Thinking is always about something. It is an attempt to categorise. What we experience is seen in the light of past experience. What we have experienced in the past is filtered through the way we look at things, our dispositions (sankhara). That is why thought will not allow us to see things anew. If we want to experience things as they really are, then thought about those things must come to an end. When thinking stops, we must be right there with what is happening…
The Unborn, the reality beyond birth and death. One of the great teachings of Buddhism. Buddhist talk given at the 2001 Buddhist Publishing Group Summer School. 62 mins
Patience requires us to go beyond the choice between fleeing or fighting. It is the third and most difficult way.
Affectionate awareness starts being a real central value in our lives.
Rather than trying to seek for Buddha or truth (dhamma) in terms of some idea or some doctrinal dogma that we might form around the concepts of Buddha and dhamma, the Buddha pointed to suffering and its cause. By recognising its cause as attachment to desire, we let go. When we let go of the cause, then we realise the cessation of suffering. The Buddha was actually teaching the way of nonsuffering. The Eightfold Path is really the experience of nonsuffering, in the present, in the here-and-now…
What happiness is and what it isn’t.
Putting the Buddha’s discovery into practice is no quick fix.
A talk by Ajahn Sumedho. Loving-kindness (Metta) to oneself and others is one of the major teachings of Buddhism. 72 minutes.
Talk by Richard Gombrich in which he explores the difficult issue of whether we can know what the Buddha taught, using the Pali texts as his basis. 46 minutes.
Humiliation is centred upon the work of ego, and humility is freedom from ego. These two words capture the gist of bondage and freedom, the gist of our practice. Maybe the only effort we need to make is to re-own the word ‘humility’ in its true sense, which often gets lost in a pseudo-humility. Hubert Benoit talks about ‘remaining motionless within humiliation’. He refers to ‘resting on the stone bed’ and ‘letting the humiliation alone.’ These are excellent descriptions of our practice; they have the strength to evoke what is beneficial, what is skilful, in transforming us…
