Search results for: "Becoming"
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- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
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