Search results for: "Becoming"

  1. Page 103
  2. The Brightness of the World
     … Again, you benefit directly from that, in that you become the beneficiary of that person’s gifts. But at the same time, that person sets a good example for you. The world isn’t all about taking. Giving is what keeps human society alive. It also develops the qualities you need on the path. As the Buddha said, a person who’s stingy can … 
  3. Study to Practice
     … You can learn how to deal with your unskillful thoughts right now after having learned about these three kinds of fabrication and become sensitive to them in your actual practice of concentration. You gain insight into how it is that the mind goes for rebirth again and again. There’s an allure to being reborn. You know there are lots of drawbacks, and at … 
  4. What It All Comes From
     … This whole construct is called becoming. It builds on the nature of desire. Desire is always moving someplace. When you look in the present moment, there’s nothing static. It’s moving. It’s moving toward a goal. One question is whether you’re going to attain that goal or not. Another is, will it make you happy? That’s all part of the … 
  5. Success Through Maturity
     … And this is how effort becomes mature. It’s very easy for the mind to start wallowing in a comfortable thought or a pleasant thought that has nothing to do with the meditation, nothing to do with thoughts of “skillful” or “unskillful.” It’s also easy to wallow in the comfort caused by the meditation. But then you forget the causes, and things fall … 
  6. Smart About Lust
     … Everyone who’s attained the deathless says, “How stupid I was not to go for this.” That’s why people who gain genuine awakening don’t become proud over the fact of their awakening, because they’ve seen how stupid they were for so long. So hold that in mind as an ideal. You haven’t seen the third noble truth yet, but that … 
  7. Descartes’ Error
     … But if it has a larger frame of reference—the whole body—this becomes your field. Other things that you’re aware of are simply things entering into the field of this concentration. You know they’re there, but the framework is solid. This way, you can maintain your concentration in all kinds of settings, all kinds of situations. So direct your thoughts in … 
  8. Pleasant Practice, Painful Practice
     … This is really important because we’re all attached to the body in one way or another, and that attachment becomes a big weight on the mind. The extent to which we don’t see it as a problem: That in itself is a problem. This is what the Buddha said: If you have a lot of passion, a lot of aversion, a lot … 
  9. Dhamma in Vinaya
     … What you’re trying to do is to become sensitive to the whole body. The image the Buddha gives, describing in the first jhana or stage concentration, is of working water through the ball of soap powder. Another image, for the second jhana, is of a lake that’s filled with cool water of a spring that’s fed again and again by rain … 
  10. A Basis in Well-being
     … Things suddenly become clear because your gaze is steadier, it’s less on edge, and you’re more in a mood to watch things as they actually happen, to see things for what they actually are. So try to cultivate this sense of well-being that’s based on the seeds of well-being that are right here, right now, in the breath, in … 
  11. Genuine Satisfaction
     … And when we do the shaping with awareness, then it all becomes part of the path. Right view is what makes a difference between actions that form a wrong path and those that form a right path for the end of suffering. So try to get in touch with your hungers. It was hunger that drove you to be born here in the first … 
  12. Getting Familiar with Concentration
     … It really does become your center, and you can use it to peel away your attachments to all other things. Only when you’ve got so that you’re relying totally on this do you pull the rug out from under yourself. That’s when you’re in the right position to benefit from the Buddha’s teaching on insight in the ultimate sense … 
  13. Rooted in Desire
     … It’s become so natural that you don’t see the extent to which you’re fabricating things. Only when you ask questions do you begin to notice, “Oh, there was something happening there. I did this, and this resulted.” So learning how to ask the right questions at the right time is an important part of gaining discernment. The Buddha said that it … 
  14. Determined on Goodwill
     … There’s the determination that focuses mainly on a particular goal you want to attain, and there are those that are focused on the practices that lead you there, trying to become more consistent in those practices, to put more energy into them. They’re connected, of course. You might decide in the course of the coming year that you want to attain a … 
  15. A Well-thatched Roof
     … And of course, as the mind settles down, it becomes more tranquil. The Buddha says when you develop tranquility and insight to a full measure, you develop both awareness-release and discernment-release. Awareness release is when you’re released from passion. This can be passion for pleasure—passion for all kinds of things. But the Buddha was wise enough to see that we … 
  16. There is This
     … Facing forward, you seem to take on everything coming at you; you become weighed down by everything that’s coming in, coming in, coming in at you. But if you turn around and face the back of the car as you’re riding along, just see things passing away, passing away, passing away. The actual impact is the same, but your attitude has changed … 
  17. Pleasures & Pains on the Middle Way
     … And it’s in developing your sensitivity to that point of just right in different circumstances that your discernment becomes sharp enough to see something that goes beyond.
  18. An Anthropologist from Mars
     … How can I live my life in such a way that it will be more conducive to the practice, to give more space to the meditation?—so that the meditation, the state of your mind, can become the bottom line. This requires that you take a skeptical look at the things that society at large views as important. As the Buddha said, basically what … 
  19. Alighting on the Dhamma
     … This way, you train that speaker inside to become more and more reliable, and you’re less likely to trash what observations you’ve made. Second, don’t despise the Dhamma. The Buddha was very careful to phrase things well. This is why we say, “*Svakkhato bhagavata dhammo,” *the Dhamma is well taught by the Blessed One. He really did teach it well. He … 
  20. The Choice Not to Suffer
     … Those patterns of tension often become the burden that the mind actually feels. One of the Buddha’s insights is that pain comes in two forms. One is pain in the three characteristics: the fact that there is stress simply because things are put together and fabricated—and that’s everywhere. But the stress that weighs down the mind is a different kind of … 
  21. A Meditation Karma Checklist
     … It’s when you’re more methodical that you can remember, “Oh, I was doing this, this, this, and then the mind settled down.” That’s how the meditation becomes a skill, when you know the steps. You know what you’re supposed to do. There will be variations from one night to the next, but they’re not infinite. You begin to get … 
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