Dhamma talkSasanarakkha Buddhist Sanctuary Retreat5 Jan 2024
Introduction talk — Cultivating Wholesome Qualities and Right Attitude
Sayadaw U Tejaniya · 1 hr 28 min
Original audio: Burmese · English interpretation
0:00−1:28:06
AI-written summary
This introductory talk explains that practice means cultivating wholesome minds and the five spiritual faculties, rather than focusing or seeking specific experiences. The teacher emphasizes right attitude, relaxing with awareness throughout daily life, and viewing all experiences as natural phenomena to learn from.
Topics
Talks in this retreat
Sasanarakkha Buddhist Sanctuary Retreat · 6 talks
- Viewing11 hr 28 minIntroduction talk — Cultivating Wholesome Qualities and Right Attitude5 Jan 2024
- 21 hr 44 minQ&A group A — Investigation and Right Attitude Toward Unpleasant States6 Jan 2024
- 32 hr 15 minQ&A group B — Investigating Drowsiness and Practicing with Right Attitude8 Jan 2024
- 42 hr 21 minQ&A group A — Cultivating Awareness with Right Attitude10 Jan 2024
- 52 hr 26 minQ&A group B — Appreciating Awareness and Staying on the Side of Awareness12 Jan 2024
- 648 minConcluding talk — Continuing Practice and Awareness at Home14 Jan 2024
Transcript
English
Today is 5 January 2024, introduction talk by Sayadaw U Tejaniya, and translation by Matet at Sasanaraka Buddhist Sanctuary via Zoom. Chairman says he's very happy to see all of you. He can see the numbers; he can't see you, yeah.
English
So now we try—
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Okay, he said, "Let's start." We're going to talk about practicing the Dhamma.
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As a basic, practicing the Dhamma is about cultivating khusala minds, which is wholesome minds. So practicing wholesome—practicing wholesome things in action, speech, and thought, yeah.
English
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Particularly practicing cultivating wholesome states of mind. So since we want to be cultivating wholesome states of mind as a practice of the Dhamma, we basically need to—to be on it all the time.
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When we're on it, we're practicing.
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, bhāvanā bom ? The word bhāvanā, which is often used to mean meditation, means cultivation. retreat ? So on this retreat, what we're going to—the sutta we're going to base the practice on is called the Satipatthana Sutta.
[Burmese segment]
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Not yet.
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Yep. So, and when we—on the basis of the Satipatthana Sutta, what we're trying to cultivate is actually that in every moment that we pay attention or are aware, we are cultivating these five—what they call faculties.
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The five faculties are awareness, effort, stability of mind,
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confidence, and— ? Yeah, wisdom. I just doubted myself for a second. And—and so every moment that we try to be aware, these five faculties are working together. They are being cultivated in our minds.
[Burmese segment]
English
Yeah. So he says he really wants to emphasize that when we're practicing meditation, what we're trying to do is develop these qualities in the mind. We're trying to develop the quality of awareness in the mind, develop the quality of right effort in the mind, develop the quality of stability of mind, develop the quality of confidence in the mind, and develop the quality of wisdom in the mind.
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He said it's not a practice of trying to focus on something. It's not a practice of what we can see or what we can do. It's a practice of—of cultivating these particular qualities, checking to see if these qualities are growing in our minds. Whether these qualities—not even not saying growing—whether these qualities are present in our minds.
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Mm-hmm. So the practice, Seadaw said, you know, is really not about—so we have, in the practice of the Dhamma, we have the things that we observe around us and—and these faculties that work when we're aware.
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And Seadaw said it's really about
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cultivating these qualities and checking in on them. And
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we're not trying to make a particular experience happen, right? Of course they work together. So we use these—the things that we observe as stepping stones.
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The things we notice around us, about us. We use them as the basis for which this awareness, you know, works, right? The awareness is aware of these things. And so we see them as a means to cultivate awareness. .
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So we're not trying to see anything in a particular way. Not forcing ourselves. Not thinking that
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any experience needs to be in any particular way that we thought it should be. So the practice of the Dhamma is done by the mind.
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So anytime during the day, from the moment we wake up till we fall asleep at night, anytime that we remember is a time that we can pick up this awareness and know that we are practicing the Dhamma. And remember that when we are doing it in the—in the name of the Dhamma, then we also want to be positive about it because we want a wholesome—we're cultivating the wholesome, right?
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Yep. .
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So anytime we find that it's not wholesome—our minds are not wholesome, right?
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We find ourselves like, you know, greed comes in, we start expecting it to be something else. We find ourselves uncomfortable suddenly because it's not what we—we keep thinking it should be something else.
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And so Seadaw says then the mind is becoming gross, right? So because of
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greed, then aversion arises. And of course there's—when we're not recognizing this is happening, then delusion is also present as we continue to do things in that way, where we keep thinking it should be something else.
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Sayadaw U Tejaniya began his Buddhist training as a young teenager in Burma under the late Shwe Oo Min Sayadaw (1913–2002). After a career in business and life as a householder, he has become a permanent monk since 1996.…