Search results for: "Becoming"

  1. Page 118
  2. Doing the Right Thing
     … Things that should have been obvious but weren’t because you were preoccupied with something else, suddenly do become clear. As for the insights you gain: You’ve got to ask yourself, “Is this something that I can apply right now?” If so, just do it. We can’t guarantee that everything you see when the mind is still is going to be the … 
  3. Fear of Concentration
     … You want that to become your normalcy, because it was at that spot that the Buddha gained all of his knowledges that lead to his awakening. So when you finally get the mind with the body, all the variations of things that happen in the body as you are trying to settle down with it—the fullness or the flows of energy: They finally … 
  4. Alighting on the Dhamma
     … You show respect to the wood, and that enables you to become a master of the wood. It’s the same with the breath. You want to have respect for the fact that this is something with a huge impact on the mind, so you want to look carefully into what it’s doing—what you can make it do; what you can’t … 
  5. Healing & Protection
     … If the body feels good, the mind begins to have a sense that it can settle down and become healed by the breath, soothed by the breath, as well. This, too, is part of the healing process. If you compare the breath to medicine, it’s like a cream you put on your skin. It’s not like an injection, where you need just … 
  6. Insight into Pain
     … As the mind is trying to settle down in concentration, that becomes a thorn, makes it hard to settle down. Training in virtue is a way of avoiding those difficulties. At the same time, training in virtue is also training in mindfulness, training in alertness, training in compassion. In other words, you’re developing good qualities of mind. As you do this, you’re … 
  7. A Recipe for Jhana
     … You mix the ingredients together and you ask yourself, “How could this ever become light and airy?” Well, it can, if you do it right. And it is possible to attain strong states of concentration and to feel at home in them. But make sure that you’re selective in which instructions you keep in mind, and which descriptions to leave for another time … 
  8. Making Yourself Worthy of Trust
     … This will become the foundation for insight. And as with any foundation, you want to make sure it’s solid. If it’s not solid, you build one story on top of it and it falls down. If it’s solid, you can as many stories on top as you like. So, show some patience, show some respect for your concentration. If your concentration … 
  9. Stop Squirming
     … This becomes your foundation, a place where you can rest, a place you can take as your haven. And because it gives you strength, it gives you your place to take a stance, where you don’t feel so threatened by pain—either physical pain or mental pain. You’ve got another place to go when those things seem threatening. When emotions are raging … 
  10. A Committed Relationship
     … It requires that you be attentive, that you know how to encourage the mind, keep it on track, so that you and the breath become fast friends. Then, from now until the time when you breathe your last breath, you’ll be helpful to each other. Ultimately you do have to let go of the breath, but you want to do it on good … 
  11. Creating Your Environment
     … That way, your speech becomes a part of your practice, a part of your training of the mind. Sticking with the precepts is another basic principle that creates a good environment. This moves out from speech to the other aspects of your actions. Make sure you’re not harming anybody. Not only are you not lying but you’re also not speaking divisively, you … 
  12. Intelligent about Change
     … This is where mindfulness becomes a strength. You remember what you need to do, and how to get past the tricks of the defilements, and you see the results that come from actually doing what you remember you should do. Seeing those results encourages you to make your mindfulness even stronger. For example, an unskillful voice in the mind may say, “Well, you’re … 
  13. The Buddha’s Questions
     … After all, the Buddha didn’t say that we become skillful because we’re innately good or because it just comes naturally to us, so that once we somehow scrub away all social conditioning we’ll find our wonderful true nature that we can trust. That’s complacency, and complacency is one of the dangers he warned against. Skillfulness comes because you realize that … 
  14. Free from Buddha Nature
     … The idea of not identifying with emotion, for a lot of people, becomes almost a political issue. You feel like you’re being told by somebody else that you can’t have this emotion; you can’t be your true self. But again, if you try to look what seems to be your true self, all you find are fabrications. So why would you … 
  15. Homage Through the Practice
     … In other words, you think of all those eons that the Buddha practiced to become the Buddha. Did he do it for flowers, candles, and incense? No. He did it for the Dhamma, the Dhamma that would show people the way to bring an end to suffering. He practiced this way, developing all the qualities he needed as a Buddha, so that other people … 
  16. Right View Tells You What to Do
     … And areas that used to be in the subconscious, or basically activities that you were doing that were subconscious, suddenly become more and more conscious. And you have to prepare yourself for the fact that you’re going to see things about the mind you’re not going to like. We read about concentration in the texts, we read about insight, and it all … 
  17. Anupassana
     … With concentration, the right question is: “How do I get the mind to settle down? How do I get to enjoy the object? How do I get to be continually with the object, become one with the object?” And then you follow it. With insight, the questions are: “How is this a fabrication? And what’s the best way to deal with these fabrications … 
  18. The Fourth Noble Truth
     … It’s at this point—where you’re looking not only at the breath, but also at the mind in relationship to the breath—that right concentration becomes noble right concentration. You’re here with one object, but you’re examining it and seeing how the mind relates to objects. What does it mean to relate to an object? What kind of relationships do … 
  19. The Path to the Top
     … The water in the rivers evaporates, becomes clouds again, rains again. Next time around, that water has a chance to flow to the ocean, but not in that river. Maybe it falls into another watershed, gets down into the Colorado—but of course nowadays even the Colorado doesn’t get to the ocean. It gets only as far as the lakes between California and … 
  20. Sending Happiness
     … That’s how you can become untiring, and this is how you show initiative in your practice. The next quality the Buddha recommends after initiative is that you’re consummate in vigilance, learning how to maintain the gains you’ve made. Now again, in the texts he’s talking about the wealth you’ve gained from your livelihood, but you can also be vigilant … 
  21. Sensitivity & Strength
     … In that way, the meditation becomes not so much a retreat from life, but a preparation for life, so that you can handle all the really important issues in life with sensitivity and strength.
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