Contemplations and reflections on death and dying are a means of focusing attention, and prioritizing where we choose to put our attention. We can ask ourselves, What is it we are becoming absorbed in? What are we letting the mind run away with? These are essential contemplations because they help us make the practice—including relinquishment and generosity—our first priority. The literal translat…

I was at the Island Hermitage in Sri Lanka this past winter, where it was very beautiful. While there, I did a fair amount of contemplation around the topic of illness, which I found very useful to my practice. The Buddha recommends this contemplation as one of the subjects for recollection: I am of the nature to sicken; I have not gone beyond sickness. While on my walking path I would bring it to…

I have been reading a book on Hawaiian spirituality. There’s a beautiful image that Hawaiians use. Each one of us is born into the world with a bowl full of light and for each unskillful choice we make throughout our lives—getting caught up in anger, conflict, or selfishness—it’s as if we put a rock in the bowl. The more rocks that are placed in the bowl, the less room there is for light. In our d…

…As we sit here during this retreat, we have to pay attention to things that are not at all interesting. They may even be unpleasant and painful. To patiently endure things rather than to run off in search of something interesting is a good discipline, isn’t it? It is good to be able to just endure the boredom, the pain, the anger, the greed, all these things – instead of always running away from…

The other night Ajahn Sucitto gave a Dhamma talk about the type of kamma that leads to the end of kamma. And one type of kamma he spoke about was stopping. The importance of stopping is often overlooked. We get so caught up in doing, becoming, activity, and engagement that we don’t attend to stopping—it’s a neglected aspect of our practice. This isn’t about sitting around doing nothing, because th…

The way of developing meditation is not a straightforward, cut and dried process. Each person must find their own way, which means you must be resourceful, and even, to some extent, inventive in choosing meditation techniques. If you encounter a hindrance with no prescribed method to circumvent it, you will have to rely on wisdom to devise a method on the spot. You can’t depend only on what the bo…

The Buddha never encouraged his followers to seek retribution, i.e., punishment for old wrongs. The conflict between retributive justice and true happiness is well illustrated by the famous story of Aṅgulimāla (MN 86). Aṅgulimāla was a bandit who had killed so many people—the Canon counts at least 100; the Commentary, 999—that he wore a garland (māla) made of their fingers (aṅguli). Yet afte…

Now, how do you use your powers of observation to get acquainted with the breath? Ask yourself: Do you know the breath yet, or not? Is the breath truly there, or not? If you can’t see whether the breath is true, look further in until it’s clearly there. There’s no trick, no mystery to it. It’s always true, right there. The important thing is whether or not you’re true. Are you? Yes. Then that’s al…

‘Discouraged’ is a word we shouldn’t use and a thing we shouldn’t allow in our hearts. Let it go and get it out. If you see it arising, let it go. Don’t take it in. If you are careless and let it sneak into the heart, then as soon as you are aware that discouragement has snuck in, you must immediately get it out. Don’t let it feed on the heart. Otherwise it will become a habit, and you will become…

A frequent question is how to give rise to rapture, and the Buddha gives a very vague answer: There are potentials for rapture in the body, so you pay appropriate attention to them. That doesn’t give you much to work with, but from personal experience I’ve found that there are certain parts of the body that have a nice pleasant feeling, nothing particularly impressive. But if you can locate them a…