All in all, the act of going for refuge occurs on three levels: external, internal, and—beyond external and internal—the level of nibbāna. These three levels can be summarized in two different ways: in terms of what they protect you from, and in terms of what they depend on to protect you. In terms of what they protect you from: The first level protects you from the unskillful actions of others; t…

They offered me a bowl, but it was cracked and it had no lid. Then I remembered once as a child taking the water buffaloes out to graze and seeing other lads carving vines and weaving them into hats. So I asked for some rattan. I wove a disk and a rectangle and then joined them. I had my bowl-lid – the only thing was it looked like a sticky rice basket. On alms-round, it was a real eyesore. The vi…

You have to reflect on death because it arouses the mind, warning it to not be heedless. Death is something we must frequently recollect, for if we don’t we will just go about occupying ourselves happily throughout our days and nights, letting time drift by as days turn into weeks, weeks into months and months into years, allowing our thoughts to proliferate about ‘at the end of the year…’ or ‘at…

The mind that is not attached is already quite happy. This is a happiness that never goes. It is something we can taste in our meditation practice. We begin to notice that we are happy when we don’t want anything. What kind of happiness is not wanting? At the point of not wanting, we are experiencing not being reborn into something. Desire is rebirth. We are reborn all the time in this sense, so w…

Investigate the pushes and pulls in the mind because it is that movement that takes us away from a central core of stillness and clarity that is possible to realize. We need to incline the mind toward the whole purpose of the practice and the promise of the Buddha: it’s possible to free the mind, to liberate oneself, to be peaceful and happy. This kind of happiness is not dependent on gratificatio…

Strive diligently and be patient. The pace of your progress depends largely on the store of virtuous tendencies you have accumulated from the past, and on the amount of present-moment effort you put into sitting and walking meditation. So always cultivate virtue and never let evil thoughts enter your mind. The more you practice in this way, the clearer your presence of mind will become, and the mo…

It seems to me that the approach most conducive to progress on the path, and the most skilful way of dealing with feelings of fear is that of strategic optimism. When people ask me how I personally deal with challenging dilemmas, I often tell them that I am a strategic optimist. Of course, naive optimism is very dangerous, as is habitual pessimism. Both these perspectives blind us to a great many…

Because the activities of producing and consuming require space and time, a happiness transcending space and time, by its very nature, is neither produced nor consumed. Thus, when the Buddha reached that happiness and stepped outside the modes of producing and consuming, he was able to turn back and see exactly how pervasive a role these activities play in ordinary experience, and how imprisoning…

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Contentment and simplicity of life-style are universal aids to peace of mind, whether for a monastic or a lay person. The four basic supports for human life are food, clothing, shelter and medicine, and their purpose is to support our spiritual aspiration rather than to become self-satisfying ends in themselves. With few possessions to worry about and contentment with what we have, our life is unc…