Buddhism

You Are Not A Permanent Person, by Ajahn Sumedho

So much of our suffering is around attachment to perceptions, views, opinions and emotional habits. In the enlightened mind one is breaking out of conditioning. Because there is an infinite variety of conditioned phenomena, the Buddha talked in terms of just five groups (five khandhas) in which to get a perspective on it, and this is to be understood in a very direct way, not in a theoretical way. Each one of us experiences through the body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness, and…

We are having a problem with our Theme

We have had a problem with our Theme. All’s well now. However, as you can see below, we have lost all of our Twitter and Facebook likes. All things are impermanent.                                     The Buddha

This is the Miracle, by Trevor Leggett

The teacher said that people today, and always, sell themselves cheap. Somebody who is always saying, ‘I’m no good,’ won’t try at anything because, ‘Things always go wrong for me. And if I do happen to succeed in something, it’s never appreciated; it always goes badly. And is life worth living anyway?’ Such people are selling themselves cheap. They have a treasure in them…

Kalachakra Initiation, by Diana St Ruth

And they dashed in groups! Tea time at Kalachakra was a sight to behold. How else are thirty thousand people going to get their cuppas in such a short time unless it is with great speed? Besides, this was obviously a time-honoured custom and one performed, as with most other things it seemed to me, with joyful vigour…

Life in a Korean Monastery, Jisu Sunim

At the beginning each practitioner is given a hua-tou, a kind of koan. For example: What is this? I-Mo-Ko? What is this? The idea is to concentrate your entire attention and mind on this one particular koan or hua-tou: What is this? What is this? What is this? It is different from vipassana meditation where the intention is to be aware and solely aware of what is going on. When you eat, you just acknowledge how that feels—approaching the spoon, touching the spoon, feeling the coolness of the handle, and so on. In koan meditation, however, your attention is single-pointedly directed to this question—What is this?—right now. Initially, it is very difficult to concentrate because all kinds of thinking comes up . . . comes up . . . comes up . . . like clouds, or smoke from a chimney…