#Dhamma

Question: I find the people in my family becoming rather resentful about my interest in Buddhism and meditation.

Ajahn Sumedho: It can be very frustrating for others who don’t understand what you’re doing.

People want you to reaffirm their lives, so if you stop drinking, smoking, and eating meat, for example, that can be very frightening.
And then you might meditate rather than sit watching television. This is a problem because families could feel very threatened; they want your participation, then they feel everything is all right, ‘She’s doing what we’re doing and we understand her when she’s doing what we’re doing.’ When you’re not doing what they’re doing, then, ‘What’s she doing? Is she going senile? Is she losing it?’
I’ve found also, though, with so many people, that in the long run and in troubled times — especially when somebody dies or something like that — the family will probably come to you.
That’s when they need you and you will have something to offer that will help them that they wouldn’t have had if you had just gone along with them.
~Ajahn Sumedho

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**Bhante Subharo** @sbb@c.im · 5h

Bhante Subharo @sbb@c.im

Back when the pandemic started, and I was in lockdown, I made an honest attempt to make my own crude thing a bit like OwnCast. It was a weekly video livestream of video #Dhamma Talks (shown on my personal website), with a live text chat optionally available on the side. However, alas, that text chat *was not in the same window* as the livestream video. This was a frustration to most attendees, who expected a frictionless experience (similar to Youtube, Zoom, or Twitch), which didn't involve arranging two windows side-by-side (or one on top of the other on a smartphone, using the un-inuitive "split-screen" feature).

Now that I've discovered #OwnCast, taking it for a test run on a Raspberry Pi 5, I'm finding it to be most pleasing and agreeable.

**ReadingFaithfully.org** @ReadingFaithfully_org@mastodon.social · 10h

10h

Today’s #DailySutta:

Thag 1.90 Sāmidattattheragāthā: Sāmidatta

“The five aggregates are fully understood; they remain, but their root is cut.…”

Read the sutta
https://daily.readingfaithfully.org/thag-1-90-samidattattheragatha-samidatta/?=MDS

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#aggregates #Theragatha #Theravada

**Tikkhapaññā** @tikkhapanna@mastodon.online · 1d

“Cessation” is an important word in Buddhism, and it’s one that I like to define as the fading away of the sense of self. The sense of self fades away when we don’t attach to an experience. Cessation occurs when we learn to look at experience objectively.
~Ajahn Viradhammo

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**ReadingFaithfully.org** @ReadingFaithfully_org@mastodon.social · 1d

Today’s #DailySutta:

SN 41.3 Dutiyaisidattasutta: With Isidatta (2nd)

“Householder, there are many different views that arise in the world.…”

Read the sutta
https://daily.readingfaithfully.org/sn-41-3-dutiyaisidattasutta-with-isidatta-2nd/?=MDS

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**Tikkhapaññā** @tikkhapanna@mastodon.online · 2d

What you are now is the result of what you were.

What you will be tomorrow will be the result of what you are now.
The consequences of an evil mind will follow you like the cart follows the ox that pulls it.
The consequences of a purified mind will follow you like your own shadow.
No one can do more for you than your own purified mind-no parent, no relative, no friend, no one.
A well-disciplined mind brings happiness.
~Bhante Gunaratana

Ajahn Subharo · 2dDhamma Talk Video 149: Not Rocket ScienceHere’s a 39-min recorded Zoom video (162MB .mp4 - Tip: tap-and-hold to “Download link”, or right click to “Save Link As…“).

**Bhante Subharo** @sbb@c.im · 2d

Bhante Subharo @sbb@c.im

#Dhamma Talk: "Not Rocket Science"
https://bhikkhu.ca/buddhism/video/2025/04/19/Dhamma_Talk_149.html

Topics:
Theravada Buddhism, objects of meditation, suttas, the Early Buddhist texts; avoiding making the mistake of getting too caught up on details, when a broader view and taking care of the basics (like sila/morality and sensory restraint) can bring a lot of benefit to formal meditation

#Buddhism #Theravada #meditation

**ReadingFaithfully.org** @ReadingFaithfully_org@mastodon.social · 2d

ReadingFaithfully.org @ReadingFaithfully_org@mastodon.social

Today’s #DailySutta:

SN 22.95 Pheṇapiṇḍūpamasutta: A Lump of Foam

“Bhikkhus, suppose that this river Ganges was carrying along a great lump of foam.…”

Read the sutta
https://daily.readingfaithfully.org/sn-22-95-phenapindupamasutta-a-lump-of-foam/?=MDS

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**Tikkhapaññā** @tikkhapanna@mastodon.online · 3d

#Buddhism #Theravada #Dhamma

And what is the Noble Truth of the Way Leading to the Cessation of Suffering?

There are these two extremes that should be avoided. The pursuit of happiness through the five senses which is low, vulgar, the way of worldlings, ignoble, unbeneficial; and the pursuit of practices that fatigue the body and mind which is painful, ignoble, unbeneficial.
Without going to either of these extremes, the Buddha has awakened to the Middle Way, which gives rise to vision, which gives rise to wisdom, which leads to peace, to direct understanding, to enlightenment, to Nibbāna.
It is this Noble Eightfold Path; right view, right motivation, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right endeavour, right mindfulness, and right stillness.
This is that middle way awakened to by the Buddha, which gives rise to vision, which gives rise to wisdom, which leads to peace, to direct understanding, to enlightenment, to Nibbāna.
~'The Word of the Buddha'

**ReadingFaithfully.org** @ReadingFaithfully_org@mastodon.social · 3d

ReadingFaithfully.org @ReadingFaithfully_org@mastodon.social

Today’s #DailySutta:

MN 28 From… Mahāhatthipadopamasutta: The Longer Simile of the Elephant’s Footprint

“These five grasping aggregates are indeed dependently originated.…”

Read the sutta
https://daily.readingfaithfully.org/mn-28-from-mahahatthipadopamasutta-the-longer-simile-of-the-elephants-footprint/?=MDS

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#aggregates #DependentOrigination #MajjhimaNikaya

**Tikkhapaññā** @tikkhapanna@mastodon.online · 4d

#Buddhism #Theravada #Dhamma

Suppose there was a firebrand for lighting a funeral pyre, burning at both ends, and smeared with dung in the middle. It couldn’t be used as timber either in the village or the wilderness.

The person who practices to benefit neither themselves nor others is like this, I say.
The person who practices to benefit others, but not themselves, is better than that.
The person who practices to benefit themselves, but not others, is better than both of those.
But the person who practices to benefit both themselves and others is the foremost, best, chief, highest, and finest of the four.
From a cow comes milk, from milk comes curds, from curds come butter, from butter comes ghee, and from ghee comes cream of ghee. And the cream of ghee is said to be the best of these.
In the same way, the person who practices to benefit both themselves and others is the foremost, best, chief, highest, and finest of the four.
~AN4.95

**ReadingFaithfully.org** @ReadingFaithfully_org@mastodon.social · 4d

ReadingFaithfully.org @ReadingFaithfully_org@mastodon.social

Today’s #DailySutta:

SN 18.21 Anusayasutta: Tendency

“Sir, how does one know and see so that there’s no I-making……”

Read the sutta
https://daily.readingfaithfully.org/sn-18-21-anusayasutta-tendency/?=MDS

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**Tikkhapaññā** @tikkhapanna@mastodon.online · 5d

The Dhamma is opanāyiko, meaning it leads us to pay attention inwardly to the mind itself.

Through shining the light of awareness on the truth of the way things are, we change the mind for the better.
From gaining this understanding, we can eventually fulfil our potential as human beings by liberating the mind from the causes of suffering.
The Dhamma is the truth, so it isn’t something external, mysterious or distant from us. It’s apparent right here and right now.
By developing the factors of the Noble Eightfold Path, we can bring our mind in line with the Dhamma, which constantly illuminates the truth for us.
The truth is just as it is. The effect the truth has on us is to awaken us, to wake us up.
~Ajahn Kalyano

ReadingFaithfully.org @ReadingFaithfully_org@mastodon.social

**ReadingFaithfully.org** @ReadingFaithfully_org@mastodon.social · 5d

Today’s #DailySutta:

MN 35 From… Cūḷasaccakasutta: The Shorter Discourse With Saccaka

“How does the worthy Gotama guide his disciples?…”

Read the sutta
https://daily.readingfaithfully.org/mn-35-from-culasaccakasutta-the-shorter-discourse-with-saccaka/?=MDS

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#aggregates #MajjhimaNikaya #Theravada

**Tikkhapaññā** @tikkhapanna@mastodon.online · 6d

The Buddha starts the Four Noble Truths that sum up His message that life is inseparably tied to something He calls dukkha. The Pali word is often translated as...

... suffering, but it means something deeper than pain and misery. It refers to a basic unsatisfactoriness running through our lives, the lives of all but the enlightened.
Sometimes this unsatisfactoriness erupts into the open as sorrow, grief, disappointment, or despair; but usually it hovers at the edge of our awareness as a vague unlocalized sense that things are never quite perfect, never fully adequate to our expectations of what they should be.
This fact of dukkha, the Buddha says, is the only real spiritual problem. The other problems — the theological and metaphysical questions that have taunted religious thinkers through the centuries — He gently waves aside as “matters not tending to liberation”.
What he teaches, He says, is just suffering and the ending of suffering, dukkha and its cessation.
~Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

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**ReadingFaithfully.org** @ReadingFaithfully_org@mastodon.social · 6d

Today’s #DailySutta:

SN 22.29 Abhinandanasutta: Taking Pleasure

“Mendicants, if you take pleasure in form, you take pleasure in suffering.…”

Read the sutta
https://daily.readingfaithfully.org/sn-22-29-abhinandanasutta-taking-pleasure/?=MDS

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**Tikkhapaññā** @tikkhapanna@mastodon.online · Apr 14

Apr 14

Whether as a monastic or a layperson, one of the things we’re trying to do in Buddhist practice is to bring forth wholesome states of mind. And gratitude is one of them...

Since gratitude is a foundation for enlightenment, we try to make gratitude into something we can cultivate—and not just when things are going well for us.
For instance, when someone is nice to us, we feel grateful to them: that’s gratitude of circumstance. Now there’s nothing wrong with feeling grateful in favorable circumstances.
But we can certainly make our gratitude more robust by practicing the bringing forth of gratitude regardless of the situation. This is what we call bhāvanā (development of mind).
We’re now cultivating a skillful state of mind—in this case, one of thankfulness.
~Ajahn Viradhammo

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**ReadingFaithfully.org** @ReadingFaithfully_org@mastodon.social · Apr 14

Apr 14

Today’s #DailySutta:

SN 23.4 Pariññeyyasutta: Should Be Completely Understood

“I will teach you the things that should be completely understood, complete understanding, and the person who has completely understood.…”

Read the sutta
https://daily.readingfaithfully.org/sn-23-4-parinneyyasutta-should-be-completely-understood/?=MDS

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Golden Buddha statues in hall of mirrors.

**Tikkhapaññā** @tikkhapanna@mastodon.online · Apr 13

Apr 13