ajahn brahm is a great teacher! thank you for offering these videos per youtube for people outside Australia. i met him 2003 while i was traveling western australia. i discovered, just one day before the rains retreat started, the small sign "buddhist monastery" next to the road (traveling south) ... and just followed the road up the hill and then to the monastery. i arrived .... not one human being was there. i parked my car and walked around a bit ... i believe it was in the afternoon ... just short before i was ready to leave, a small asian lady appeared and invited me to the big party which should happen the next day, right before the rains retreat. i decided to come back the next day.... and so all started. i met some amazing people, and when i returned from my trip south, i returned to visit serpentine as well as the nuns monastery, where sister ajahn vayama was head nun at the time. she is a great teacher as well. ajahn brahm was perfectly right to chose her to set up the nuns monastery in western australia. i was very sad when i heard that she had become sick. love to all the monks and nuns of both monasteries. some of them maybe remember me. at the time i lived in Germany, today i live in the USA. i always considered Australia my soul-country! ;) Kristina
+MrM wilson The art of living is to know what colors to paint with, to create the image you wish to perceive. Life is very colorful and filled with creations and images all for you to perceive. To appreciate art for what it is, is its most infinite and defining quality. Art, and its eagerness to be created and appear to then inspire, is very similar to the creation of life. Peace in the world isn't of any concern if there is peace of mind. Even tho wars and famine and negative youtube comments can bring one down. Realize the brush is in your hand, and all you see is what you make of it. How you paint the impressions of your experience in your mind is what peace can be for you. So you can enjoy all the colors of the rainbow without care if it lead to a pot of gold or not.
while other religion focuses on getting sth, getting salvation, getting heaven of lust, getting merits, getting this getting that. Buddhism focuses on detaching, until liberated completely. And thats the true path of peace.
the idea is to be fully in the moment. as soon as you set your self any goal in mind, you are programming yourself to some future goal that has to be achieved. naturally that contradicts with " beeing in the Moment ". simply watch your breath ! dont hold on to any thoughts that come, the vansih by themselfs, and other thoughts come. within your first meditation sessions you will be able to observe how, after some time, the "pace" of your thoughts slow down. keep on practising this, include some Metta meditation after some time. If you keep practising the first Nimmitas ( funy lights you see in your mind ) show up, untill you arrive to the first Jhana. Some people just need 3 Days, other take month,..accept that as part of your Karma. and just keep practising,.... if you follow that path every thing else will fall in place best Charles
