Search results for: "Becoming"

  1. Page 105
  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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.
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. Training the Mind
     … It’s is in this way that our happiness becomes secure. We can rely on it because we’ve learned how to rely on ourselves—the way we process information and the skills that we’ve developed in the mind. They start with simple things like this: being able to stay with one thing and make the most of it. After all, what could … 
  17. Facing Pain Straight On
     … You also gain insight into how you can train the mind to be observant, to ask questions about cause and effect, and to watch and experiment and become more skillful as you approach the issue of suffering and pain in your life. This is one of things that was really distinctive about the Buddha’s teachings. You look at the teachings that were taught … 
  18. The Desire to End All Desires
     … When you focus your desire there, it becomes an integral part of getting to the point where you don’t need desire anymore.
  19. Attachment to Views
     … This is where the issue of non-attachment to views actually becomes total non-attachment. But even then, as we see in the case of the Buddha, he would teach other people how to use the raft, what worked and what didn’t, and how to make a raft for themselves. That’s not called attachment to views, that’s called skillful use of … 
  20. The Mind Comes First
     … That will become your reminder. When unskillful thoughts come up, you can remind yourself, “Okay, one of the ways of undercutting them is to turn around, look at the breath again.” Drop whatever that frame of reference was, and re-establish yourself from the frame of reference here at the breath. Then there are the images you hold in mind. Those sometimes lie behind … 
  21. Five Steps to Insight
     … In this way, your concentration grows deeper because it becomes more and more resilient. You get quicker and quicker at seeing through the things that used to pull you away, until it feels like concentration is the normal state of the mind. You learn how to enjoy it. But then you begin to realize that it has its drawbacks, too. This is where you … 
  22. Load next page...