Search results for: "Becoming"
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- Exploring Contentment… In that way, the principle of contentment and not-contentment becomes a single principle. So keep trying to explore that frontier, because that’s where these two principles do become one. And they really do work toward a happiness that’s worthy of contentment on the deepest possible level.
- Treasure Island… After all, he’s telling you that your sense of self in the world is a state of becoming—and we’re trying to get past becoming. Wherever there’s becoming, there’s going to be suffering. So even though you may have a strong sense of your idea of what your self is and what the world is, is it reality? He asked …
- Friends with the Breath… As you work and play together with the breath, you become friends, you become companions. So instead of taking your thoughts of past and future as your companions—which we do most of the time—now the breath becomes your companion: someone to work with, someone to play with, all the time. You’re never really alone. This way the body and the mind …
- More Wisdom for Dummies… Once you realize that you can have the choice not to be foolish, not to cause harm, then the next step is to want to find out what you can do to become wiser. One of the basic principles the Buddha lays down is that you see which duties fall to you and which ones don’t. If you’re wise, you take up …
- When Things Aren’t Going Well… Many of the elements of dependent co-arising have the potential to become path factors. Attention, in name-and-form, can become appropriate attention. Fabrication can become the comfortable breathing and directed thought and evaluation of right concentration. So it’s all right here. When you get bored or discouraged with the practice, remind yourself that it’s because you’re not paying careful …
- Metta Math… Is there anything you can do to help that person become more skillful—to want to become more skillful? You probably know the folktale of the Sun and the Wind. They got into a discussion one day, and then into an argument: Who was stronger? Who had more power? The Wind said, “I’ll show you that I’m stronger. See that man down …
- The Joy of Growing… So basically the Buddha’s asking that we become adult, we become mature, we grow up. Among the world religions, Buddhism seems to be unique in that it expects us to be adults. We’re not told to simply obey. We’re not told to place our hopes in somebody else doing all the work for us. We’ve got to do the work …
- The Problem of Suffering… You pick up the Buddha’s teachings as they become necessary, as they become useful. But the first thing is to get the mind to settle down. As the Buddha once said, right concentration is the heart of the path. And his most detailed instructions on meditation are those on breath meditation. Watch the breath, he says, as it comes in, goes out. Be …
- For the Survival of True Happiness… You want to remind yourself that the dangerous forms of craving are the ones that deal with sensuality, becoming, and non-becoming—in other words, getting fascinated with sensual pleasures, or wanting to take on an identity. You see that you’re losing the body and you’re afraid, “If I don’t have a body, where am I going to be? What’s …
- Get Attached to Jhana… Allow the different tight parts of the body to open up to the potential of pleasure for the breath, and that way you become more fully present. Your attention will become more appropriate. Your sensitivity will become more sensitive. And it’s through developing your sensitivity that your discernment grows. So this is a pleasure with a purpose and it requires that you appreciate …
- See Your Thoughts as Strange… They become a becoming, a whole world in which you take on an identity, and these states of becoming are what cause us to suffer. They require feeding, and the feeding entails suffering. In fact, the Buddha’s word for clinging, which he identifies with suffering, can also mean to feed. You take on this identity where you have to feed, which means you …
- Worldly Narratives… This is why we have to drum it into our minds every day, every day—aging, illness, death, separation, and the principle of karma—so that that becomes the ordering principle in our lives. That becomes prior to everything else. That way, as the mind processes experience, it’s got this little reminder, “Don’t let yourself get carried away! Because if you let …
- Gratification… Find some enjoyment in that, learning to become ingenious in tackling the problem from different angles. That way, the meditation eventually does become gratifying as you learn different ways of keeping the mind centered in different situations—easy situations, hard situations—and figuring out how to deal with setbacks. After all, they are going to come. It’s inevitable. What makes or breaks a …
- Stress… That’s the point where the directed thought and evaluation become superfluous. They are the disturbance at that point. So you let them go. You get into a more peaceful state of concentration. Try to maintain that. And then you notice, where’s the disturbance there? You could take this process through concentration, layer by layer. You can even get to the point where …
- Fence Me In… How much difference will that make? Things you otherwise wouldn’t notice at all suddenly become really enlarged, because you restrict the range of your awareness. It’s the same with the precepts. Once you promise yourself that you’re not going to kill any living being in any circumstances, then you’re going to have to become a lot more ingenious in how …
- Rivers of Craving… But the thing to notice there is how much fantasies about sensuality also involve fantasies about becoming: who you would like to become, what you would like to be, what world you would like to live in. Again, you would think that if you had died and followed your cravings, you’d probably want to become only good things and find only good things …
- Samvegic Ironies… In becoming reliable, you become free. Those are the lessons that the Buddha learned from his second knowledge and that led through to his third: the knowledge where he realized that what kept all that round and round and round of rebirth going was circling around in his own heart. He would have to take care of that if he was going to solve …
- In the Driver’s Seat… So when you have your mind set on the Dhamma, you become rich; as you develop more and more good qualities, you become richer. So remember, you’re in the driver’s seat. What matters as you’re driving is not your past driving record, except for reminding yourself that you’ve made those mistakes in the past and you don’t want to …
- Protection Through the Practice… As he pointed out, probably the worst thing someone else can do to you is to get you to do unskillful things because that then becomes your bad karma. And from that you can suffer for a long time. They can rob you, abuse you, or even kill you, but the results of that last only one lifetime. But if you do something really …
- Making a Difference… The more sensitive you are to detect the slightest little bit of tension or tightness and work through it, then the more comfortable the breath becomes, the more absorbing it becomes. It feels really good just sitting here breathing. You can start exploring this aspect of what it means to have a body and what it means to sense a body from the inside …
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