The moods, once so solid, now seem softer and there is a general uplift towards calmness, peace and joy…
Buddhist meditation
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…
Birth and Death, by Shen Hui
However hard I practise seeing my true nature, I am always brought back into birth and death. What method must be practised in order to obtain the birthless and the deathless?
Part 1 Zazenshin: Acupuncture Needle of Zazen, by Shohaku Okumura
When we practise for certain lengths of time we find that our motivation itself is influenced by poison. Then we often have doubts about our practice and whether or not it works to lessen the suffering caused by the three poisons. Sometimes we might even quit because we feel it doesn’t work…
A Good Dose of Dhamma: For meditators when they are ill, by Upasika Kee Nanayon.
You can’t prevent pleasure and pain, you can’t keep the mind from labelling things and forming thoughts, but you can put these things to a new use. If the mind labels a pain, saying, `I hurt,’ you have to read the label carefully, contemplating it until you see that it’s wrong. If the label were right, it would have to say that the pain isn’t me, it’s empty. Or if there’s a thought that `I’m in pain,’ this type of thinking is also wrong. You have to take a new approach to your thinking, to see that thinking is inconstant, stressful, and not yours…
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…
Form is Void by Shen Hui
Form exists because the mind produces it; void exists because of that which cannot be perceived. It is also said…
Impermanence: The Butterfly on the Board, John Aske
Because life itself as it unfolds is unbound, and as the barriers to our understanding fall away, the simple uncompounded freedom that the Buddha taught becomes our life, and our happiness.
