The Middle Way is much misunderstood in the West. People think it means the easy and convenient way of practice. But that idea of the path is merely the way of the kilesas; the way of mental defilements like laziness and complacency. Effort is difficult because it goes directly against the pull of the kilesas. There is an innate desire to just relax or to go into some pursuit that you feel comfort…

Lost Something? If you understand that good and bad, right and wrong, all lie within you, then you won’t have to go looking for them somewhere else. Just look for them where they arise. If you don’t, it’d be like losing something in one place and then going to look for it in another. If you lose something here, you must look for it here. Even if you don’t find it at first, keep looking where you d…

There’s also the issue of the effort you put into that happiness. Is it worth it? Do you really get the happiness you want from it? What’s the cost of this happiness you’re pursuing? You want to look at this balance sheet very carefully. One of the reasons we practice concentration is to gain a sense of the range of happiness, the range of well-being that the mind is capable of. For a lot of peopl…

Sometimes, our practice gets bogged down when we forget to enjoy and make it interesting. We do the practice by applying a method, taking a methodological approach: “If I just follow the technique, I’m going to get peaceful somehow.” Actually, practice relies on the quality of awareness. The results we experience depend on the quality of our awareness and mindfulness: calming the bodily formation,…

Life is not easy for those who have a sense of shame, who are modest, pure-minded and detached, morally upright and reflective. v. 245 If we find ourselves thinking, ‘This is just too much, I can’t let go of this one’, we need to be extra careful. It is easy to let go of minor attachments, but the really serious ones are a different story. The Buddha knew about that different story, the one we ten…

Now for the next hour we’ll do the walking practice, using the motion of walking as the object of concentration, bringing your attention to the movement of your feet and the pressure of the feet touching the ground. You can use the mantra ‘Buddho’ for that also – ‘Bud’ for the right, ‘-dho’ for the left, using the span of the joṅgrom path. See if you can be fully with, fully alert to the sensatio…

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.…