Working with Negative Mindstates and Trauma | Ajahn Dhammasiha | Buddhist Dhamma Talk at Dhammagiri

Dhammagiri Buddhist Podcasts · Jul 4, 2025 · 38m

In our meditation, we usually hope to find calm, happiness, bliss and enlightenment. But what we often encounter instead are all kinds of challenging and highly disagreeable mindstates. Defilements and distractions of all sorts assail the heart.

Ajahn Dhammasiha reminds us that these negative states are very normal to encounter in meditation. Unless we're someone with great pāramī, like Venerable Sāriputta, who's heart was was already very pure from practice in previous lifetimes, we have a lot of cleaning up to do in our mind.

In fact, that's exactly the point of our meditation: It's a…