Two Halves of the Community

อาจารย์ อมโร

Two Halves of the Community

The Buddhist festival known as the Kathina revolves around the simple act of offering a piece of cloth to a monastic. But it’s really much more than that. What this ceremony symbolizes is the profound relationship between the two halves of the Buddhist community: the Sangha and lay society. In the Kathina, there is a recognition of the physical dependency of the monastics on their lay supporters.…

Bringing Attention to Ordinariness

อาจารย์ สุเมโธ

Bringing Attention to Ordinariness

Television is extraordinary. They can put all kinds of fantastic adventurous romantic things on the television. It’s a miraculous thing, so it’s easy to concentrate on. You can get mesmerised by the ‘telly.’ Also, when the body becomes extraordinary, say it becomes very ill or very painful, or it feels ecstatic or wonderful feelings go through it, we notice that! But just the pressure of the right…

A Bell at Rest

อาจารย์ ชยสาโร

A Bell at Rest

Some of the most profound and beautiful of Luang Por’s similes shed light upon experiences in meditation. In one memorable image, he compared the mind existing in a state both at peace and yet primed to respond intelligently to conditions to that of a bell at rest. When a bell is rung and its natural silence disturbed by a forceful stimulus, the bell responds with a beautiful sound that, after a s…

Working with Anger

อาจารย์ สุนทรา

Working with Anger

Witnessing the mind is not so simple. When we try to be a witness, a knower who watches and observes, it can take a while before we come to the place where the mind settles, where it is relaxed, present and aware enough to actually begin seeing things in the moment. Even then we might still not be skilled in seeing; it can take a long time. I spent years witnessing anger and letting it go, and it…

A Natural Strength of the Heart

อาจารย์ วีรธัมโม

A Natural Strength of the Heart

In his teachings on the foundations for open-heartedness, the Buddha spoke of the four brahmavihāras (sublime states of mind): mettā is the sense of goodwill, of well-wishing to all beings; karuṇā is compassion for the suffering of beings; muditā is joy or gladness for the success or good fortune of other beings; and upekkhā is equanimity or even-mindedness. The brahmavihāras enable us to relate t…

Elephants and Horses

อาจารย์ มุนินโท

Elephants and Horses

320. As an elephant in battle withstands arrows, I choose to endure verbal attacks from others. 321. Well-trained horses can be trusted in crowds, and are to be mounted by kings. Individuals who have trained themselves to withstand abuse will be valuable everywhere. 322. Impressive are horses or elephants which have been well-trained; but more impressive are individuals who have tamed themselves.…

Feeling of and Attitude toward Pain

ฐานิสสโร ภิกขุ

Feeling of and Attitude toward Pain

As for the pain, that also becomes something you can approach with the tools you’ve learned from your technique. Try breathing through the tension around the pain. If the pain is in your knee, you can think of the breath coming in and out right at the knee. Or you can think of it going down the leg and through the pain in the knee and then out through the toes. Or if it’s already coming into the k…

Aiding or Thwarting Liberation

อาจารย์ ปสันโน

Aiding or Thwarting Liberation

We turn now to consider the practices that facilitate the penetration of Nibbāna. These practices include views – ways of regarding the world of experience. Our view may be unreliable as a means of seeing truth. A part of the path leading to Nibbāna includes the process of reflecting on descriptions of Nibbāna so as to gain clear understanding. The need for this sort of reflection derives from the…

Two Ways to Look at the World

อาจารย์ อมโร

Two Ways to Look at the World

Perhaps a good place to start contemplating the nature of Nibbāna is in the more mundane realm of things since, just as the Buddha opened his expression of the Four Noble Truths with the common and tangible experience of dukkha, unsatisfactoriness, it will be most helpful to begin this investigation within the realm of the familiar and then to work towards the more subtle and abstruse from there.…

Kindly Interest

อาจารย์ จันทสิริ

Kindly Interest

For many years I had a kind of subliminal negativity going on; quietly grumbling away, usually about myself: ‘You’re not good enough. You’ve been meditating all these years, and still your mind wanders and you fall asleep. You’re never going to be any good.’ – those kinds of voices. Are they familiar … just quietly there, mumbling away, undermining any sense of well-being? It took me a long time t…