As monastics, we are taught to contemplate old age, sickness, and death every day. Reflecting on these truths gives our practice a sense of urgency, as we come to understand that we are all together in this—that nobody is exempt from that fate. We need to remind ourselves regularly that, while we don’t know when we are going to die, it is certain that we will die—that death is inevitable. For many…

So it is: when we enter the field of meaning, image, fable and myth arise. They sustain the collective domain. And although the way the mythic Buddha – the figure who appears in the literature, art and temples of Asia – is shaped is in accord with a culture’s expression of veneration, all accounts are consistent in presenting a person of unwavering resolve, peerless depth and steady compassion. ‘F…

Time is our present breath. This reflection by Ajahn Chah is from the book, No Ajahn Chah, (pdf) p. 21.

Part of cultivating and sustaining awareness is recognizing what pulls the mind out into becoming and birth. What allows the mind to turn to non-becoming, to not being born into anything? As we explore that, the mind can become very still and very silent. Allow that sense of spaciousness and silence to open up and create a wedge in the habit of movement. Rather than allowing attention to be hijack…

I have been listening to a few of Bhikkhu Bodhi’s talks on mettā, loving-kindness. He explained that in many practice situations, mettā can often be used with an external, outgoing energy and making a genuine wish for other people to be happy. However, there is also an internal response that can occur for us when we express mettā in this way. I was surprised when Bhikkhu Bodhi mentioned that th…

I was reading something from a talk of Ajahn Sumedho that touched me very much. He was saying that when he’d just become a monk, he didn’t speak Thai at all and he met a Thai monk who had previously been in the Thai Navy; so, he’d met Americans and knew a bit of English. This Thai monk had been with Ajahn Chah for a while, so he was quite diligent in terms of discipline and meditation. Ajahn Sumed…

Greater in battle than the man who would conquer a thousand-thousand men, is he who would conquer just one– himself. Better to conquer yourself than others. When you’ve trained yourself, living in constant self-control, neither a deva nor gandhabba, nor a Mara banded with Brahmas, could turn that triumph back into defeat. This reflection from the Pāli Canon is from Thousands, Dhammapada Chapter 8…

It is important to recognize that the nature of becoming is generated through the force of desire, tanha, of craving—craving for sensuality, craving for being—for a sense of self, to be somebody, to be something, or craving for non- being—that sense of pushing away, of aversion, of negation. The becoming mind then seeks an object that is either internal or external. What does that seeking look lik…

“Being freed from all sense desires” is a radical relinquishing of attachment. For loving-kindness to manifest fully and come to fruition, we need to undermine the fundamental roots of attachment, defilement, and clinging. So this takes mettā practice and ramps it up to another level, bringing it to a liberating insight practice. As we cultivate loving-kindness, the heart becomes more attuned to…

There was a layman who used to come and see Ajahn Chah who had a lot of complaints: his fields weren’t producing very much and his buffalo was getting old and his house wasn’t big enough and his kids weren’t satisfying him and… He said he was getting really sick of the world and becoming dispassionate. Ajahn Chah said, “No, you’re not. You’re not dispassionate. If you got more buffaloes, newer one…