Search results for: "Becoming"

  1. Page 114
  2. Right Resolve in Real Life
     … You get upset about something and your breath changes and becomes intolerable. It’s not the situation that’s intolerable. It’s your breathing that’s intolerable, but you lash out. So you constantly have to be on the lookout for when the breath changes. One of the reasons why we practice here—sitting with our eyes closed, focusing on the breath—is to … 
  3. Relationships
     … And through exercise, it becomes strong. In the same way, you take whatever virtue, concentration, and discernment you have, and you apply them to the problems of life as they arise. And it’s good to keep things basic. All too often, we like to head off into advanced Buddhist philosophy right away. But if it doesn’t have any grounding, we tend to … 
  4. Invest in the Breath
     … Things you never even noticed you had in your mind before now begin to become clear. So we try to learn both from pleasure and from pain. They can be used to refine our understanding of what our minds are doing. We realize that even with the limitations that come to the body and to the mind, we can still do good with what … 
  5. The Skill of Restraint
     … If you do it skillfully, your looking and listening all become part of the practice. They can keep you on the path all day long.
  6. The Dhamma Wheel Shakes Up the World
     … Not only the world, but everything in the universe quaked, they say, all the way up through the Brahma worlds, because it opened a real possibility to get out of this continued wandering around through suffering that shapes the very basis of all levels of becoming. So it’s up to each of us to see if we want to keep that Dhamma wheel … 
  7. Views & Vision
     … And once you’ve decided to do that once, you can do it again, and you can do it again, until it becomes a habit. Then there are the reflections to make sure that you don’t be heedless and complacent. There’s recollection of death: the fact that death could come at any time and that you’ve got to prepare because death … 
  8. The Return of Chickens from Hell
     … Focus on the potentials that are good as the mind does settle down and become still. When it’s really solid, then you can turn around and look at these processes of aggregates. Look at the chickens you’re feeding, look at the things coming out of the chickens for what they really are. That way, you get more skillful not only in your … 
  9. Respect, Confidence, & Patience
     … When you find the proper object for your respect, you find that respect becomes a strength—something you can rely on, something you can depend on, all the way to the end of suffering.
  10. Tranquility & Insight
     … You don’t just sit here and become complacent and indifferent to things. You have to be passionate about the concentration, because otherwise you’re going to go out and feed on other things. So learn how to feed on the stillness of mind that you can create as the mind settles down. That can be your passion. You want to do this well … 
  11. Inconstant, Stressful, Not-self
     … He wants to provoke dispassion because the passion we have for fabricating our worlds of becoming, our sense of who we are and the worlds we inhabit: that passion is what keeps these processes going. It keeps us tied to these processes and to the worlds of experience they create. If we learn to develop dispassion for these processes, then the mind is released … 
  12. Taking Responsibility
     … The world is the process of becoming, and the going into that world is birth. So there’s this process right here. This is what you want to study: how the mind takes birth; how you start taking on an identity in one of these little thought worlds. Before you go into it, you can ask yourself, “Is this going to lead to something … 
  13. Good at Thinking
     … Because there will come a point where the breath feels good enough, everything feels settled within the body, and you can just let your awareness become one with the breath. You can drop all that evaluation. You don’t have to keep reminding yourself to stay with the breath, because you’re right there. That’s when the mind gets really focused on its … 
  14. Independent Values
     … This way, you become more self-reliant, more independent. A lot of the old issue of true happiness lies around this ability to be independent, to be self-reliant. We were talking today about what they call the topics of noble conversation. And the first five—which create a system of values that’s very different from the normal system of values in society … 
  15. Can Do
     … We do get that attitude sometimes, reading the texts and especially reading about the Buddha. “The Buddha could do that, but that’s because he was Buddha.” When monks would say that about the Buddha’s special qualities, “Well, he’s special because he’s Buddha,” he’d say, “Where does becoming a Buddha come from? It comes from developing the proper mental qualities … 
  16. Refuge for All Beings
     … He wasn’t in a position where he could tell us what we have to do, aside from the monks who—once we become ordained—are committed to following the teachings, following the Vinaya. But otherwise, there’s no imposition. But he spoke as an expert: If you want true happiness, this is what you’ve got to do. We follow the path voluntarily … 
  17. The Time & Place to Let Go
     … That way, the breath becomes more and more absorbing, more interesting. And when it feels really good, the boundary between your awareness and the breath seems to dissolve, so that you’re one with the breathing. The awareness and the breathing are right there together. They seem to melt into each other, so that the breath fills your awareness, and your awareness fills the … 
  18. Body Contemplation Is Compassionate
     … Then you’ll find that as you get detachment from your own body, the bodies of other people become less attractive. You look at your own body and say, “What could be attractive about anything in there at all?” A lot of the fuel for your fantasies lies in your own sense of your own attractiveness. When that’s gone, there’s very little … 
  19. Not-self as a Raft
     … As you get really good as a cook, or really good at any skill, you’re going to become a different person. Your sense of what you can do will change. So here’s a skill you can develop. It enables you to put an end to suffering. Sometimes the path looks daunting. You say, “How can I possibly do that?” Well, if you … 
  20. A Sense of Yourself
     … You may not become a Buddha, but you can awaken to the end of suffering. This means that your actions make a difference, your actions are important. So you have conviction in the power of your own actions and in your potential. Ask yourself, how much conviction do you have in these things? A lot of us have some pretty negative commentators inside, the … 
  21. Overwhelmed by Freedom
     … Your mind, which is normally very active and proactive, becomes passive, loses its direction. This is why the Buddha’s perspectives on karma, his perspectives on time in the world, are an important part of the practice. There are no passages in his teachings that are there just for abstract speculation. They’re all part of the training. He talks about eons of time … 
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