“When contemplating a meditation object, check to see which object is right for you. It’s like food on a tray. You have to contemplate for yourself to choose which foods are right for the conditions of your body. In the…
“Meditation means contemplating in a way that solves problems at the same time. Look at yourself a lot. Keep track of the mind, your sensitivity, your thought-fabrications. Actually, all your thoughts are an affair of fabrication. To put it in…
“Some people have to keep thinking: “What is the mind? What is the heart?”—all kinds of things, keeping at it, back and forth until they go crazy. They don’t understand anything. You don’t have to think that far. Just simply…
“Virtue, concentration, and discernment are like our food. If virtue were food, we’d say that it’s sweet but without any richness. If you add concentration, that adds some richness. Now it’s both sweet and rich. It’s good that way. But…
“The crude, beginning level of the practice is a little hard to maintain, but the refined levels of virtue, concentration, and discernment all come out of this. It’s as if they’re distilled from this same thing. To put it in…
“When you construct a house, then when it’s finished, only the construction of it is finished, right? The next step is that you have to live in the house and always keep cleaning it. It’s not the case that when…
“Some people come to the monastery but never come to the meditation hall to hear the Dhamma. They sit way out there, chatting with their children and grandchildren, and don’t understand anything. This isn’t coming into the monastery like people.…
“When discernment arises, you can abandon your defilements. As your discernment grows, your behavior will change. You’ll abandon your old ways. It’s like going into the forest to look for fruit. At first you find some fruit that’s not especially…
“When you go for alms in the village, put on your robes neatly before you go. Exercise restraint as you go for alms. I’ve seen new monks and novices who don’t know anything. When they eat in someone’s house, they…
“Reaching the Dhamma, awakening to the Dhamma: These things sound awfully exalted, too exalted to talk about. But actually, people like us are on a level where we can reach the Dhamma. Reaching the Dhamma is understanding, “This is evil.…