Recent Posts - page 230

  • Notes on Meditation, from Ajahn Chah

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    On Meditaton

    If the mind is agitated by different things and you can’t concentrate, try taking an extra–deep breath until the lungs are completely full, and then release all the air until there is none left inside. Do this several times, then re–establish awareness…

  • Anxiety by John Aske

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    Hound Tor, Dartmoor, Devon. Art © @TessaMacDermot

    Worry, care, depression, gloom, all of these are targets of the universal raider. Anxiety is drawn like a spider to the web in which we struggle, and thrives on our resistance. But its strength is drawn from this and only this. The energy released by our struggling and resistance is what attracts it…

  • A Handful of Pain, by Diana St Ruth

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    Fudo @KyotoDailyPhoto

    To allow the body to be painful when it needs to be, without regarding it as a bad thing, can be a liberating experience, a relief even, because there is no further conflict in the mind. Of course it is difficult when pain is severe, but there is a way of separating oneself from it and changing one’s relationship to it…

  • In Simple Terms, by Ajahn Chah

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    In Simple Terms, by Ajahn Chah

    So if we have any discernment, we’ll realize that we’re not far from the Buddha at all. We’re sitting right in front of him right now. Whenever we understand the Dhamma, we see the Buddha…

    Download PDF copy of ‘In Simple Terms’, by Ajahn Chah

  • The End of The Affair, by John Snelling

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    Sea on the coast of Devon

    A couple of years ago I experienced that commonplace modern disaster, the breakup of a marriage. It’s always a trauma when two people who have thrown in their lot together split up.

  • Symbols, forms and conventions, by Ajahn Sumedho

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    Buddhas. Photo: © Janet Novak

    These kinds of symbols, forms and conventions can be used for awareness rather than for developing worldly attitudes or attachments to becoming some kind of Buddhist…

  • Discovering the Text of Hui Hai, by John Blofeld.

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    Kangchenjunga mountain, Himalayas

    Back in my room, which even at midday was rather dark, I lighted a red votive candle and began idly glancing through the pages of the old gentleman’s gift. It proved to be a reprint of an eighth-century (T’ang dynasty) text composed by the Ch’an Master Hui Hai, together with a selection of his dialogues with his disciples…

  • Standing Under a Tree, by Beopjeong Sunim

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    Tree

    When rain falls, the urban alleyways fill with people under umbrellas, with each person walking rather glumly under his or her own. Occasionally there may be two people under an umbrella but the umbrellas of the secular world are so narrow they hardly cover a single person’s shoulders. That reflects how stingy space and urban life have become…