Search results for: "Becoming"
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- 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 …
- Admirable Friendship… And the whole question of self-image becomes very sensitive, very painful. So when we say that you’re looking at yourself, remember you’re not looking at your “self.” You’re looking at your thoughts, words, and deeds. Try to look at them as objectively as possible, get the whole issue of “self” out of the way, and then it becomes a lot …
- Beyond Gratitude… This is how your discernment becomes more all-around. It’s based on the determination that you’re not going to let yourself get hoodwinked by whatever comes up. Sometimes you find yourself equal to the task and other times not quite so equal to the task, but still you do what you can. That’s how discernment grows. This is how you become …
- To Escape the Prison of Time… So the possibility of stepping outside of becoming, putting an end to becoming and going beyond it: That’s something you take on as a working hypothesis. In other words, you place your bets on the idea that a deathless happiness is possible. That’s a safer hypothesis than saying it’s not possible. If you believe it’s not possible, you’re never …
- A Path of Skills… If you simply sit there wanting, wanting, wanting to get the results but without actually putting together the causes, the desire becomes a problem. But if you focus your desire on the causes, it becomes a part of the solution. Here we’re trying to create a state of concentration in the mind. You have to want the mind to settle down, which means …
- Cutting Edge Perceptions… Then you see that the present moment becomes a lot lighter. Your sense of the body becomes a lot lighter. The sense that you’re weighed down by things gets relieved. So try to take things moment by moment, sensation by sensation, and have a sense that they are discrete moments, discrete sensations, so that they don’t build up. In that way, you …
- Balance & Release… But the pushing becomes another type of becoming. As the Buddha said, craving for non-becoming leads to more becoming. The image of the middle path can be the middle point of a spectrum or it can be off the spectrum entirely. Release comes in getting off the spectrum. In balancing between excessive energy and deficient energy, you bring the mind into the middle …
- Self-starting… But the whole thrust of the teaching is, “What are you doing right now?” Or as the Buddha says in one of his questions for daily reflection, “What have I become as days and nights fly past?” Look at what kind of person you’re becoming, given the habits you’ve been picking up, the habits that you’ve been training yourself in—regardless …
- Acceptance… This becomes possible because you become more and more sensitive to what’s actually here, what’s actually going on. Things have been going on all the time, but you just haven’t noticed them because your sensitivity hasn’t been developed enough. So that’s the sense in which there’s a gradual slope leading to a sudden drop-off. And the really …
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