Bhikkhus, when the mind becomes excited, it is timely to develop the enlightenment factor of tranquillity…

…the sign of the beautiful: frequently giving careless attention to it is the nutriment for the arising of unarisen sensual desire…

Just as the body depends on food, the hindrances and the awakening factors feed on specific nutriments. In this sutta, the Buddha gives the specific condition for each of these mental qualities.

In an attempt to counterbalance the plethora of data demonstrating the relaxing and hypoarousing effects of Buddhist meditation, this interdisciplinary review aims to provide evidence of meditation’s arousing or wake-promoting effects by drawing both from Buddhist textual sources and from scientific studies, including subjective, behavioral, and neuroimaging studies during wakefulness, meditation, and sleep.

The course of meditative progress suggests a nonlinear multiphasic trajectory, such that early phases that are more effortful may produce more fatigue and sleep propensity, while later stages produce greater wakefulness as a result of neuroplastic changes and more efficient processing.

… he suffered painful, sharp, severe, and acute feelings, which he endured unbothered, with mindfulness and awareness.

Having undertaken them, train in the training rules. When you have done so, what further should be done?

Get up and meditate!
What’s the point in your sleeping?

Don’t let an opportunity for practice pass you by.

Remote jungle-thicket resting places in the forest are hard to endure, seclusion is hard to practise, and it is hard to enjoy solitude.

The Buddha explains the difficulties of living in the wilderness, and how they are overcome by purity of conduct and meditation. He recounts some of the fears and obstacles he faced during his own practice and how he overcame them all.

The eye is yours, Evil One, forms are yours, eye-contact and its base of consciousness are yours; but, Evil One, where there is no eye, no forms, no eye-contact and its base of consciousness—there is no place for you there

While the mendicants are listening to the teachings, Māra takes the form of a farmer looking for lost oxen.

Greed is that one thing, bhikkhus. Abandon that and I guarantee you non-return.

Abandoning greed is most, though not all, of the path.

Bhikkhus, held by two kinds of views, some devas and human beings hold back and some overreach; only those with vision see.

How craving for being or annihilation blind us to dependent origination.

Take a case where a mendicant focuses on sensual pleasures, but their mind isn’t eager, confident, settled, and decided about them. But when they focus on renunciation, their mind is eager, confident, settled, and decided about it. Their mind is in a good state…

A practical method for escaping the five fetters.

From the inside out, I can know exactly where I am at any time and so, even when I’m falling short, I still have confidence because I know where I am. I’m not lost because the Dharma can find me.

How to learn the Dhamma.

When there is still more to be done, this venerable stopped half-way after achieving some insignificant distinction. But stopping half-way means decline in the teaching and training proclaimed by the Realized One.

Ten qualities which tell you that someone isn’t an arahant.

Bhikkhus, there are huge trees with tiny seeds and huge bodies, encirclers of other trees, and the trees which they encircle become bent, twisted, and split.

… when some clansman here has left behind sensual pleasures and gone forth from the household life into homelessness, he becomes bent, twisted, and split because of those same sensual pleasures, or because of others worse than them.

The hindrances ensnare and ruin the mind.

Iron is a corruption of gold, corrupted by which gold is neither malleable nor wieldy nor radiant but brittle and not properly fit for work.

Hindrances sully the mind like impurities in gold.

That’s how it is for one who is not without passion for fabrications.

The Venerable Tissa is roused by an interview with the Buddha.

If, bhikkhus, that log does not veer towards the near shore, does not veer towards the far shore, does not sink in mid-stream, does not get cast up on high ground, does not get caught by human beings, does not get caught by nonhuman beings, does not get caught in a whirlpool, and does not become inwardly rotten, it will slant, slope, and incline towards the ocean.

A cowherd named Nanda overhears a teaching by the Buddha.

When your harp’s strings were tuned too tight, was it resonant and playable?

When Venerable Soṇa thinks of disrobing, the Buddha comes and encourages him with the famous simile of the lute that is tuned neither too loose nor too tight.

… an integrative theoretical framework and systems-based neurobiological model that explains the mechanisms by which mindfulness reduces biases related to self-processing and creates a sustainable healthy mind.

Mindfulness is described through systematic mental training that develops meta-awareness (self-awareness), an ability to effectively modulate one’s behavior (self-regulation), and a positive relationship between self and other that transcends self-focused needs and increases prosocial characteristics (self-transcendence). This framework of self-awareness, -regulation, and -transcendence (S-ART) illustrates a method for becoming aware of the conditions that cause (and remove) distortions or biases.

… near Kallavāḷamutta Village, Venerable Mahāmoggallāna was nodding off while meditating…

Seven methods for overcoming drowsiness in your meditation.

… an enemy wishes of an enemy, ‘O, may this person sleep badly!’

When someone is angry, they wish ill upon their enemy and are disappointed if they do well.

Monks, I do not see a single thing that gives rise to sense desire like the feature of attractiveness.

All those times I was bored…

For twenty-five years,
since I had gone forth,
I had not experienced serenity…

When you get angry at an angry person
you just make things worse for yourself.

Hey, mind! Now I will stop you

The river would keep flowing swiftly for a long way, carrying all before it.

A simile describing how samādhi depends on a momentum of practice to clear away the hindrances.

… allow the mind, which is the source, to settle

The anger, the aversion is something we’ve carried around and developed for a long time. It’s something that has causes in the way we’ve lived our lives. It’s something that we can’t remove from our minds simply by wishing for it. It’s something we can only be free from by understanding and retraining our minds out of this bad habit.

An explanation of the four satipaṭṭhāna and how meditating on them creates liberating understanding.

… the most important sources of suffering are not something that activism can fix

If you’d like to share your, or read other people’s, thoughts on this, be sure to check out the lively discussion on SuttaCentral about this article.

We found that participants typically did not enjoy spending 6 to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do […] and that many preferred to administer electric shocks to themselves instead of being left alone with their thoughts.

If you were then to use the sharp weapon of intelligence to cut and break apart this iron you would find that nothing, not even the subtlemost particle, remains. This is the meaning of ‘form is emptiness.’ … Not seeking to gain [pleasure] and avoid [pain] because neither is genuinely real, you will feel equanimity

Note, an editted version of this article appears as chapter two of From Craving to Liberation.

The life enriched by meditation is three dimensional: it’s not a completely different realm, it’s providing a new and clearer perspective.

In meditation we have this delicious, wonderful experience of being nobody… It’s boring. That’s the point… You can’t expect to feel inspired all the time… [But] remember that all of those great monks and nuns and teachers, they all started off — every one of them — with confused minds. They weren’t pure and peaceful right from the beginning. They got where they are through effort. And there’s no reason why you can’t put forth that same effort.

A dhamma talk at Cittarama (Malaysia) on the purpose of meditation.

Sensual pleasures give little gratification and much suffering and distress, and they are all the more full of drawbacks. Even though a noble disciple has clearly seen this with right wisdom, so long as they don’t achieve the rapture and bliss that are apart from sensual pleasures and unskillful qualities, or something even more peaceful than that, they might still return to sensual pleasures.

A lay person is puzzled at how, despite their long practice, they still have greedy or hateful thoughts. The Buddha explains the importance of absorption for letting go. But he also criticizes self-mortification, and recounts a previous dialog with some Jain ascetics.

… five people similar to warriors are found among the monks

Some warriors, like some monks, falter before the threat of battle, while others emerge victorious.

A monkey went up to the little hut

A canonical basis for the ubiquitous “monkey mind” metaphor.

For Bhikkhu Analayo’s comments on this sutta, see Upakkilesa Sutta, 2008.

Bhante Sujato pointed out that this sutta is likely a response to the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.3 which claims that “man’s inner light” is his infinite, eternal “self.” The traditional Hindu commentary on this Upaniṣad (inline above) takes pains to respond to the Buddhist critique.

[A meditator’s] physical discomfort is not completely settled, their dullness and drowsiness is not completely eradicated, and their restlessness and remorse is not completely eliminated. Because of this they practice absorption dimly, as it were. When their body breaks up, after death, they’re reborn in the company of the gods of corrupted radiance.

A lay person becomes confused when encouraged to develop the “limitless” and “expansive” liberations, and asks Venerable Anuruddha to explain whether they are the same or different.

… a monk who is endowed with these fifteen factors including exertion, it is possible for [him to attain] breakthrough, it is possible for [him to attain] awakening, it is possible for [him to attain] arrival at unsurpassable security from bondage.

The Buddha explains various ways one can become cut off.

Whatever doubts there are…
The meditators give up all these

The Buddha rejoices in Ven. Revata’s diligent meditation.

Suppose a person was to catch six animals, with diverse territories and feeding grounds, and tie them up with a strong rope…

The senses are like a snake, a crocodile, a bird, a dog, a jackal, and a monkey all tied up together, pulling this way and that. Mindfulness is like a post that keeps them grounded.

Mendicants, there are eight grounds for laziness.

And the corresponding eight grounds for energy.

‘I’ve developed the heart’s release by love… Yet somehow ill will still occupies my mind.’

The Buddha’s teachings are effective, so we can’t claim to have practiced them fully if we’re still afflicted by various forms of suffering.

… use these five methods to completely get rid of resentment when it has arisen towards anyone

Five reflections to eliminate enmity in brief.

These two complementary perspectives on happiness — distinguishing between unwholesome and wholesome types and treating the stages of development of its wholesome manifestations — run like a red thread through the entire compass of the teachings in the Pāli discourses, from instructions on basic morality through the path of mental purification all the way up to full awakening.

Bhikkhu Anālayo analyzes a dozen key doctrinal terms in depth: exploring their meaning, nature, imagery and importance.