The Buddha recognized that meditation can dig up unskillful thoughts in the mind, unskillful states, but he had a solution for them. It comes down to how you breathe, how you talk to yourself, the perceptions and feelings you focus on. The most famous case was that of some monks who were practicing body contemplation without any supervision. The Buddha had gone off on a personal retreat into the f…

(From a talk recorded in July 2013) Recently I’ve made visits to a physical therapist because I have some ongoing muscle issues that have plagued me for the last twenty years. Often this type of situation originates with a small abnormality that causes pain, and many people will subconsciously allow the body to adjust to it or slump in a certain way to relieve that pain. Although this gives tempor…

In our monastic training, we try to create a very low standard of what we need in life. I took care of my elderly mother for about nine years until she died. During that time, I lived with her in her condo apartment in Ottawa. When an extremely old person died, it was sometimes mentioned on TV or in the newspaper. Once, there was a British airman who died at 113 years of age; my mum was ninety-thr…

When we sit down to meditate, we are paying attention to whatever meditation object we use. When using the breath, we are paying attention to the in-breath, the out-breath; paying attention to the body; soothing the body with the breath; settling the mind with the breath-filled body. There’s an ease that comes from that awareness and mindfulness. There’s the appreciation of stillness, tranquility,…

You think, ‘This is a rip-off! I’ve been struggling away for five or six years with fear and lust and so on, and now I get to the free space – here we are out in the open – and it’s a desert. This is not right!’ But then, what you realize is that this is not what the Buddha was pointing to as the goal of the holy life, because even though one can’t see any outstanding objects causing obstruction o…

Theravada Buddhism, for instance, is often taken to represent the Hinayana position, the self-concern of ‘Quick, let me out of here, I’ve had enough of this mess; I want this to be over as quickly as possible.’ One can see that that represents a very definite stage in one’s own spiritual development. For example, we start out with just a worldly attitude; basically we’re not interested in spiritua…

In our first newsletter we included a picture of two of us walking in October sunshine along this wide, clear path in the Milntuim Woods. The path itself is clear. To the right and left are interesting digressions (in this case, there is a swamp on the left and a thicket on the right). Ahead, there is open countryside and the radiant light of the sun. It reminded me of the journey that each of us…

Meditation practice requires the bodily, conceptual, and heart-based intelligences to work together. As a standard, the advice is to simplify the activity of conceptual intelligence to that of placing a thoughtful listening onto an aspect of body or heart. And to then sense how that feels, or what response arises. Some details to consider are: With what attitude and energy do you place your attent…

On a number of occasions, the Buddha described the Path of Spiritual Practise as a spiritual progression or evolution. [See note from the book below] On one such occasion, in answer to the query about how to realize the cessation of I-making, he elaborated as follows: ‘A person hears the Dhamma taught by the Buddha or one of his disciples. They gain faith and, recognizing that it is not easy to pr…

If we were to measure our thoughts in terms of their quantity, we’d have to say that we’re really good at thinking. In terms of their quality, it’s another matter. Very rarely do we pay much attention to quality; it’s more a matter of being interested in whatever the mind churns up. Some people are better at directing their thoughts for particular purposes, and other people just follow wherever th…