Search results for: "Becoming"
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- Making a Refuge… That becomes an example for you that you can follow, that you can imitate. You want to spend time with people like this because you pick up their habits—whatever good points they have. And bit by bit by bit, as in Dõgen’s line—he says it’s like walking through the mist and your robes get wet without your even realizing it …
- Verified Confidence… It’ll help keep you on the path to the point where that conviction becomes verified confidence. It’s at that point that there’s no more fear of death. So, do what you can to see if that promise is true.
- Genuine Goodness… We have the choice of putting things together in the mind in a way that, instead of being a burden for the mind, actually becomes a path out of suffering. This is an important insight: realizing that the way we suffer is based on a choice. We have a whole series of choices and we can undo those choices. They’re not inscribed in …
- Angry… How are you fabricating your present experience? Do it with knowledge and it becomes part of the path. Look at the Buddha’s teachings on breath meditation. In the first tetrad, you get sensitive to the breath and then you get sensitive to what he calls bodily fabrication, i.e., the impact that the breath has on the body and then, through the body …
- Challenges… Then you become like a healthy person who can go anywhere, eat any kind of food, sleep on any kind of bed. That gives you a greater sense of freedom. Even though it may not be absolute freedom, it gives you a much wider range of things you can handle. But even this pleasure does have its dangers, particularly in the beginning stages. You …
- A Sense of Time & Place… It’s only then that your practice becomes all-around.
- Evaluating Your Practice… Ultimately, you reach the point where, as the texts say, you become independent in the Buddha’s teaching. In other words, you develop an all-around sense of these things, to the point where you can rely on yourself to make the adjustments, to make the corrections you need. Up to that point, you need the example of others to help keep you on …
- Skillful Thinking… That’s when your thinking gets wise—and becomes part of the path.
- Painful Thinking… When we’re burdened down and other people become burdened down, we can’t help them with their burdens because what we’re carrying around is more than heavy enough. Sometimes we sway and lean and fall over on other people because of our burdens. But the Buddha pointed out that if you can unlearn those habits and replace them with habits that don …
- Training Your Commentator… These truths become true only when you want them to be true. If you want to be a good musician, if you want to be a good sportsman, if you want to be a good cook, it’s not going to happen if you don’t want it. Your desire is what makes it happen. So remember: The path is largely a truth of …
- “May I Be Happy”… He knows that if he scoops his hand down to get the water, the water will become muddy and he wouldn’t be able to drink it. So he very carefully has to bring his lips down to the water and slurp it up. The water here stands for what little goodness those other people may have. It may not be much, but you …
- Housecleaning… This way, as you clean things out, you find that this house here in the present moment really becomes a home, a real home where you can stay. You can rest when you need to rest. If you have work you need to do, you can do it right here—because your work is to figure out how the mind causes itself unnecessary stress …
- What Are You Doing in the Present?… If you don’t let go at the other side, and you try to carry it around, it becomes a burden. If you let go in the middle of the river, you fall off the raft and get swept away. So you don’t try to develop dispassion for concentration until you sense there’s going to be something better. As long as you …
- Judging Your Meditation… And you’ve got the understanding, and the patience, and truthfulness, to become a better and better judge of when the meditation is working and when it’s not, and what to do when it’s not. So, on the one hand, don’t be too quick to judge your meditation, but on the other hand, try to develop the skills that will make …
- Go, Do Jhana… The question then becomes: If you begin to notice an imbalance in the mind, how do you bring it back into balance? If you’re thinking too much and it’s snuffing out your concentration, drop the thinking for a while. If your concentration is getting too dull, learn to probe it with a few questions. And in trying to find that balance, you …
- A Meritorious Heart… They can point out how to become skillful. But the actual energy and attention, mindfulness and discernment that are needed to develop a skill: Those are things you have to bring to the practice. So there is work involved, but it’s good work. This is why people are happy to do it. In Thailand, they have the phrase, jai boon, which literally means …
- At Home with the Breath… But when you bring it back, make sure you bring it back in a way that’s solid and comfortable at the same time, because if bringing it back becomes a chore or something unpleasant, it’s going to get harder and harder to bring it back. So each time you come back to the breath, ask yourself: Is the breath as comfortable as …
- Helping Others Is a Battle… Here he had done all the work required to become awakened and he was willing to teach everybody—yet even so, there were people who were offended by what he taught. Even the Buddha had people who tried to kill him. He realized that, taming himself, he had to do battle with his own defilements. Taming other people would involve having to battle with …
- Set Your Heart on the Breath… As you do that, there’s a very strong sense that the mind and the breath become One. It’s not that you’re on one side of a membrane separating you from the breath. You’re there in the breath; the breath is in you. If that happens, maintain that sense of being One with your object. That can bring an even greater …
- Chronic Pain… The pain will become the center for all kinds of complaints, and you get to see a lot of the mind’s assumptions written into the complaints. It’s a really good place to get to know the mind. You can think of it as a water hole in the savannah. Suppose you want to make a documentary about the animals in the savannah …
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