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February 2012 |
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February 2012
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1 Feb : 8 Fold Noble Path: Right concentration |
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A foundation to all Buddhist practice is meditation and concentration. Whether it is watching your speech, monitoring your emotions, or concentrating on your breath in meditation - right concentration is an essential practice for transformation and insight.
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8 Feb : 8 Fold Noble Path: Right thought |
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Right thought involves the purification of the mind - letting go of negative or harmful mental states, and awakening to a Buddha mind - full of love, generosity and patience.
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15 Feb : 8 Fold Noble Path: Right action |
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Right action involves adhering to the Buddhist precepts of not doing harm, not killing, not stealing, of living one's sexuality mindfully, of not abusing substances. Though these may seem straight-forward, they are often challenges at different times in our lives. It is the effort of growing virtue that brings about important life changes.
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22 Feb : 8 Fold Noble Path: Right effort |
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Remember those new year's resolutions? Right effort is about having the courage, commitment and focus to keep up your practices, resolutions and personal standards. The Buddha asks us to consider the middle way - extreme fanaticism or lazy resignation will not get us to greater happiness and enlightenment, the correct pace involves understanding and achieving right effort. Nigel Crawhall leads this week's talk on Right Effort / Samma vayama. The Buddha reminds us of the effort to avoid, the effort to become (through concentration, mindfulness and equanimity), and the effort to maintain our path.
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29 Feb : Dhamma Talk: The Five Aggregates |
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The Five Aggregates are a grouping of five phenomena: Form, Feeling, Thoughts, Perceptions and Conciousness. Intriguingly, the Buddha points out that, as humans, we spend most of our time and energy wrapped up in these aggregates, and so we tend to view ourselves in terms... of these things.
However, the Buddha realised that these aggregates are impermanent -- subject to change. Due to this, any happiness derived from the aggregates will inevitably change to some form of disappointment. Likewise, no discomfort is lasting.
Thus, the Buddha notes that we should not cling to the aggregates, but instead regard them as not self. By starting this process, we begin to tread the path towards something that is unchanging.
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