One truly sees any kind of form at all—past, future, or present; internal or external; solid or subtle; inferior or superior; far or near: all form—with right understanding: ‘This is not mine, I am not this, this is not my self.’

Rāhula asks how to see so that conceit no longer occurs. The Buddha teaches him to investigate the five aggregates in terms of not-self.

If you take pleasure in consciousness, you take pleasure in suffering.

Monks, there are these three effluents. Which three?

A short poem on the ending of the out-flows.

those wanderers who followed other religions, unable to bear the esteem of the mendicant Sangha, abused, attacked, harassed, and troubled the mendicants…

How a wise meditator views abusive speech.

I urge you to meditate beforehand, i.e., before you come across old age, sickness and death

Six brief talks given by Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw in 1952 around Asia on the path to Nibbana while on a tour sponsored by the newly-independent Burmese government to drum up support for its then-upcoming Sixth Council.

Samādhi, in all its glory is Samudaya.

Luang Dta Maha Boowa talks at the funeral for Ajahn Paññā about the importance of good teachers to keep us straight on the path.

This is the practice. I ask that all of you practise. Don’t ignore your heart, alright? Don’t let the Kilesa walk all over it.

… the one who is extinguished without extra effort, the one who is extinguished with extra effort, and the one who heads upstream..

A rare sutta, showing ten stages of enlightenment.

This is the difference between a Realized One, a perfected one, a fully awakened Buddha, and a mendicant freed by wisdom.

The Buddha declares that a mendicant is freed by wisdom by non-attachment to the aggregates, in just the same way as he himself. He then explains that the difference between himself and another awakened mendicant is simply that he was the first to discover the path and teach it to others.

… as a fragile bridge of reeds…

Bhikkhus, those beings are thoroughly deprived who are deprived of noble wisdom.

Mendicants, when a mendicant’s mind has been well consolidated with wisdom it’s appropriate for them to say: ‘I understand…’

Nine reflections by which a mendicant knows their mind has wisdom.

Bhikkhus, the formless is more peaceful than the form realm, and cessation is more peaceful than the formless.

The Nibbāna element with residue remaining (Sōpādisesa Nibbāna) and the Nibbāna element with no residue remaining (Anupādisesa Nibbāna).

this not being, that is not;
from the cessation of this, that ceases.

Dependent Origination is the answer to this famously pithy Dharma summary.

It’s hard to see the unaffected…

Then the Blessed One, realizing his own abandoning of the perceptions & categories of objectification, on that occasion exclaimed…

All his doubts then vanish since he understands
Each thing along with its cause.

The Buddha, soon after awakening, summarizes what it is he awakened to.

One who does not seek delight in suffering, I say, is freed from suffering.

If you enjoy the six senses, you enjoy suffering.

… freed by not grasping: they are well freed. Those who are well freed are consummate ones. For consummate ones, there is no cycle of rebirths to be found.

How the Four Noble Truths illuminate the Five Aggregates.

‘When Master Gotama teaches in this way, is the whole world saved, or half, or a third?’ But when he said this, the Buddha kept silent.

Venerable Ānanda answers on the Buddha’s behalf with the simile of the citadel.

…a mendicant arousing knowledge
of the outcome of greed, hate, and delusion,
would cast off all bad destinies.

Greed, hatred, and delusion as planting karmic “seeds.”

The nights and days do not afflict me,
I see for myself no decline in the world.

The Buddha rests after being struck by stone splinters, and though Māra criticizes him for being lazy, the Buddha rests easy.

Where name-and-form ceases,
Stops without remainder,
And also impingement and perception of form:
It is here this tangle is cut.

This generation is all tangled up like a nest of matted hair. Who can untangle this mess and how?

The beauties remain as they are in the world,
while, in this regard,
the enlightened
subdue their desire.

The Buddha gives a deep discourse on the development of wisdom.

In what way is extinguishment apparent in the present life … ?

Is this venerable one restrained without fear, not restrained by fear, and does he avoid indulging in sensual pleasures because he is without lust through the destruction of lust?

The Buddha gives a thorough and exacting method for those who wish to investigate his qualifications as a spiritual teacher.

The ultimate condition in which the two truths cannot be separated,
That is the yoga of the Great Middle Way.

A medium length peom by a modern Tibetan master on realizing the fruit of the Middle Way: non-duality.

The anidassana verse refers to the formless attainments, especially infinite consciousness, treating them as the highest goal of the Brahmanical system, and as a step towards the Buddha’s teaching of cessation.

Putting the Buddha’s teaching on viññāṇaṁ anidassanaṁ into its historical and doctrinal context.

… all fixation is annihilated,
and the mass of darkness destroyed.

Take a mendicant who declares enlightenment: ‘I understand: “Rebirth is ended, the spiritual journey has been completed, what had to be done has been done, there is no return to any state of existence.”’ You should neither approve nor dismiss that mendicant’s statement. Rather, you should question them…

How to reply to someone claiming to be an arahant.

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.

I shall extol the giant for you,
for he does nothing monstrous.
Gentleness and harmlessness
are two feet of the giant.

Consciousness together with its nutriment should be seen as like the five kinds of seeds.

They are watered by craving.

Bhikkhus, when one dwells contemplating gratification in things that can fetter, there is a descent of name-and-form.

The mental and physical organism is reborn when you linger on pleasing things which stimulate the fetters, illustrated with the simile of a tree.

the Buddhist reformulation of the annihilationist tenet can indeed serve as an inspired utterance for those aspiring to become arahants by annihilating even the subtlest forms of clinging in the form of any traces of conceit.

A comparative study of how no-self combats ideas of annihilation

Sāriputta, see this
young boy coming,
carrying a water pot,
serene inside himself…

It is in such a way, Elder, that dwelling alone is fulfilled…

A monk named “Senior” likes to live alone, but the Buddha questions whether it is true solitude.

But what is that ultimate splendor compared to which no other splendor is finer?

A wanderer teaches his doctrine of the “highest splendor” but is unable to give a satisfactory account of what that means. The Buddha memorably compares him to someone who is in love with a women he has never met.

Few are those among humans who cross to the far shore.

The wrong path is the near shore where most people dwell; the right path is the far shore, where few have crossed over.

… they do not look up at the face of another ascetic or brahmin, thinking: ‘This worthy is surely one who really knows, who really sees.’ For what reason? Because, bhikkhus, they have clearly seen the Four Noble Truths.

One who has not seen the Dhamma is fickle and easily misled.

For Early Buddhism, “public knowledge” would be a contradiction in terms.

Contrasting the Early Buddhist theory of knowledge with logical positivism, to which it is sometimes compared.

Guttā, why did you go forth?

All suffering is fully understood,
craving, its cause, has been made to wither…

… quietly ignoring much in the Buddhist heritage that suggested that birth as a woman indicated that one was less prepared to attain enlightenment than men, Ch’an teachers urged upon their students the point of view that enlightenment was available to everyone at all times; any other view was seen as a hindrance to practice

… not understanding and not comprehending the Noble Truth of suffering, both you and I have wandered and journeyed in this cycle of birth and death for a very long time

… even an arahant can be “vexed”

… exactly what are we talking about when we’re talking about “our feelings”

… some see in viññāṇa anidassana a kind of consciousness essentially equal to nibbāna. But there are many problems with this

… unlike other Buddhist traditions based on teachings contained in one or more Buddhist sūtras, the Zen school validates itself on the basis of being “a transmission outside the sutras” (kyōge betsuden). That is to say, a transmission of the Buddha-dharma from the enlightened mind of a Zen master to his/her disciple(s). But what happens in those cases when the “enlightened master” isn’t truly enlightened?

Given certain Zen Masters’ vociferous support of Japan’s militarism during World War II, how can their students today claim to have a legitimate “Dharma transmission”?

For a critique of Brian Victoria’s attack on Makiguchi specifically, see A Critical Analysis by Daniel Metraux.

… a consideration of metaphor in the uraga verses refrain, and how the refrain may be an example of early Buddhist non-dualism

is one a brahmin due to birth,
or else because of actions?

Two brahmin students ask the Buddha about what makes a brahmin. The Buddha points out that, while the species of animals are determined by birth, for humans what matters is not your race or caste but how you chose to live.

The Buddha has rid us of so many things that bring suffering and gifted us so many things that bring happiness!

… take a person practicing to give up and let go of attachments. As they do so, every so often they lose mindfulness, and memories and thoughts connected with attachments beset them. Their mindfulness is slow to come up, but they quickly give them up, get rid of, eliminate, and obliterate those thoughts. I also call this person ‘fettered’, not ‘detached’. Why is that?

Udāyī, I even recommend giving up the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception. Do you see any fetter, large or small, that I don’t recommend giving up?

Again raising the rule regarding eating, but this time as a reflection of gratitude for the Buddha in eliminating things that cause complexity and stress. The Buddha emphasizes how attachment even to little things is dangerous and a burden.

As a result of seeing the truth of how craving leads to suffering, we have a moment where our minds cease all craving and release us from the incessant arising of experience

A clear and concise description of what enlightenment is, is not, and how it arises.

Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that the MNS has provided the historical starting-point as well as the chief scriptural basis for enquiry into the problem of the Buddha-nature in China, and it would be difficult if not impossible to grasp the significance of the concept and its subsequent evolution in Chinese Buddhism without a proper understanding of the teaching of the MNS on the subject.

A thorough introduction to the concept of the “Buddha-nature” in Mahāyāna Buddhism through its most influential, textual basis.

This sequence of images of cities may lie behind the location of Nibbāna at the pinnacle of a cosmological hierarchy as has been frequently noted in ethnographic studies of contemporary Theravādin Buddhism.

The Nibbānasutta displays, at least in part, the processes through which summaries and new suttas were created in the Theravāda tradition.

A late, apocryphal “sutta” in the Theravāda tradition, building on the famous simile of Nibbāna as a hidden, jungle city.

This small Sutta deals with the veneration in which the Buddha held the Dharma, the doctrine which he had discovered on the night of his enlightenment and which he had chosen as his teacher. This text throws some light on the nature of the Buddha and the Dharma as they were conceived by the first Buddhists.

On the five pure and impure Skandhas and on the subtle reversal of paṭicca-samuppāda in the prajñāpāramitā

Master Gotama, are there any laypeople who, without giving up the fetter of lay life, make an end of suffering when the body breaks up?

On the limits of the lay life… and the Buddha’s omniscience.

… and the resolution to the paradox is not through working it out theoretically. The resolution to the paradox is in the experience of freedom.

A monk endowed with six qualities is capable of realizing the unexcelled cooled state.

For a comparison of different translations, see this table.

Bad things are easy to think about! It’s the good things that are difficult, because the kilesas don’t like them.

An afternoon chat about emptiness.

By the ariya, the cessation of sakkaya is seen as happiness. This is the reverse of the outlook of the entire world!

Some explanitory comments on SN 9.6 and on how the enlightened see the world.

… all pathways for verbal expression, terminology and designation converge on this whirlpool between name-and-form and consciousness

The Nivane Niveema are a series of thirty-three sermons on Nibbāna, originally delivered in Sinhala during the period 1988–1991 and given to the assembly of monks in Nissaraṇa Vanaya, Meethirigala, one of Sri Lanka’s most respected meditation monasteries in the strict forest tradition.

The English translations were released in 7 vols. between 2003 and 2012 and continue to brilliantly challenge the traditional Theravāda exegesis.

You can get the lecture notes here and can watch the lectures on YouTube here.

… here is a book to take up at quiet times

A haphazard collection of inspirational quotes on the Lord Buddha’s nine virtuous qualities taken mostly from the Pāli Canon.

The book doesn’t pretend to have a thesis or an agenda. It’s merely a ready companion for your devotional recollection.

In this pure awareness without basis or origin,
How tiresome it seems to practise dos and don’ts!

A poem on what it’s like to be enlightened from a revered Tibetan master.

… a bhikkhu who is without ardour and without fear of wrongdoing is incapable of attaining enlightenment

This treatise explains the progress of insight, together with the corresponding stages of purification. It has been written in brief for the benefit of meditators who have obtained distinctive results in their practice, so that they may more easily understand their experience.

Wisdom and consciousness–these things are mixed, not separate. And you can never completely dissect them

Venerable Sāriputta deftly defines a bewildering array of terms.

Be free from even so much as a single thought that is deceived

A short admonition to transcend the concerns for gain and loss, etc and to attain the true aim of “non-dual” practice

There are only two things you need to realize the path: the first is to start practicing and the second is to not stop.

A short talk on Stream Entry and the stages of Awakening, and on having faith without expectations.

How could suffering affect
The man whose mind is thus cultivated And which, like a rock,
Stands unmoving,
Detached from pleasant things

An example of a composite sutra from the EA, showing how this collection was made from a jumble of texts. It also contains a concrete example of the Mahayana growing out of Early Buddhism, in its use of the term “vajra”

To be female is to have the dukkha of a female. To be male is to have the dukkha of a male. […] If we deludedly think ‘I am happy’ then we must suffer accordingly.

In these three dhamma talks on emptiness delivered at Siriraj Hospital (Bangkok) in 1961, Ajahn Buddhadasa cuts right to the heart of Buddhism, encouraging us in plain and vivid language to stop identifying as or clinging to anything at all.

A highly technical but mostly accurate map of the path, this article in particular shows the places meditators can get stuck on the path without realizing it.

nibbāna is not a destination after death.

A transcribed sermon arguing against this common misconception of nibbāna.

The magga, then, is not a ‘path’ as a series of steps, but a particular way of approach, a way of operating, an orientation that is fully equipped only when it has eight factors. It can then do its work of perfecting noble sīla, then noble samādhi and then noble paññā.

… the Noble Eight-factored Magga is neither the general practice of Buddhism, including ordinary levels of samatha and vipassanā meditation, nor, as in the developed Abhidhamma-cum-commentarial view, only the instant prior to stream-entry. It is a specific eight-factored way of approach, or skilful method that can arise when the mind is free of the five hindrances, especially during a sermon on the four ariya-saccas or when there is samatha and strong vipassanā into the three marks

Kammaṭṭhāna meditation should be practised so as to reach Nibbāna, thereby escaping from all kinds of misery

A thorough and concise overview of the entire path of meditative purification. A very helpful map, essentially summarizing the Visuddhimagga.

… the Nikāyas do not see Nibbāna as a form of consciousness, including such exceptional kinds of consciousness as anidassana viññāṇa and appatiṭṭhita viññāṇa. Nor can Nibbāna be regarded as equivalent to mind, or any particular state of mind.

… the main force of the nikāyas is to discount speculation about nibbāna. It is the summum bonum. To seek to know more is to manufacture obstacles. By the time of the early Abhidhamma the situation is much clearer. The whole Buddhist tradition is agreed that nibbāna is the unconditioned

Nibbāna isn’t something you accidentally fall into: it’s the culmination of intense, deliberate renunciation.

If someone gives up this body to continue with another body, I say that this is indeed a serious fault. If someone has given up this body and does not continue with another body, I do not say that this is a serious fault.

… deliverance from saṃsāra, i.e., the sorrow-laden round of existence, cannot consist in the re-absorption into an eternal Absolute which is at the root of all manifoldness, but can only be achieved by a complete extinguishing of all factors which condition the processes constituting life and world.

Western writers too readily described Buddhism as a nihilistic doctrine teaching annihilation as its highest goal, a view these writers condemned as philosophically absurd and ethically reprehensible. Similar statements still sometimes appear in prejudiced non-Buddhist literature. The pendular reaction to that view was the conception of Nibbāna as existence. It was now interpreted in the light of already familiar religious and philosophical notions [such] as pure being, pure consciousness, pure self or some other metaphysical concept.

A short booklet on seeing Nibbāna as the ultimate expression of the middle way between existence and non-existence.

On the basis of Prajnavarman’s and Nagarjuna’s citations and of Vasubandhu’s and Asanga’s lists, it seems that parallels to the Pali Asankhatasamyutta were indeed transmitted by the (Mula-)Sarvastivadins and perhaps other schools, even though they have not been preserved in Chinese translation.

I rejoice, great seer,
in that supreme peace

How can one become freed of all doubts? How does one continue to advance even after stream-entry?

The ignorant dullard who creates acquisition
encounters suffering again and again.
Therefore, understanding, one should not create acquisition, of contemplating it as the genesis and origin of suffering.

Ordinary and Enlightened beings contrasted, with intimations of the path between the two.

a perilous flood has arisen,
for those oppressed by old age and death,
let me declare an island to you.
Owning nothing, taking nothing:
this is the island with nothing further.
I call this [island] ‘nibbāna,’
the extinction of old age and death.

How to recognize an emancipated person.

The book includes detailed descriptions of the qualia of the different stages of enlightenment, along with the insights and practices relevant to each stage. Far from a technical manual though, this book is a hugely inspiring and approachable series of straightforward conversations. A beginning practitioner will benefit immensely from hearing how possible enlightenment is, but it is the most advanced practitioners (think: sakadāgāmī / anāgāmī already) who will reap the highest reward from Arahattamagga: Arahattaphala.

… bodily conduct that harms oneself, harms others, harms both; that destroys wisdom and fosters evil; that does not [lead to] attaining Nibbāna, does not lead to knowledge, does not lead to awakening, and does not lead to Nibbāna.

For at least the Pāli Buddhist tradition, the cessation of suffering is the sole intrinsic good.

A monkey went up to the little hut

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

Whoso has boys, has sorrow of his boys,
Whoso has kine, by kine come his annoys.
Man’s assets, these of all his woes are chief.
Who has no more, no more has grief.

In this dramatic poem, the Buddha and a cowherd debate who is more prepared for a coming storm.

This somewhat confusing discourse has a parallel in MĀ 12, which I recommend reading alongside this account as it helps to clarify things somewhat.

Gain and loss, disrepute and fame,
blame and praise, pleasure and pain:
these conditions that people meet
are impermanent, transient, and subject to change.

The eight worldly conditions in brief.

Mendicants, these seven perceptions, when developed and cultivated, are very fruitful and beneficial. They culminate in the deathless and end with the deathless. What seven? The perceptions of ugliness, death, repulsiveness of food, dissatisfaction with the whole world, impermanence, suffering in impermanence, and not-self in suffering.

Listen to the book read by Ajahn Amaro here

… 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.

So this holy life, bhikkhus, does not have gain, honour, and renown for its benefit, or the attainment of virtue for its benefit, or the attainment of concentration for its benefit, or knowledge and vision for its benefit. But it is this unshakeable deliverance of mind that is the goal of this holy life, its heartwood, and its end.

Following the incident with Devadatta, the Buddha cautions the mendicants against becoming complacent with superficial benefits of spiritual life and points to liberation as the true heart of the teaching.

During my first weeks with my teacher, Ajaan Fuang, I began to realize that he had psychic powers.

The key principle in Buddhism is that understanding sets you free. It’s not about attaining or creating anything, it’s about simply understanding things as they are

… how lust, hatred, delusion and other negative emotions are considered to cause physical and mental pain among [unenlightened beings]

My favorite part of this lovely article is its subtle normalization of the ariya and pathologizing of puthujjanas—a rhetorical flip from our usual conceptualization that I hope catches on!

… conditioned phenomena have these three characteristics…

The difference between the conditioned and the unconditioned.

They focus on the cessation of identification, and their mind is eager, confident, settled, and decided about it. You’d expect that mendicant to stop identifying.

A rare sutta about cessation attainment and the final leap.

All of the monks and nuns who declare in my presence that they have attained perfection, did so by one or other of four paths.

Ways of practicing serenity and discernment.

One who has entirely given up the body, … how should one like that be guided?

How to develop insight after mastering the perception of nothingness.

If a bhikkhu seeks delight in [the senses], welcomes them, and remains holding to them, he is called a bhikkhu who has swallowed Mara’s hook. He has met with calamity and disaster, and the Evil One can do with him as he wishes.

Sense pleasures are like a baited hook.

… by thoroughly understanding conceit, he has made an end of suffering.

How the three types of feeling should be viewed.

‘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.

Though it sprouted and grew in the water, it would rise up above the water and stand with no water clinging to it. In the same way, the Realized One has escaped

Giving up ten things, the Buddha lives free of limits.

… of all the attempts to describe the etymology of the word nibbāna, the closest is the one Buddhaghosa proposed in The Path of Purification: Un- (nir) + binding (vāna): Unbinding

Ajahn Geoff explores the symbolism of extinguishment from the context of ancient Indian physics in order to give us a new (old) take on this central image of Buddhist soteriology.

A very famous example of poetic analysis and hermeneutics in action at the time of the Buddha, this sutta gives several subtle cues on how to read obscure passages.

It would be good, lord, if the Blessed One would teach me the Dhamma in brief

This discourse is one of the few teachings in the canon (along with the teachings on mindfulness) which the Buddha declared as “categorical”: always applicable and useful in any situation. This sutta gives, better than any other, the overall direction of the teachings, and is a helpful rubric to refer back to.