Search results for: "Becoming"

  1. Page 108
  2. Equanimity in Heart & Mind
     … You begin to see how that person seemed to become part of you. You were actually feeding on that person in terms of your emotions. A large part of your identity is built around that relationship. But look what happens: Every relationship is going to end. And when it does, are you going to go looking for another one? Or would it be better … 
  3. Safe Haven
     … As you develop a sense of ease sitting right here, wherever you may feel it, be confident that this is going to become your safe place. It may not be very large right now. To use another image, it’s like starting a fire on a windy day. As soon as you light the kindling, you’ve got to protect it. Once the fire … 
  4. Figuring Out Concentration
     … The more the mind gets still, the more delicate the work becomes—but it’s still work. There’s still plenty to figure out. So whatever verb you use, or however you describe the verb of thinking, make sure that your thinking is on target, doing what it should be doing. Whether it counts as directed thought or as reflection or whatever, it’s … 
  5. What’s Not on the Map
     … Your external habits of speaking become part of your internal dialogue. So the practice is a combination of learning what you’ve picked up from other people, taking it to heart, and then also realizing that you’ve got to test it. Things may not come out the way you anticipated them. This is part of discernment. It starts with learning from what you … 
  6. Wisdom as a Tool
     … We’re here because it’s one of the best places to watch things as they unfold, before we slap labels on them, such as “This is me” or “This is mine or somebody else’s” or “This is a great insight.” Before you start conjuring up all the processes of becoming around them, learn to see things as events, as they come, as … 
  7. Letting Go
     … After all, if you hang on, you become a ghost and then haunt the people you’re concerned about. That, of course, freaks them out. You’re not doing anybody any good. You’ve got to realize that a lot of these thoughts, even though they may be responsible and they may be compelling, have their time and place. When it’s no longer … 
  8. Training Your Moods
     … It’s in this way that the training becomes a complete training. Not just for a couple hours during the day—it’s the whole day. As Ajaan Fuang used to say, our practice tends to get fragmented into times. We have a time to eat, a time to talk, a time to work, and then there’s a little bit of time for … 
  9. Visakha Puja
     … Develop this path—this middle way of virtue, concentration, and discernment—take your desire for happiness seriously, so that it’s not just a selfish thing, it becomes a quality that gives rise to wisdom, compassion, purity. Then you take these qualities and bring them to the present moment, look what’s going on in the mind right now, so that you can develop … 
  10. Reflections
     … There will be part of the mind that says, “Hey, I’ve got a whole hour here, I can just take five minutes to think about what I want… ten minutes, fifteen minutes, whatever.” You find of course, that what’s originally planned as a short excursion becomes a long-term trip. It eats up the whole time. You can tell yourself: “I’ve … 
  11. Doing, Maintaining, Using
     … It’s the same with the meditation When you use it, it becomes a more complete training. We’re here not just to master a technique, but also to learn how we’re creating suffering in unnecessary ways, both for ourselves and for other people around us, and how we can learn to undo those habits. We see that the suffering that really matters … 
  12. Strength Training
     … In fact, the act of following the path itself becomes the object of your meditation, the object of your analysis. You see how all the factors of the mind that the Buddha would describe in dependent co-arising, or in the different kinds of fabrication, all play a role in developing these strengths. You get hands-on experience in using them. That’s when … 
  13. Close to What You Know
     … If you take that as your context, then the issue of self becomes a question of: What kind of activity is self? And what are the results of selfing in different situations? When you look at your sense of self in that way, you begin to realize that it’s something you do, something you put together given certain circumstances. You perceive a certain … 
  14. Tranquility & Insight Together
     … It becomes what’s called a path. It leads you ultimately to something that’s not shaped at all, not fabricated at all. It’s just there. So when you’re working with the breath, trying to get the mind into concentration, you’re bringing some awareness to the way you fabricate the state of your mind and your experience of your body. When … 
  15. The Self-correcting Mind
     … This way, the mind becomes self-correcting and learns to explore possibilities that it might not have thought of before. As the Buddha said, there’s the discernment that comes from listening and there’s the discernment that comes from thinking things through. But the discernment that really works in making a difference for the mind, allowing it to gain release from its suffering … 
  16. Choosing Not to Suffer
     … It’s bad to die when you’re worried, because that becomes the dominant mindset that you go with.” She was able to put him at ease. And it so happened that he didn’t die. He recovered. At one point, when he was just barely strong enough to walk, he went to see the Buddha. He told him about what his wife had … 
  17. Perceptions for Training the Mind
     … But if you fabricate with knowledge, it becomes the path—and that’s what we’re doing as we sit here and meditate. We’re learning how to fabricate with knowledge. We reflect on the Buddha’s teachings, many of which are there to give us ideas of knowledgeable ways of fabricating. There’s bodily fabrication, which is the breath. And there’s verbal … 
  18. A Victory that Matters
     … This is what happens when a narrow view becomes ascendant and demands to be ascendant in every area. It’s not just now that people are challenging the Buddha about the metaphysics of rebirth. Back in his time it was a controversial issue, too. One of the major fallacies that you hear repeatedly is that the Buddha just picked up the idea of rebirth … 
  19. A Post by the Ocean
     … It can become a post on which you build a house. It can be a post to which you tie up your boat, so that the boat doesn’t get washed out to sea. And the post itself doesn’t get damaged much by the waves. But if you take your post and lay it down at the edge of the ocean — thinking that … 
  20. Return of Wisdom for Dummies
     … What are you doing? How can you become more skillful in doing it? And how far can you take that question of skillfulness? That’s how the results come, and that’s how wisdom for dummies really is wise.
  21. Ego
     … Well, you become a god-like person when you can step back and look at your own foibles and laugh at them as well. So all these are negotiating strategies. This is what a healthy ego means: It’s a function, it’s not a thing in the mind. It’s a range of skills that you need to develop in order to negotiate … 
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