Search results for: "Becoming"

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  2. Testing Insights
     … In that way, you become a tourist meditator. You dip in a little bit, and you have a nice little tourist experience, and then you dip out. You come in again, then you’re out again. You never gain the kind of understanding that comes from really living in a location. But if you stick with one way of dealing with the breath, you … 
  3. Magha Puja: Showing Respect with the Practice
     … Are they as good as this? Are they as harmless as this? Are you taking something from other people? Or is the mind becoming intoxicated? Is the awareness becoming blurred with its happiness? You’ve got this clear state of mind in the present moment as your point of comparison so that you can begin to measure clearly which kinds of happiness are worth … 
  4. Mindfulness of Death & the Deathless
     … That’s the process of what the Buddha calls “becoming,” followed by “birth.” So the process that would lead to rebirth is happening right here, all the time. All the “becomings” that we create in the course of the day are simply small versions of what’s going to happen when we can’t stay in this body any longer. Different worlds will appear … 
  5. De-domesticated
    As you engage in the practice, you take on new states of becoming. You become a new person and you shape the world around you in new ways. After all, that’s what becoming is: a sense of who you are in a particular world of experience. And your sense of yourself and your sense of the world are very intimately interconnected. You’ve … 
  6. Metta Can Hurt
     … Otherwise, if they don’t become a source of obvious suffering, they become a source of denial. You’re in a little bubble of mettā and it’s not connected with the world at all. That’s not the kind of concentration that can be really useful for discernment. The Buddha does talk about using the brahma-vihāras as a basis for the seven … 
  7. Permission to Play
     … If you’re simply sitting with whatever comes up, meditation becomes an exercise in brute endurance. If no pleasure’s coming up in the meditation, no sense of rapture or gratification, it becomes dull and unattractive. You find it harder and harder to actually sit down and keep up with the practice day after day. But if you allow the meditation to be a … 
  8. Making the Dhamma Your Own
     … This strengthens your confidence both in yourself and in the Dhamma—because they become one and the same thing. Your mind becomes Dhamma; you’ve made it your own. And that’s not by imposing your ideas about the Dhamma on it. It simply means that you make yourself into Dhamma by challenging yourself and using the Dhamma to rise to the challenge. When … 
  9. Ask the Right Questions
     … And when you take these issues seriously, you find that your life does become more auspicious. You’re causing less suffering for yourself, less suffering for other beings. There’s a greater and greater sense of well-being that becomes established inside. So this is how we develop a happy New Year: developing the causes for a happy New Year by making sure that … 
  10. A Total Training
     … Once that movement feels good, think of it spreading to different parts of the body, so that the breathing becomes a whole-body process. Everybody’s participating in the breath. If the mind wanders off, bring it back and then see if the breath can be made even more comfortable. This way, over time, the breath becomes more satisfying; the mind becomes more tame … 
  11. Enlarged Awareness
     … That way, the meditation becomes your foundation, and your sense of the world or your sense of yourself within the world begins to change. It’s not that there’s a little you inside the world. It’s more that there’s an experience of the world inside this larger sense of awareness. That becomes more fundamental. That becomes your foundation. If there’s … 
  12. Caring Without Clinging
     … This is another one of those issues around becoming. In fact, the Pali word for emotion, bhāva, is like bhava. Bhava means “becoming.” You make it bhāva with a long a, and it becomes “emotion.” We like to get into the emotion. We like to taste it. But then we become slaves to it. We get addicted to the taste. We want to taste … 
  13. Strong Through Mindfulness
     … It then becomes part of the rhythm of your own mind. Then, as the Buddha said, you take the ability you’ve developed through memorizing passages to get better and better at holding things in mind. That makes it easier to settle down and do the real work of the meditation. After all, we’re not here just to be aware of things, to … 
  14. Working with Nature
     … It’s a wandering, going from one state of becoming to another. What you’re trying to do here is create a state of becoming that stays. So you use some of the mental factors that would lead to becoming, but you’re trying to do it in such a way that creates a place where the mind can settle in. Some of its … 
  15. Craving & Desire on the Path
     … You want to put an end to the you who is suffering, the *you *who is creating suffering, the you who wants to keep on traveling through *saṁsāra. *That would count as craving for non-becoming. As craving for becoming, you want to become awakened. Okay, you use that desire as a motive force for the practice. As you get closer and closer to … 
  16. A Culture of Self Reliance
     … We do have the example of the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha to give us guidance, to give us support, as we internalize their example, so that the mind really can become its own refuge. Atta hi attano natho: The self is its own mainstay. It becomes its mainstay when it’s well trained. As long as you need outside help, keep looking … 
  17. Your Higher Power
     … So he has you cultivate new, more skillful desires, and he also gives you the techniques for strengthening them out so that you become a new you. You can tap into your higher power. And the word “your” there is important because it is part of your mind. The potential is there. It’s just that you’ve gotten so disappointed in yourself that … 
  18. Life in the Buddha’s Hospital
     … Not that you become lazy or apathetic, just letting things be whatever way they want to be. You become selective: Where can you make a difference? Where can you not make a difference? Where is your craving helping you in the path? Where is it getting in the way? You have to learn how to be selective, how to be skillful in where you … 
  19. Getting Connected Inside
     … Then allow them to open up, open up, as best you can.” Because the more open things are, the more your awareness can become whole, so that the spotlighted part and the background part become a unified awareness. You’ll eventually get to a point in the concentration where you don’t have to do that much evaluation. You’ve sorted things out, you … 
  20. Selves with Skills
     … But as you get better and better, and it becomes more natural, it really does feel more and more like you: you the meditator. It’s an identity that becomes more and more second nature. The time will come when you have to put it down, but in the meantime, use it—all these roles of the new you. As you see how you … 
  21. Training Your Inner Teacher
     … When the Buddha sets out the four noble truths, he says that the thoughts that give rise to suffering come from craving for sensuality, craving for becoming, craving for non-becoming. Then there are the thoughts that lead away from suffering, starting with thoughts of right view, right resolve—your intention to follow the duties of the path—then right speech, right action, right … 
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