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This talk is a walkthrough of the Buddha's teachings on breath meditation based on the Anapanasati Sutta. It is also a troubleshooting guide that highlights the various problems and solutions at each stage. - - - Please, feel free to recommend this podcast to your friends! Feedback If you have feedback or questions about this podcast, send an email to: post@dnbf.org Donation The non-profit society...

The spiritual training is like aircon for your mind. Our body can be uncomfortable in a hot and humid climate. But air conditioning can really help. So too can our hot and uncomfortable mind get real help from our spiritual development of ethics, meditation and wisdom. But when doing your meditation, please allow your mind to calm down by itself - you just create more mental discomfort by craving,...

One day our body doesn't want to hang around any more because of old age, then what is the continuation? By looking back in time, we can see that there is continuation forward in time. How does this continuation happen? What can we do to secure the future? And how can we develop towards the highest? This teaching was given at Venabu 2025, and the relevant illustrations are found here: https://dnbf...

Focusing on the fact that our body is going to die, can arouse a sense of spiritual urgency, that again can help us developing wholesome states of mind. This practice is of great fruit and benefits, it helps to put life in perspective − what is important in life, what should we prioritise, what values should we have. We ask ourselves - how kind have we been, how much gratitude have we shown and ho...

We can waist lots of time, doing the same things over and over again in meditation, if we don't sometimes pull back and look at what we are doing. Sometimes analysis is important, and for example using the framework of the five hindrances that stops our development. In this talk the focus is the hindrances of sensory desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and remorse and doubt. So next t...

Loving kindness meditation or metta-meditation is a type of practice that fulfils the whole eight fold path. It is a type of unconditional love, committed to the wellbeing of everybody − it is radically inclusive. While breath meditation creates peace first, and then happiness later − loving kindness meditation creates happiness first and then peace later. It is a type of meditation which makes us...

In the beginning of a retreat it is important to focus on deliberately creating happiness and beautiful states of mind, and this is exemplified in this talk by teachings of the Buddha and current teachers. When we are happy inside, we get to sit for a long time, and the longer we meditate, the more stillness and clarity is created for our development of wisdom. In between the meditation, staying i...

If meditation is your only method, then the result can be limited and meditation becomes difficult. Developing our mind is an integrated whole, focusing both on virtue, meditation and wisdom. It is the calm of meditation that can abandon craving. And when insights are developed, we understand and we can abandon delusion − we can see the truth.  One way of looking at the training is called the grad...

How does the mind work? Often we don't understand, and we create problems for ourselves and others. But it IS possible to develop wisdom and to be free! In Buddhism it is done by developing samatha and vipassana. Samatha is the emotional approach, having a genuine emotional engagement or emotional wholeness. The benefit is obvious: You feel good, it is nice to be happy, so you keep meditating, may...

Jhana has become popular, but often dumbed down. So then it helps to have an overview of how aspects of the path fits together.  Jhana means oneness and illumination, and is described as having five factors: applied and sustained application (vitakka, vicara), rapture or uplift (piti), pleasure (sukha) and unification of consciousness (ekaggata). And the coming together of all this factors is jhan...

When coming to a retreat, you give up a lot for a few days − there is maybe a desire or a longing for freedom. And just that is the first of 'The four bases of mental power' (iddhi pada), this wish or longing for freedom and a spiritual development − and maybe the most important supporting factor for this desire is mental pleasure, which is really important to develop.  The second factor is energy...

This talk is about the process the Buddha went through learning to meditate, starting with an experiences he had as a child, which teachers he met and learned from and how he was conditioned by other schools. Then later on, how the Buddha stayed with the sramanas doing all kinds of ascetic practises, which the Buddha found as a waste of time. And finally, when he had been searching out all the bes...

Metta meditation is the practice to develop the mind in such a way that this feeling of metta, this most exalted of human potentials, becomes a reality. And when this feeling starts to spark, which sages in the past has described as transcendence or divinity, than that is inside you! And it has been there all along − it is like coming home − and it it is there for everybody. This talk is actually...

Mindfulness is not really meditation, but can be used as a type of meditation where we simply are aware of what is happening in your body and mind. You start to notice what is happening: thoughts, feelings, sensations, memories, ideas, desires - and spaces between them. The aim to get a place where we are resonable equanimous, as a preperation for other types of meditation. Just remember that ethi...

After a retreat, how can we continue our practice, how can we transfer our skills to our daily lives? At this retreat at Venabu a whole toolkit was given: right approach to mediation, what happiness and suffering is, learning to be mindful and developing wholesome qualities, the importance of joy and how it is aroused, and wisdom - what it is and how it is developed. In our daily life we must prot...

Ajahn Nitho describes in this talk what wisdom is according to the teaching of the Buddha. He also reads out a short parable describing when wisdom will arrise in a person − independent of gender, body or ethnicity. He continues with a longer descriptions of the various stages of meditation, all the way into deep meditation or jhana, because that is the needed level of meditation for deep wisdom a...

This talk is about loving kindness − what it is, how it affects our mind, different ways of doing loving kindness meditation, and how it connects to deep meditation and awakening.  This is a method that aligns the mind with proper intention during meditation—kindness, not controlling, letting things be, not possessing, giving to the moment, giving to our practice and what we are experiencing. The...

In this talk, Venerable Canda talks about guarding the sense doors, and the hindrances that arise in relation to the sensory world, with the goal to create clarity of mind. She talks about the sense bases, and how contact creates feelings in body and mind − pleasant or not − resulting in craving or ill will. Seeing that this process is conditioned, not substantial, reduces the reactivity and the c...

Doing breath meditation ends sometimes up being dry and out of oomph, then try the advice of the Buddha. This talk is about the importance of joy, happiness and rapture for the development of deep meditation and wisdom. In the end of the talk, Ajahn Nitho also mentions some alternative meditations to help kindle these beatiful mental states during meditation of breathing.  This teaching was given...

We all want more of happiness, and less suffering. What is the reason for happiness? What type of happiness should we pursue? What is the foundation and causes for happiness? What motivates us to practice? Happiness is a natural process − there is happiness, and it comes as a result of putting in beautiful wholesome causes, learning to go through problems with wisdom, and developing perceptions th...

This is a recording of a question and answers session normally done every evening during retreat: (00:00) − You mentioned that for meditation, it helps to focus on the here and now, like breathing, walking or yoga. Would focusing on petting ones cat be the same, could that be meditate? (02:51) − Often when I am observing my breathing closely, the closer I watch, the more I realise that I am all do...

Ajahn Brahm and Ven Canda were invited to the House of Litterature in Oslo, to talk about our complicated minds - which always have to find fault. This teaching was given in Oslo 2022: https://dnbf.org/en/2022/11/its-not-your-fault/ - - - Please, feel free to recommend this podcast to your friends! Feedback If you have feedback or questions about this podcast, send an email to: post@dnbf.org Donat...

Sometimes meditation is frustrating and disappointing, then we should practice insights. And just as in the story of Sam and Vi, each with their dog, Metta and Anapana, climbs a mountain both for deep peace and a clear view, so we can climb the meditation mountain inside.  But we have blind spots, we see only what we want to see, and don't see what we don't want to see. Real insights goes much dee...

Buddhism is not a religion of belief, but a training to empower ourselves to develop wisdom and happiness, based on our own experience. Some people, the bhikkhunis and bhikkhus, do this training full time, and then become teachers for others. And maybe the most important aspekt is kindness, and a few good stories are told about how kindness can help, both when one encounters poisonous snakes, or w...

These questions were asked and answered: (00:00) − Christmas family time - I find it really difficult when I gather with my big family for Christmas for many days, can you give some advice on how to handle the lack of silence, the negative discussions, they love to discuss all the problems in the world, the overload of thing and food, everybody has so much, and all want to buy more? (12:05) − Do y...