Search results for: "Greed"
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- Filling in the Buddha’s Outline… Across the board, the Buddha says no killing, no stealing, no illicit sex, no lying, no harsh speech, no divisive speech, no idle chatter; trying to avoid greed that goes out of bounds—of course, that raises the question, “What are the bounds?” The bounds start with any greed that would require that you do things that are against the precepts in order to …
- Papañca… It brings you back to the present moment in a way that makes you want to take apart that sense of “what you are,” “who you’ve been,” “who you will be.” This is why the Buddha recommends just focusing on the body in and of itself and putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world, because as soon as you start …
- Appreciating Goodness… You realize that you’re not a slave to your greed. You have something that you could use yourself, but you say, “No, I’d rather give it to somebody else.” You begin to realize there are gradations of well-being, gradations of happiness in the world. There’s the pleasure that comes from consuming something, but there’s a greater pleasure that comes …
- Dedicating Goodness, Spreading Goodwill… And as for the people you choose to give to, the Buddha says the most skillful recipients to look for are people who are free of greed, aversion, and delusion, or people who are practicing trying to get rid of greed, aversion, and delusion, because they’ll probably make the best use of the gift. And as for the recipients, the Buddha said that …
- Behind the Scenes… the way greed, aversion, and delusion go into the creation of a mind state, and how they disguise themselves as something else. And there’s the question: How is it that we’re both the creator of these mind states and the observer of the mind states, and yet we fall for them? How is it that we cover things up? It’s like …
- Sowing Good Seeds… A lot of the insights that you’re going to gain are uncomfortable truths about yourself, about how you’ve given into greed, anger, and delusion when you really knew better—and how you’ve tried to cover up the evidence. So this is one of the reasons we try to make the breath as comfortable as possible. When the mind has been nourished …
- To Be Trustworthy… Your own greed, aversion, and delusion will get you. And when they get you, they make you do unskillful things. That’s our big fear: that we can’t trust ourselves not to do unskillful things. You think about what’s going to happen in society if this quarantine lasts for a long time. There’s going to be a lot of hardship. When …
- The Good We Already Have… sometimes the mind thinks in skillful ways, sometimes it gets overcome by greed, anger, and delusion, and goes off in unskillful ways. Back and forth like this, and nothing really positive has much of a chance to grow. And so we meditate – the Pali word is bhavana, which means to develop, to increase. That’s what we’re doing: We’re increasing the good …
- Free for the Time Being… The Buddha says that an important part of staying with the breath, staying with the body in and of itself, is what he calls subduing greed and distress with reference to the world, or putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. The “world” here has many meanings. You can think about the world outside. Or just the world of your six …
- The Lightness of the Concentrated Mind… The Buddha calls it putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. We have greed and distress over things that have meanings. So try to cut things down to individual events just happening on their own: coming, going away. This is why the Buddha says discernment deals with penetrative insight into arising and passing away: seeing things as they come just as …
- Time to Heal… All those little times offer lots of little entryways for greed, aversion, and delusion to slip into the mind and to infect it. So here we want to have some time to sit down and be quiet and heal the mind. The breath helps. It feels good coming in, feels good going out. If it doesn’t feel good coming in and coming out …
- Virtue Fosters Concentration… Where is this going to get your mind in terms of virtue, concentration, and discernment? And who’s doing the looking, who’s doing the listening? Are you doing it, or is greed? Or is it lust? Anger? Are they taking over? Remember Ajaan Lee’s analogy of all the little beings inside your body. Maybe they’re looking through your eyes instead of …
- Delight & Beyond Delight… As for your mind that’s so good at advertising greed, aversion, and delusion, get it to advertise the path to itself: how good it is that you can wake up early in the morning and have nothing else to do but sit and meditate. Think of all the people in the world who don’t have that opportunity. Think of the fact that …
- Reclaim Your Breath… In other words, greed doesn’t take it over; anger doesn’t take it over. Fear, delusion: We don’t want these things seizing our breath. We’ve got to reclaim our breath. That puts us in a better position to deal with the mind’s defilements. You’ll often notice, especially when anger arises, that the breath has changed, having an impact on …
- Reflect on Your Actions… We’ve got our greed, aversion, and delusion in the background. If you put all your energy into focusing on your project, the greed, aversion, and delusion get to run rampant. They might stay within the bounds of the project that needs to be done, but as soon as the project is accomplished or you feel that you can let up a little bit …
- A Happiness Based Inside… But you’ve got to be consciously making the comparisons and seeing the areas where you can focus on things outside in certain ways so that your center is not disturbed by other ways of focusing, i.e., involving greed, anger, delusion, and all the other unskillful mental qualities that knock your center off kilter. This requires discernment: comparing things, seeing connections, and seeing …
- Meaning & Purpose… Someone showed me a video the other day, where some Abhidhamma expert was talking about how people who try to get the mind to be concentrated are suffering from greed, which is an unskillful state. When the mind gets still and is not analyzing dhammas, it’s suffering from delusion, which is another unskillful state. But: If you can’t have any desire in …
- Reflecting on Karma… The happiness where there’s no greed, aversion, or delusion to make you do foolish things with your good fortune. So when you see people who are abusing their good fortune, take it as a lesson. Maybe someday you’ll be there too, having good fortune. And for your own sake you want to make sure you don’t abuse it. This kind of …
- The Gift of Meditation… If you’re able to say No to your greed, aversion, and delusion, then other people don’t have to be exposed to your greed, aversion, and delusion, either. All of the goodness we do in the practice—in terms of generosity, virtue, concentration, discernment—is the kind of goodness, the kind of happiness that spreads around, that doesn’t have clear boundaries—which …
- A Trained Observer… Your greed is something else. Your anger is something else. If you’re watching pain, the pain is one thing, the awareness is something else, the body is something else. It’s this ability to watch, to step back, that allows you to see the whole story of how different things interact. One of Ajaan Fuang’s students complained to him once that the …
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