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…

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…

Eating is one way of interacting with our environment; it is one form of relationship to material things. When eating, we use our tongues, our palate, to connect with external, material food; eating is therefore one aspect of ‘conduct.’ If by eating we generate advantageous, beneficial results, our conduct is considered accomplished; if, however, we generate ill-effects and cause harm, our conduct…

The profound teaching is whatever you can’t do yet. It’s not something that’s always intellectually difficult, but it’s profound if you haven’t yet penetrated it, you haven’t yet reached it. Indeed, it’s often the simplest and most straightforward teachings which are the most effective and produce the most meaningful change in our lives. This is a point to observe about the Dhamma - that the study…

When the Buddha clearly saw suffering and the cause that gives rise to suffering, he looked for a way to solve the problem. He realized that it had to be solved at the cause: the mind that’s deluded. So he developed intelligence in the area of the heart and mind, to see if the things the heart and mind are infatuated with are really worth that infatuation. Exactly how wonderful are they really? Th…

But then the last four lines of the sutta present a very different message: By not holding to fixed views, The pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision, Being freed from all sense desires, Is not born again into this world. Until those last four lines, there’s a seamless flow of ideas, a deeply inspiring sentiment that the Buddha encourages for all of us. It continues to get more exalted and bri…

The discernment of admirable friends can be seen in two things: the standards by which they judge you, and their purpose in judging you. If they’re really discerning, they’ll judge you by your actions—not by your appearance, wealth, or anything else over which you have no control. They’ll judge your actions both by the intentions on which you act and on the results of your actions. In both cases—a…

Sometimes we may think that if we could just get to a place where we didn’t feel this fear problem or this grief issue that we have, we’d be happy. Often we’re trying to climb over a ‘this’ to get to some imagined ‘that’; we’re trying to climb over the present in order to reach some imagined future where there’s ‘me’ without ‘that thing’. I’ve had to work a lot with this in the past, particularly…

People find a tremendous sense of positioning through holding views. In my own practice I found it quite easy to give up things, even to be quite austere, but then I’d develop critical views about everyone else. I hadn’t relinquished that conceit, that way of positioning myself by judging others. So rather than going into debates about who is right and who is wrong, which is the right meditation p…