Search results for: "Becoming"
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- The Mind’s Song… The observer can see more and more because you give it the time to develop, to become strong, to become your real home where you settle down. So ideally, ultimately, when you meditate, it won’t be a matter of getting in position. You’ll get the body in position, but the mind will already be in position, the habitual position of the observer …
- The Buddha’s Map… As you try to nip the becomings in the bud, you see more and more clearly the stages by which the mind creates a state of becoming. This is where the concentration shades into discernment. Here again, the Buddha has you focus on certain things. What is it about the becoming that attracts you? What’s the allure? As the Buddha said, all the …
- Lessons for New Monks… You behave on your own, and you behave with other people, in a way that’s more conducive to helping the mind settle down and become independent—to become its own refuge. The first principle is being virtuous. For the monks, of course, this means being strict in line with the Pāṭimokkha and all the other rules they’re supposed to follow. For lay …
- Fabricating against Defilement… So you give in and act on the anger and become a fool as a result. The same with lust: If you feel you’ve got to get it out of your system by acting on it, it simply becomes another unskillful habit. The Buddha, however, offers another alternative: Use the breath to counteract that impulse, that belief. Find where the breath has been …
- The Steps of Breath Meditation… You see all the effort that goes into producing a particular type of experience, and the question becomes, “Is it worth it? Isn’t this burdensome, having to keep making, making, making these experiences all the time?” Then the problem becomes, “What are you going to do to let go of this burden?” If you don’t fabricate these states of concentration, is your …
- The Seven Treasures… You actually regard yourself in a good light, such a good light that when lower behavior or lower thoughts occur to you, you realize that they’re not becoming to you. They’re beneath you. You’re above them. You’d be ashamed to do those things. That’s a quality of self-esteem, self-respect. And then there’s ottappa, which can be …
- Self-reliance… That’s how you become your own refuge. And that’s how you answer this question, “Why is it that you’re causing suffering?” You see your actions more and more clearly. The internal judge helps you develop your skill, so that what you do and say and think, instead of being a cause for suffering, becomes part of the path to its cessation.
- Here to Learn… If you’re observant, anything becomes a useful lesson as to what works, what doesn’t work. When the mind is in a particular state, what kind of breathing is best for it? You can try to find out. Then if the approach you try doesn’t work, tomorrow you can try another approach. If you come with the attitude that you’re here …
- Opting Out… Otherwise you’re stuck in this continual back and forth that is becoming, “further becoming.” This is what makes the Dhamma distinctive. You read every now and then, people accusing meditation, especially as it’s taught here in the West, of serving the interests of the status quo: telling people that their problems are inside, and that if they learn how to straighten themselves …
- Exercising Discernment… craving for sensual satisfaction, craving for becoming, and craving for no becoming. Becoming is the process where our mind builds little worlds inside and then goes into them. You see that clearly in the meditation as the mind slips off. It’s as if that pseudopod is a bubble beginning to form, and then there’s a little pinching, and the bubble is independent …
- Success by Approximation… The concentration itself becomes your motivation. The mindfulness becomes your motivation. Your insight becomes your motivation. All this is achieved by success through approximation. So as Ajaan Lee points out in his talk on the various demons of defilement, some of them have their uses. You’re a fighter as you meditate, and some of the most intelligent fighters are the ones who not …
- Goodwill as a Guardian… This is where a generic good human quality becomes heightened as it’s practiced in the context of the Dhamma. It’s good for you to think of it in that context, too—and to act on it as well. That’s when goodwill genuinely becomes a guardian meditation.
- Our Variegated Minds… You direct your thoughts repeatedly to the breath and you evaluate the breathing, so that it becomes more comfortable. In other words, you bring knowledge and awareness in terms of the four noble truths to the process of breathing: That’s the verbal fabrication. Mental fabrication is learning how to perceive the breath in such a way it becomes more and more of a …
- Adult Dhamma… Even when he was teaching children he taught them adult things, or basically how to become adults. The Novice’s Questions, for instance, start out with the big harsh fact of life: that all beings subsist on food. This fact is also the main proof against the idea of intelligent design. If there were intelligent design, we could all live off the dew every …
- The Equanimity that Doesn’t Give Up… You won’t become an artist unless you want to become an artist. You won’t succeed at accomplishing something unless you stick with the desire to keep at the causes. The path is a truth of the will. So the voices that encourage that kind of truth, that say you do have the potential, you do have what it takes within you to …
- Where the Mind & Body Meet… It’s a craving for becoming, becoming a form, the sense of the body as felt from within. It becomes a craving for the formless when you get into states of concentration that are more formless with a sense of space, a sense of simply being conscious of consciousness. Those, too, are types of becoming, and they’re fabricated. As long as the concentration …
- Taking Your Own Medicine… They start with sensual desire and states of becoming. Becoming is one of the those words we hear and we say, “What are they talking about?” States of becoming are the worlds the mind creates for itself. Artists are especially good at this. They can create whole worlds with, say, a musical composition, a novel, or a poem. But the Buddha points out that …
- Help Others, Help Your Mind… If we have just equanimity without the goodwill, we become indifferent, callous. We become apathetic. There’s that great story of the storm that went through Ajaan Chah’s monastery once. The next day, Ajaan Chah went around the monastery checking up on the damage, and he found one monk sitting in a hut with half the roof blown off. He asked the monk …
- Specifically… He was becoming a teenager, and lust and anger were becoming real problems. If he got angry at somebody, he’s just hit that person right away. She told me, “Tell him not to be angry.” I said, “You can’t tell somebody not to be angry. The first step is to say, ‘When you get angry, this is what you do.’” In his …
- In Terms of the Four Noble Truths… The stories you build around them, the sense of who you are that you build around them, the sense of the world that you build around them, all of which is called becoming: It becomes a burden. It becomes, to use Ajaan Mahaboowa’s phrase, a squeeze on the heart. And you want to see that, you want to appreciate that, detect it every …
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