Search results for: "Becoming"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. Get Outside Yourself
     … But it’s good to have some specific questions to help bring you to your senses, wake you up, because becomings are very much like dreams, worlds that we create. They have some connection with the world outside, but a lot of the connections are made by our own minds. The more often we engage in certain becomings, the more firmly we believe in … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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.
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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