This is what we are all involved with. This is what life is for us at this time. We are all alive now, living within the restrictions of our bodies and minds. Whether you like it, approve of it, or whatever, it doesn’t matter…
Ajahn Sumedho
Is awareness lonely? Ajahn Sumedho
Extract from a talk given at the Buddhist Publishing Group 2002 Summer School. Around 3 minutes
The Path of Wisdom, by Ajahn Sumedho
Talking about universal love is a very inspiring subject. There is nothing wrong with contemplating universal love, either. But if that’s all we are doing, then it can be merely a whitewash over inner pain and anguish. We might want to love all beings and live in a world of unity and total love. That might be a very appealing idea. What is it that prevents us from that unity? If we trace it back, we will find it’s the ignorance that we have about ourselves…
Crashed out Buddhas, by Ajahn Sumedho
All sensory objects satisfy us temporarily, but then we have to find something else to be absorbed into — to read, think, go to sleep, get drunk, take dope, have sex. It goes on and on, without reflection…
Tathata or Suchness
When I first came across this word ‘Suchness’ in Zen literature, I thought, ‘What the heck is Suchness?
Brothers and sisters in suffering, old age, sickness and death, by Ajahn Sumedho
If the Buddha had started with the teaching that there is no suffering, none of us would have believed it: There certainly is! He certainly got that wrong! So he started with: There is suffering…
In the moment of mindfulness, there is no suffering, by Ajahn Sumedho
In the moment of mindfulness, there is no suffering. I can’t find any suffering in mindfulness; it’s impossible; there’s absolutely none. But when there’s heedlessness, there is a lot of suffering in my mind…
Pointers to the Ultimate, by Ajahn Sumedho
In any religion there is the exoteric side — the tradition and forms, scriptures, ceremonies and disciplines—and the esoteric, which is the essential nature of that. So, in much of what we call religion, the emphasis is really on the external form.
Buddhism now 