(approx. 13 minutes)15th December, 2024 KEYWORDS: Q: Self Seems To Be Growing Not Diminishing – I meditate and watch behaviour patterns and bear with my thoughts and feelings, including feeling into the belly. However I seem to become more of what was buried, and not less. There is no increased sense of freedom. The "self" even seems to have grown, not diminished by my explorations over the last 11 years of serious meditation and 31 years of some kind of commitment to it. I feel that at the core I am as strapped as I ever was. Bearing with the unbearable, the ultimate transformer, storehouse of wholesomeness, great faith, great doubt, great endurance, overly focus on suffering, Going For Refuge, surrender, compassionate caring, desire, denied pain, overwhelm, sadness, unawareness, volunteering, forget about ourselves, being an abbot, vibhava tanha, appreciative attention, willing to meet ourselves, Outshining The Sorrow.
Q: Could The Mind Actually Become Our Friend?
(approx. 12 minutes) KEYWORDS: "Could the mind actually become our friend? At what point should we say....’enough, leave it be. Enough work has been done'?" There must come a point when we no longer need to keep looking back for the clearance of Dukkha.” Doubt, old pain, Ajahn Chah, friends, liking, trusting, honesty, stories, patient endurance, bhava tanha, obstruction, abstraction, balanced practice, allowing practice to happen, ‘doing the practice’, bowing, rituals, going for refuge, selflessness, ‘my way’, recovering, Aligning Meditation, disembodied, the unknown, limited disposition, open-hearted, befriending.
Q: What Is The Right Amount Of Sleep?
(approx. 13 minutes) KEYWORDS: Esteemed Thai forest tradition teachers, teenagers, projecting authority, compulsive comparing, aphorism at Wat Pah Pong, ‘eat little, speak little, sleep little’, eat more, know the right amount, superior samadhi, parents, stories, speaking, seen and heard, primary carers, adequate emotional nourishment, listening, doubt, uncertainty, Dhammapada verse 160, being your own refuge, theistic religions.