Search results for: "Becoming"
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- The Wisdom of Merit… It’s when you understand this principle that your practice becomes mature.
- The Fetter of Perceptions… So can we perceive it as separate? This is where the Buddha’s analysis of the sensations of the body into the four properties becomes useful. The four properties of earth, water, wind, and fire, or solidity, coolness, energy, and warmth are the components of your sense of the body as you feel it from within. The pains are something different. They may be …
- Faith in Karma… And so you have to become more and more mindful, more and more alert, more discerning. You have to gain more concentration, so that you can see the mind more clearly. And given the sense of well-being that comes from concentration—the Buddha compares it to food—you’re in a better position to say No to unskillful intentions. So we practice equanimity …
- Pro-self, Pro-help… It’s when you keep that in mind and really develop the first three strengths that the fourth strength, concentration, becomes strong. If you find that you have trouble staying with the breath, you can ask yourself what’s missing. Is there a lack in your conviction? A lack in your persistence? In your mindfulness? How about your sense of heedfulness—the sense that …
- Sense Restraint… You become absorbed in it and you want more. But then you realize that if you were to stop all that commentary, there wouldn’t be much. Think about all the vocabulary that goes around wine. They have whole magazines, whole books on the topic, and a very elaborate vocabulary to describe the different notes that you can taste in different vines. You see …
- A Greater Happiness… The longer you stay here, the more solid this inner sense of stillness becomes, then the more you can detach yourself from your fierce attachment to sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations, all the sensory things outside that everybody likes, everybody’s afraid to give up. It’s because of that fear that they do all kinds of evil things, short-sighted things …
- Everything You Need… As he said, if you take a position either that there is a self or there is no self, that becomes a thicket of views, and you’ll never get yourself out. But if you look at self and not-self as activities, there’s a clear logic. You do these things because they lead to happiness. And so if you find yourself selfing …
- Concentration & Insight… Why is it that that particular state of mind is so attractive? Why are you willing to play along with it? We mentioned earlier that there’s a point when a world of becoming suddenly appears in the mind, and you have the choice of whether to go with it or not. To go along with it is like playing make-believe. Why are …
- The Most Important Thing to Be Doing… The Buddha identifies the cause as the craving that leads to becoming. And notice he doesn’t say physical pain leads to suffering or that disappointment leads to suffering. He says it’s the craving, the clinging that lead to the suffering. Those are things that happen within. Which means that it’s within your power to change the cause of suffering into the …
- Against the Stream… It becomes our safe place, our solid place. The image they use a lot in the forest tradition is that the establishings of mindfulness, which are the topics of concentration, are your stronghold. That’s a place where you go when the enemy gets dangerous. You’ve got your stronghold here, and it’s a place where you’re safe. Now, sometimes you can …
- Antidotes… He gets into the king’s service and becomes a reliable servant of the king. Then one day, when he finally catches the king one-on-one, he kills him. As the Buddha said, the man was actually the king’s murderer even before he got into the king’s service. Every day when he was getting up before the king and going back …
- Habits & Practices… As you become more sensitive to your actions and intentions, then it gets easier to get the mind into concentration. After all, to hold to a precept, you have to be, one, mindful to keep it in mind. That’s what mindfulness means. Two, you have to be alert to watch what you’re actually doing. And three, you have to be ardent. You …
- Now & at Death… That becomes a good habit. As for restlessness and anxiety, restlessness has to do with fear for the future; anxiety has to do with fear of the results of bad things you can remember having done in the past. In both cases, you have to remember: You don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, but you do know that unexpected …
- Sort Things Out… Meditation involves some stress as you’re trying to get things together, but then as the mind begins to settle down, you begin to realize a lot of the activity you’ve been engaged in to keep the mind settled in becomes unnecessary. It’s as if the center of gravity has shifted and it’s easier to stay with the breath. You can …
- Teachings to Rahula… Make sure your intentions are good and then look at your actions to make sure that your intentions become skillful. Have the integrity to admit mistakes; the honesty to talk them over with someone. It’s in this way that, as the Buddha said, you purify your thoughts and your words and your deeds. When they’re pure, and you look at your actions …
- Perception… One of the purposes of meditation is to get the mind more still so that things that used to be subconscious can become conscious. It’s like bringing them up into the light of day. Or you can compare it to tuning in to a radio station. The more precisely you’re on the frequency, the less static there is. The less static, the …
- The Wheel of Dhamma… If you see you’ve got good results, take pride in the fact that you’re progressing in the training. “Progress” here means that you’re becoming more and more sensitive to the results you’re getting, and to the connection between those results and causes that actually brought them about. So what starts out as a really basic principle that you teach a …
- Trustworthy Intentions… It’s in this way that your training of the mind develops in all areas, and becomes a training of the mind as a whole.
- What to Tolerate, What Not… You want to figure out, “Where’s the cause?” Once you deal with the cause, then the problem becomes not a problem anymore. So it’s important that you realize the Buddha’s distinction here between what you tolerate and what you don’t tolerate. You tolerate the things that are beyond your control. The things that are unskillful that are within your control …
- Eight Principles… As you get sensitive to this issue, your focus can become a healing focus—mindfulness combined with breath—that dissolves the tension away. It’s in this way that being crazy about the meditation is a good way of developing discernment around the body. You learn a lot of things about how you hold the body, how you breathe, how the breath has an …
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