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…
Subjects include: Meditation, Mindfulness, Consciousness, and how we create ourselves.
You sometimes hear widely accepted teachings in Buddhism being argued about and all but dismissed, but Buddhism is for testing. Isn’t that the whole point? But you do hear these tussles going on…
Ajahn Sumedho gives a Dhamma talk on meditation, the Four Noble Truths and the impermanence of all conditioned phenomena… Short film 43mins
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 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.’
For many people the attitude towards meditation is one of always trying to change something, always trying to attain a particular state or recreate some kind of blissful experience remembered from the past…
Mindfulness in words — trying to make an internal commentary of what one is doing — is just a kind of illusion. It can be compared to putting into words something that cannot be put into words, and that is not at all what is meant by mindfulness…
