Beginners

We have a choice, by Corrado Pensa

Every difficult or unpleasant situation can be used as further training for our aversion, anger and hatred or as training in our dharma practise. Any pleasant situation can be used to further our training in attachment, fantasising and possessiveness or to kindle attention and exercise our capacity to open up and let go…

The Burdened Heart, by Ajahn Brahmamuni.

True peace is found only in the dharma. When we practise meditation and our hearts attain to the dharma of letting go, or non-attachment to all moods, feelings and emotions, when we do not incline towards or attach to any mood whatsoever, then we will escape the repetitious cycle of birth and death; then we will escape Samsara…

Something in the training, by Trevor Leggett

The man wants the bath water to be calm so he smacks down the waves as they come up. The teacher said, ‘That’s like trying to smack down your thoughts as they arise. But that will just create new ones! If, instead, you simply keep still and watch the waves, they will die down of themselves.’

Anicca

One of the first insights of the Buddha ‘all that arises ceases’, are not reality, not nirvana, not liberation.

The Eightfold Path

Whoever makes endeavour for the riddance of wrong purpose, for the attainment of right purpose, that is his right endeavour. Mindful, he gets rid of wrong purpose; mindful, entering on right purpose he abides in it. That is his right mindfulness. Thus these three things circle round and follow after right purpose — that is to say: right view, right endeavour, right mindful­ness…

The Four Noble Truths

And what is the ariyan truth of the arising of anguish? Whatever crav­ing is connected with again-becoming, accompanied by delight and attach­ment, finding delight in this and that, namely the craving for sense-pleasures, the craving for becoming, the craving for annihilation — this is called the ariyan truth of the arising of anguish…