Search results for: middle way

1. Inner Strength & Parting Gifts Knowledge & Vision
    … When this sense of mahābhūta-rūpa is nourished with breath and mindfulness in this way, it will grow and mature. The properties will grow quiet and mature, and become mahā-satipaṭṭhāna, the great frame of reference. This is threshold concentration, or vicāra—spreading the breath. In centering the mind, we have to put it on the middle path, cutting away all thoughts of past … 
2. Inner Strength & Parting Gifts Crossing the Ocean of Life
    … You’ll end up sinking in the middle of the sea. The Buddha contemplated this fact, which is why he advised us to develop our goodness. On one level, developing goodness is involved with the way we use our material possessions. On another, it’s involved with the way we look after our actions, improving the way we use our physical body so that … 
3. Inner Strength & Parting Gifts Mental Power, Step by Step
    … Let the breath spread throughout every part of the body, from the head to the tips of the fingers and toes, in front, in back, in the middle of the stomach, all the way through the intestines, along the blood vessels, and out through every pore. Breathe long and deep until the body feels full. The body will feel light, open and spacious, just … 
4. Inner Strength & Parting Gifts Beyond Right & Wrong
    … This is the middle path. If you make your awareness of the breath too narrow, you’ll end up sitting stock stiff, with no alertness at all. If you make your awareness too broad—all the way to heaven and hell—you can end up falling for aberrant perceptions. So neither extreme is good. You have to keep things moderate and just right if … 
5. Inner Strength & Parting Gifts A Mind of Pure Gold
    … In the same way, a pure mind—even if we can make it pure for only a little while—can give results way in excess of its size. People who are really intent on purifying the mind may even lift themselves over and beyond the world. So we’re taught that people whose minds aren’t pure—regardless of whether they’ve given donations … 
6. Inner Strength & Parting Gifts III. Inner Release
    … Aging, illness, and death are its shadows or effects that show by way of the body. When we want to kill our enemy and so take a knife to stab his shadow, how is he going to die? In the same way, ignorant people try to destroy the shadows of stress and don’t get anywhere. As for the essence of stress in the … 
7. Inner Strength & Parting Gifts The Demons of Defilement
    … of temptation, that get in the way of our practice. It’s not the case that they always obstruct us. Sometimes they turn into our friends and companions; sometimes into our workers and supporters; sometimes into our slaves, helping us and caring for us. This is why, if you’re discerning, you have to walk a middle course. On one hand, you have to … 
8. Inner Strength & Parting Gifts As the Mind Turns
    … Another fetter is uncertainty—doubts and hesitation, running back and forth, not knowing which way to go and ending up spinning around along with the world. Once we know the ways of the body and mind, we’ll be released from these fetters. The mind will gain release from the body and shed the fermentations of defilement. This is called knowledge of the end … 
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