices we make in this life matter a lot: choosing to leave that country; choosing to ch…