Right View, essential to this process, delivers the mental clarity we need to understand the laws of karma: that skilful acts lead to wholesome results and unskillful acts to harm. Secondly, we perceive the impermanence, suffering, and impersonal nature of all conditioned existence. Once we recognize our ability to affect our karma, our insight into these truths moves us to live accordingly: we ta…

These five qualities are also called strengths. The difference between “faculty” and “strength” lies in the intensity. The Pāli word for faculty, indrīya, is related to Indra, the king of the gods. When something is a faculty in the mind, it’s in charge. You can think of the mind as being like a committee. A strength is a strong member of the committee whereas a faculty is someone who has taken ov…

This is Right View: seeing life as it is, knowing life as it is, experiencing life as it is and letting go. This is not ‘me’ doing something; it is a clear seeing. Awareness itself is what enables the mind to let go. We use this teaching as an entry into learning. This approach is very tolerant and accepting, benevolent and compassionate. It’s not an approach that continues to divide, dissect, mak…

[From a Morning Reflection, June 2013] Even when we live in a monastery, the mind tends toward busyness and proliferation. This is a natural habit of the human mind. We can make ourselves conscious of that—not through a force of will, trying to squelch or annihilate it—but through understanding the mind’s natural habits and the tendencies we carry with us. We can work with them in a skillful way.…

Along with developing gratitude towards our physical parents, the Buddha also encourages us to cultivate it in relationship to our spiritual teachers and with those who have helped us in our spiritual lives. This means gratitude to those who have taught us and introduced us to the liberating teachings. Thus, in a similar way, despite whatever shortcomings there might be in our teachers, and things…

Why should our parents have always got it right? It’s even strange that we should expect, let alone demand that. When we think it through, it’s somewhat ridiculous, but our idealistic mind can easily look for that. So it’s a good opportunity to cultivate a sense of compassion, of kindness and of forgiveness. And whatever the difficulties are that have come from family life – inherited along with t…

There’s the view that we’ve passed the Golden Age when everything was perfect. Nevertheless there is this aspiration of the human heart for individuals, communities and nations to somehow get back to that perfect paradise on planet Earth, where everything is fair and just, beautiful and true and perfect for us. And while we can point to the mess we humans have made, we have to recognize that Mothe…

Shortly after her ordination, the Buddha’s step-mother Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī asked him for a short Dhamma-instruction that would guide her in her solitary practice. He responded with eight principles for recognizing what qualifies as Dhamma and Vinaya, and what does not. The commentary tells us that after her instruction, Mahāpajāpati Gotamī in no long time became an arahant. The eight principles ha…

A more refined explanation of awakening or nibbāna is that there are two kinds: there is awakening ‘with residue’, meaning being awakened with a living body, or while still alive; and there is awakening ‘without residue’ when the awakened person dies and the body breaks up. The first designation refers to the condition of awakening with the usual expressions of body/mind still intact. The awakene…

Most of the more popular chants found in the Thai Buddhist tradition consist of passages selected from the Tipitaka. They include verses listing the qualities of the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha; discourses expounding key teachings; passages of wise reflection; and verses for radiating thoughts of kindness and for sharing merits with all sentient beings. For many Thai lay Buddhists chanting is their…