Search results for: "Becoming"

  1. Page 105
  2. What Are You Doing Right Now?
     … Some people get the idea that they’ve reached the ground of being, when the body is filled with awareness, your whole range of awareness is filled with mindfulness and alertness, and consciousness itself becomes an object. But again, the Buddha has you look at this as a process, something you’re doing as days and nights fly past, fly past. What are you … 
  3. Keeping Your Values Alive
     … As the Buddha points out, as right resolve develops, it becomes one with the concentration. All the factors of the path come together. So the practice is not just doing a technique. It’s also realizing why the practice is important, why you need it, how you can apply it, and how you can create an environment in which you can grow. You really … 
  4. Hindrances
     … Here you want to learn how to look at the events in the mind simply as events, for a different purpose, for the purpose of developing dispassion for them, so you don’t create a sense of “you” around them, a sense of desire that creates a state of becoming. There’s a lot going on here, even as you sit here quietly watching … 
  5. Ardency
     … Once you’ve got the basic patterns, that doesn’t guarantee you’re going to learn how to become a good, consistent weaver or make a basket that really looks good. That requires your own powers of observation. So you make a basket and you look at it. How is the weave? Is it fine enough? Is it consistent enough? If it’s not … 
  6. The Dhamma Mirror
     … It’s not the case that their form, feelings, etcetera, become permanent when they gain awakening. You have to realize that the problem is the clinging. The clinging is what you’re doing, and you’ll see that clearly as you deal with distractions in concentration, and as you’re doing the concentration itself. This is why, when the Buddha introduced his son to … 
  7. Against Your Type
     … In this way, defilements that were recalcitrant become a lot easier to deal with—because they have their skills too, you know. If you apply only one approach to them, they’ll know you. They’ll see you coming from three miles down the road because you telegraph your moves. They have their tricks, so you need to have your tricks, too. There are … 
  8. Free from Animosity
     … But if that leads you to do unskillful things, then the other person becomes someone to whom something is owed, and nothing’s ever really resolved. See the drawbacks of this kind of thinking, that it leads to more and more bad kamma. When you can see that the drawbacks outweigh the allure, that’s when you can have some dispassion for the whole … 
  9. How to Listen
     … But then that becomes a disturbance. You want the mind quieter than that. So you keep peeling away these layers, layers of the concentration itself. As you peel away, peel away, it’s like peeling an onion. You finally get to the point where there’s nothing more to peel away. That’s what appropriate attention is all about. It gets you from the … 
  10. Lessons from Stilling the Mind
     … So instead, you employ this pleasure of form—in other words, the body as you feel it from within, and you let it become strong. It’s not a tactile sensation. It’s related to the elements in the body or the properties of the body: warmth, coolness, heaviness, energy. When they come together, they feel really good. That kind of pleasure doesn’t … 
  11. You Can’t Clone Awakening
     … If you recognize that a thought has come from an unskillful intention, you hold it in check and try to replace it with something that comes from a more skillful intention, until the skillful intention becomes more and more habitual. From there, the mind is in a better position to start getting into good states of concentration. This is how the path factor of … 
  12. Modest, Unentangled, Unburdensome
     … It’s only when you make a lot of requests of people that it becomes a burden. Or when they have to shell out extra money: That’s a burden. So you have to be very careful. Try to develop as much contentment as you can. And it’s in this way that your practice is in line with the Dhamma, because these external … 
  13. Basic Stuff
     … Learn how to use the breath as an ally in learning to become skillful and wise, so that the principle that all beings are the owners of their actions, will lead to happiness. Even though there’s aging, illness, death, and separation in life, they don’t have to make you suffer if you learn how to train the mind to have mindfulness, alertness … 
  14. Dissolving Distress
     … And it becomes interesting because of the questions you ask: What kind of breathing would feel good? What kind of breathing would feel really nourishing? What kind of breathing does the body need right now? If you’re feeling tense, try to breathe in a way that’s relaxing. If you’re feeling tired, try to breathe in a way that gives you more … 
  15. Sensitive to the Mind
     … The whole meditation is about becoming sensitive to the mind—what it needs—and the Buddha’s simply giving you tools so that you can provide for those needs on more and more subtle levels. So look at each meditation as a learning experience. You may not learn what you wanted to to begin with, you may learn some things about yourself that you … 
  16. Ānāpānasati Day
     … There were monks who were becoming stream enterers, once returners, non-returners, arahants. Even those who weren’t gaining the noble attainments were making good progress in their meditation. So on the last night of the rainy season, i.e., tonight, he gave a long talk in celebration of what they had done. It’s a sutta that affirms the principle that even though … 
  17. Do, Maintain, Use
     … You become sensitive over time. You begin to see how the mind slips off, how you can get it back again, how a little thought begins to form, and then the mind denies that it formed. Then it waits until your mindfulness slips, your alertness slips, and it’ll take over. So you have to watch out for that. This is how concentration begins … 
  18. A Genius about Your own Mind
     … This was well before the Buddha had become the Buddha. King Bimbisara saw this mendicant who didn’t look like an ordinary mendicant. He looked like a noble warrior, and in fact he was. So the king offered him a position in his army. The Buddha responded, “That’s not what I have gone forth for. I’m not going forth for sensual pleasures … 
  19. Strategies for Happiness
     … You first have to become skillful in the way you manage your happiness, realizing that being generous, being virtuous, training the mind are things you have to do; that you’re responsible for your happiness, and have to develop these qualities that are harmless both to yourself and to others. Once you’ve got that principle firmly in mind, then you can start turning … 
  20. Over-informed
     … He didn’t tell them they could become stream-enterers, or once-returners, or non-returners, or arahants. He basically said, This is the path for putting an end to suffering. Focus on the suffering you’re doing right now. Notice that you’re doing it. You’re clinging to things. It’s not simply that you’re on the receiving end of the … 
  21. The Karma of Perception
     … But if we learn how to apply it really skillfully, with all the elements of the path—right view through right concentration—then it becomes the karma that leads to the end of karma, perceptions that lead to the end of perceptions. That’s one of the skills the Buddha wants us to develop.
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