Podcast, Page 59

When you live in a monastery, there’s all these orthodox ways of coming together–with ritual and with chanting.  The purpose of them is to compose the mind and collect the mind.  That’s obviously one of the most difficult things to do.  Our minds are just easily scattered off into worry, or annoyance, or whatever it may be.  Just having to collect your mind on a ritualized choreography is actually very, very helpful.  If you get into it, it also has this devotional quality–a quality of the heart–that actually helps to prepare your mind for meditation.… Read the rest

So, we’ll do some walking meditation.  One of the things I’ve been trying to emphasize is to notice the state of no thought.  So, in the walking meditation, use the end of the path.  When you start, bring the mind to clarity–this is the way it is now–and try to get to that sense of quiet.… Read the rest

So, notice something like anticipation.  Notice thoughts that are looking for something like ‘How long will the sitting last?’.  Just to know them and to witness their comings and goings brings you to peace.… Read the rest

Tahn Ajahn Dtun answers questions on topics including…

• How to develop concentration and jhana
• Whether or not householders can attain the level of sotapanna and how it can be done
• The alteration of the bones of arahants into crystal-like relics

I always find it helpful to contemplate the context of the Buddha’s own search and why he did his practice.  The Buddha’s aspiration was very, very profound.  The Buddha was a very successful being, socially and yet, in him there was a kind of questioning and it had to do with birth and death.  He came from the consideration that old age, sickness, and death was his lot as well as everyone else’s lot and yet, in Indian culture there was this idea of ‘moksha’ or liberation from the round of birth and death as the context of his search.  So, what’s the context of your search?… Read the rest

We’ve received these bodies from the material elements that we’ve taken from our parents, and so we should be careful in how we go about using this body, because we require it to go about developing goodness in our lives.  When I was the age of 16 or 17, I can remember having a fever and just thinking to myself, “Why is it that I can not tell this body to feel better, to feel normal?” and it became clear to me that the body and mind are separate–that I had no control over my own body.

*Translated by Ajahn Tejapanyo… Read the rest

When Luang Por Sumedho used to start his retreats he’d say, “The past is a memory, the future’s unknown, now is the knowing.”  So, the encouragement is always the awakening to the way things are.… Read the rest

Sometimes people in the practice of metta are trying to manufacture some incredible, blissful, heart state, but that’s a form of greed.  But, just the natural openness of heart which have when we feel gratitude, when we feel generosity, when we feel friendship; I think we’re just touching that natural way of being in life when the heart is very open.… Read the rest

Tahn Ajahn Dtun (Ajahn Tejapanyo translates) answers questions at a dana at Tisarana.  He covers topics such as…

• Eliminating sakaya ditthi (self-identity view)
• Whether or not it is selfish to end suffering for oneself when there are so many other beings that will be left behind
• How to have the determination to be reborn in a situation where we can practice.

I’ve been suggesting during this retreat to establish mindfulness, so those of you who have just come might just try that.  So, be receptive, let the sounds come to you, let go of thought, listen.… Read the rest