The role of our weekly Observance Day is to put things down and focus on the precepts and the formal spiritual qualities of our life. It’s a day of recollecting, a day of observing; it’s a day to remember Dhamma, to observe that primal principle and our primal motivation for being here at the monastery. It’s a time to recollect the possibility we have as human beings to let go of all confusion, de…

In the next few days there will be some coming and going. One of the laypeople who has been here a while will be moving back to Thailand in a few days. There’s a word in Pali that’s an epitaph of the Buddha: sugata. It means coming well or going well. What is a sugata? What is someone who goes well and comes well? When a person makes kamma (performs actions), and this action has been purified in t…

When bringing our Dhamma practice into daily life it is important to learn how to pay attention to detail, to pay attention to small things. One can have a woolly, universal, “just be mindful” attitude and not be clear about what one is doing. It’s important to look after one’s duties and not overlook things and to keep things neat, tidy, clean and orderly. Attention to detail cultivates an attitu…

There are three ways we act on the inclinations, impulses, and intentions that come through the mind. We act on them through body, speech, or mind. Particularly in a monastery, we notice speech because there are many restraints on the activities we engage in. Things are often expressed in the form of speech, so it’s good to focus our attention on the habit of speech. We can learn a lot about ourse…

I’ve been thinking about these patterns of weather and patterns of nature the last little while. At the community work day a few days ago, people dragged dead branches and leaves out of the forest. Everything there on the ground was alive and growing with sap running through at one time. The leaves were green; they were living and functioning. Now they are on the ground dead and they’ve changed. I…

There’s always a mood present in our experience. It’s amazing to think how the presence of a mood so completely shapes and conditions both our attitude and the way that we see things. It’s really important that we have straight vision, some sense of what our life is about, what it’s for, and what we aspire to. This vision or aspiration provides a compass when moods arise, tear us apart, and someti…

Last night, I gave encouragement to reflect around themes of death and the drawbacks of physical existence. These recollections around death bring up a sense of urgency or cognition that there isn’t time to waste, that there aren’t unlimited opportunities for spiritual practice. We have excellent conditions right now and we should make use of them. The image that the Buddha uses for this sense of…

Last week at the Spirit Rock family retreat we saw many small, young humans beings surrounded by wholesome structures and examples and offered much in the way of skillful guidance. Seeing the good results of that in just a few days made me reflect on the idea that if you catch things early and have an influence at the beginning, as something is setting out and taking shape, then a small influence…

During the time of the Buddha there was a lady who was pregnant for a long period of time. After asking the Buddha for a blessing, the monks chanted some protective verses for her and she finally gave birth to a child named Sivali. The woman was very grateful to the Buddha and asked if she might be able to offer the meal to the Sangha for a whole week. The Buddha asked Mahamogalana and some other…

I had a learning experience when I was a junior monk of two or three pansa. A good friend of mine with whom I ordained was the monastery stores monk. Once he went away to Pu Jum Gorm for a week and I was stores monk in his absence. I was keen to be helpful and do something supportive or generous as a show of kindness to him. So while he was away, I cleaned up and reorganized the stores room. I tho…