Equanimity Through Sense Restraint

One of the key ways the Buddha recommended we aim towards an equanimous outlook on life was through sense restraint, otherwise known as “guarding the sense doors”. What was that practice? We will discuss it in this video. Suttas mentioned: All the DefilementsUntamed, UnguardedSāriputta and the PupilWith Bhāradvāja Interesting online discussion: https://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/how-to-practice-sense-restraint-guarding-the-sense-doors/3228

Read More

What’s Wrong With Pleasure?

What’s wrong with pleasure? It often seems as though sensory pleasures are an unalloyed good, the sorts of things that we should aim to gain as much of during our lifetimes as possible. The Buddha had a somewhat different view of them however, which we will consider in this video. Book: Sven Beckert’s Empire of…

Read More

Breaking Our Sense Sphere Attachments

What are the “sense spheres” and how do they get us attached in unskillful ways? How do we go about breaking these attachments? We’ll discuss all that in this video. Suttas referred to: Koṭṭhita (SN 35.232) Six Sets of Six (MN 148.28) Is There a Method? (SN 35.153) Check out my Patreon page!

Read More

On Taste and Connoisseurship

Is it important or worthwhile to cultivate refined taste or connoisseurship in one’s aesthetic preferences? This often seems to be one of the aims of formal education. We’ll look at some Western thinking around the notion of refined pleasures, and then look at some of the Buddha’s thoughts on the same topic. Some suttas mentioned:…

Read More

Why We Can't Have Nice Things

We all like nice things, but our pursuit of them has important drawbacks. We’ll look at some of those here, as well as evidence of a transmission fluid leak that I’ve been dealing with for the past year. Oh well.

Read More