é™æ€è¯ Readings For Silent Reflection
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Enlightening !
Ajahn Chah’s simple, profound advice to an aging student approaching her death.
Keep mind and body separate
This very lump of flesh that lies here in decline is saccadhamma, the truth. The truth of this body is saccadhamma, and it is the unchanging teaching of the Buddha. The Buddha taught us to look at the body, to contemplate it and to come to terms with its nature. We must be able to be at peace with the body, whatever state it is in. The Buddha taught that we should ensure that it is only the body that is locked up in jail, and not let the mind be imprisoned along with it. Now as your body begins to run down and deteriorate with age, don’t resist that, but don’t let your mind deteriorate with it. Keep the mind separate. Give energy to the mind by realizing the truth of the way things are. The Lord Buddha taught that this is the nature of the body. It can’t be any other way. Having been born, it gets old and sick and then it dies. This is a great truth that you are presently encountering. Look at the body with wisdom and realize it.
Even if your house is flooded or burnt to the ground, whatever the danger that threatens it, let it concern only the house. If there’s a flood, don’t let it flood your mind. If there’s a fire, don’t let it burn your heart. Let it be merely the house, that which is external to you, that is flooded and burned. Allow the mind to let go of its attachments. The time is ripe.
You have been alive a long time. Your eyes have seen any number of forms and colors, your ears have heard so many sounds, and you’ve had any number of experiences. And that’s all they were— just experiences. You’ve eaten delicious foods and all the good tastes were just good tastes, nothing more. The unpleasant tastes were just unpleasant tastes, that’s all. If the eye sees a beautiful form, that’s all it is, just a beautiful form. An ugly form is just an ugly form. The ear hears an entrancing, melodious sound, and it’s nothing more than that. A grating, disharmonious sound is simply so.
The Buddha said that rich or poor, young or old, human or animal, no being in this world can maintain itself in any one state for long; everything experiences change and estrangement. This is a fact of life that we can do nothing to remedy. But the Buddha said that what we can do is to contemplate the body and mind so as to see their impersonality, see that neither of them is “me” or “mine.” They have a merely provisional reality. It’s like this house: it’s only nominally yours, you couldn’t take it with you anywhere.
It is the same with your wealth, your possessions, and your family—they are all yours only in name; they don’t really belong to you, they belong to nature. Now this truth doesn’t apply to you alone; everyone is in the same position, even the Lord Buddha and his enlightened disciples. They differed from us in only one respect, and that was in their acceptance of the way things are. They saw that it could be no other way. -
(å˜å¥½å¿ƒï¼‰Thinking good thoughts means:
To transform a wasteful mind to a cherishing mind,
To transform a hateful mind to a tolerant mind,
To transform a hot-tempered mind to a patient mind,
To transform an ignorant mind to a reasonable mind,
To transform a discursive mind to an attentive mind,
To transform a careless mind to a prudent mind,
To transform an indulgent mind to a disciplined mind,
To transform an indolent mind to a responsible mind,
To transform an opportunistic mind to a respectful mind,
To transform a pessimistic mind to an optimistic mind. -
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顶礼西方接引导师大慈大悲å�—æ— é˜¿å¼¥é™€ä½› _/|\_
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The empty mind - the pure mind - is not a blank, zero-land, where you're not feeling or caring about anything. It's an effulgence of the mind. It's a brightness that is truly sensitive and accepting. It's an ability to accept life as it is. When we accept life as it is, we can respond appropriately to the way we're experiencing it, rather than just reacting out of fear and aversion.
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Of course we can always imagine more perfect conditions, how it should be ideally, how everyone should behave. But it is not our task to create an ideal. It's our task to see how it is, and to learn from the world as it is. For the awakening of the heart, conditions are always good enough.
Ajahn Sumedho
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The mind of an enlightened human being is flexible and adaptable. The mind of the ignorant person is conditioned and fixed.
Ajahn Sumedho -
Where does rain come from?
It comes from all the dirty water that evaporates from the earth, like urine and the water you throw out after washing your feet.
Isn't it wonderful how the sky can take that dirty water and change it into pure, clean water?
Your mind can do the same with your defilements if you let it.
Ajahn Chah -
Sudden windfalls seldom
bring about sudden happiness;
bringing sudden unrest instead.
– Stonepeace
A peasant dug up a very valuable golden statue of an Arhat from a hill. When his friends learned of the discovery, they rushed to congratulate him. But the peasant was worried. He had earned a living from tilling the soil, enough to feed and clothe himself, to be happy and carefree. But from the moment of the discovery, he neither ate or slept well.
After a month, he had become a bag of bones. This was because he was afraid that someone would steal the statue, while the other reason was that from morning till night, he racked his brains thinking, ‘There are supposed to be 18 Arhat statues, but I’ve only dug up one. Where are the other 17? If I could find them too, wouldn’t that be great?’
This is called, ‘the never satisfied mind is like a snake trying to swallow an elephant‘! With this much greed, what happiness can there be? A single desire [with worldly greed] is a fetter. A tangled multitude of desires is like links of fetters formed into a web of chains, that tightly binds us. -
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DETACHMENT
1. No attachment to wealth.
2. No attachment to love.
3. No attachment to fame.
4. No attachment to defamation.
5. No attachment to sufferings.
6. No attachment to difficulties.
7. No attachment to forces.
8. No attachment to anger.
WHAT IS A TRANQUIL MIND?
1. When there are no worries, the mind remains clear and still.
2. When there are worries, the mind can make judgments.
3. When favorable circumstances arise, the mind remains simple.
4. When unfavorable circumstances arise, the mind remains calm. -
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