In Buddhism, we gain a type of experientially acquired knowledge that grows in our hearts through what we call “practice.” We use the word “practice” in Buddhism much more than we use the word “belief.” We don’t say to each other: “How’s your belief going?” Instead, we ask, “How’s your practice going?” It’s a different way of learning. Intellectual learning gives us intellectual knowledge. Having…

As you practice being aware of objects (such as moods) from the time they arise until the time they pass away, you develop insight. You begin to realize that it’s not pleasant to attach to objects that are constantly changing. So you stop holding on to them. When you stop attaching to these objects, they lose their capacity to overwhelm you. For instance, you might be very inspired by something, s…

Our birth and death are just one thing. You can’t have one without the other. It’s a little funny to see how at a death people are so tearful and sad, and at a birth how happy and delighted. It’s delusion. I think if you really want to cry, then it would be better to do so when someone is born. Cry at the root, for if there were no birth, there would be no death. Can you understand this? This refl…

When people would say to Ajahn Chah that they found it impossible to practice in society, he would ask them: “If I poked you in the chest with a burning stick, would you say ‘I’m suffering, it’s true, but since I live in this society I can’t get away from it?”’ Ajahn Chah’s response makes a point not unlike the Buddha’s parable of the poisoned arrow. The Buddha tells of man who had been shot by an…

Actually there’s nothing much to this mind. It’s simply radiant in and of itself. It’s naturally peaceful. Why the mind doesn’t feel peaceful right now is because it gets lost in its own moods. There’s nothing to mind itself. It simply abides in its natural state, that’s all. That sometimes the mind feels peaceful and other times not peaceful is because it has been tricked by these moods. The untr…

Worried about attachment to jhānas? The worst that can happen is that we will be reborn in a heavenly realm for up to 84 thousand eons of celestial bliss. Considering the range of possible rebirths within samsara that’s still not a bad option. The best that can happen is that we realize enlightenment. Virtue and states of samādhi are like rungs of a ladder. We have to hold onto higher and higher…

Renunciation is a lovely reflection to bring up from time to time. Sometimes people talk about how they’ve renounced something they were strongly attached to. They say that having renounced it, they’re now done with it, once and for all. However, it’s rarely as simple as that. Being attached to something means we don’t want to let it go. If we recognize that something is harmful, a desire may aris…

For sustaining and integrating the benefits of meditation, the composure of sense restraint is highly effective. The Buddha repeatedly emphasized the importance of establishing mindfulness at the doors of the senses in order to curtail self-indulgence. The bliss that arises in jhāna is completely independent of sensual pleasures. Thrills and excitement are in fact an obstruction to deep meditatio…

Yesterday, at the City of the Dharma Realm in Sacramento, I was giving instructions to twenty-eight novices who were preparing to ordain next month as bhikṣunīs, Buddhist nuns. It was quite a delightful time. Their sincerity was tangible. One of the ideas I brought up with them is developing samaṇa saññā, the perception or recollection of being a religious seeker. We function out of our perc…

Another training the Buddha described with regard to food is that to eat appropriately you should eat one mouthful at a time. That may not strike you as a novel concept. It means you eat the mouthful of food that is in your mouth, without lining up the next spoonful in a holding pattern like a plane hovering round an airport or waiting for take-off on a runway. Instead, simply be with the mouthful…