Search results for: middle way

  1. How to Feed Mindfulness
     … So try to picture them learning to see to the error of their ways and changing their ways. In other words, you wish for them to start creating the causes for happiness. You don’t feel that you have to settle old scores first before you let them be happy or wise. When you learn how to think in these ways, it helps to … 
  2. Levels of the Breath
     … Say you’re focused in the middle of the chest. Keep that sense of the middle of the chest wide open all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out, and then think of that sense of openness spreading throughout the body, wherever it’s going to go. Get in touch with the awareness that already fills the body as … 
  3. Jhana: Responsible Happiness
     … around the navel, the middle of the chest, the back of the neck, wherever. Here again the steadiness and quality of your awareness is the medicine. The breath is a solvent that allows the effects of the medicine to spread through different parts of the body. This is an important skill—learning how to stay focused in a way that’s healing—because that … 
  4. The Uses of Fear
     … You hop on a train of thought and find yourself in Burma, England, in the middle of Russia, up to the North Pole, down to the South Pole, out to Mars and Saturn, with brief stops along the way when you’re feeling hungry, tired, or hot. It’s back-and-forth all over the place. And when our thoughts are totally out of … 
  5. Fear & Anger
     … the middle of the head, the palate, the base of the throat, the middle the chest, just above the navel—-because they tend to be trigger points. Once a trigger point has been engaged, everything else seems to seize up as well. If you keep the trigger point relaxed, open, at ease, then the other physical reactions don’t happen. That way your body … 
  6. Joy in Effort
     … Right effort doesn’t mean middling effort all the time, you know. What makes the effort right is that it’s skillful, appropriate for right here, right now—and you’re up for the challenge. In the Buddha’s description of right effort, you’re told to generate desire. And one of the best ways of generating desire is to learn how to enjoy … 
  7. Thinking Your Way to Stillness
    Thinking Your Way to Stillness January 8, 2009 There’s a common perception that meditation doesn’t involve any thinking. You just force the mind to stay alert in the present moment and refuse to get involved in any thoughts at all. Then it will settle down. That approach works for some people in some circumstances, but not for everyone. This is why the … 
  8. Knowing the Body from Within
     … You want to get to know the filtering process very well, so you can recognize when it’s filtering things in an accurate and useful way, and when it’s filtering them in a harmful way that gives rise to suffering. So we focus on the breath not simply as a means for getting the mind to settle down and be still, but also … 
  9. Moving Between Thought Worlds
     … wake up in the middle of one of your created worlds, and say, “Oh, this is suffering. It doesn’t have to be here.” And you look in the right place instead of placing the blame on other people in the past or in the present. The suffering doesn’t come from them. The suffering comes from the way the mind thinks about things … 
  10. A Well-Thatched Roof
     … They make it part of their self-image and do unskillful things with it, rather than seeing it as something of the world that has temporarily come their way. The wise question to ask when gain comes your way is, “How are you going to squeeze the best use out of it?” This doesn’t mean squeezing as much pleasure as you can. It … 
  11. Always Willing to Learn
     … What would be the most effective way of stopping that kind of behavior? The most effective way is rarely the route of anger. There are more subtle ways, more indirect ways, that are much more effective, much more lasting. But they’re not going to occur to you if you’re boiling over with indignation. You may come to realize that you actually use … 
  12. Acceptance
    Acceptance October 31, 2008 As with so many other issues, the Buddha took a middle road when it came to the issue of other-power and self-power on the path. On the one hand, there’s the famous passage where Ven. Ananda comes to see the Buddha and exclaims that having admirable friends is half of the practice, half of the holy life … 
  13. End of results