Search results for: "Becoming"

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  2. Feeding your Attack Dogs
     … Well, that becomes a habit. And then that habit gets carried into the meditation. So when you’re working on the mind, it’s not just a matter of what you’re doing while you’re here sitting with your eyes closed, but also of what you do and think about during the rest of the day. The Buddha talks about anusaya , which is … 
  3. Not-selfing Your Selves
     … Your sense of self is part of what’s called “becoming.” And every becoming deals with a desire. You take on an identity in a particular world to attain that desire, and that identity consists of at least two parts. One is the part that’s going to experience the pleasure that comes when that desire has been met: the self as the consumer … 
  4. The Energy in the Body
     … Experiment with them and, over time, you learn how to evaluate the results of what you’re getting, as the wisdom becomes your own, the discernment becomes your own. That’s when you can really do important work in the mind. As you develop greater and greater sensitivity in reading the breath, you also become more and more capable of reading the mind: what … 
  5. Think Like a Thief
     … This is what’s called the process of becoming. Can you turn around and devote it to the project of learning how to understand the process of becoming so that you can put an end to it? It all comes down to your intention. Do you really want to see, or do you just want to play with your likes and dislikes? This is … 
  6. Ingenuity
     … That’s when you become someone who can rely on yourself. It’s the ingenuity of stepping back that saves you. So look into yourself. To what extent do you have these qualities, and to what extent do you need to develop them? Work on them. And as you work on them, you find that you become more and more reliable as a judge … 
  7. Discerning the Middle Way
     … It’s in this way that your concentration becomes just right and the other factors of the path become just right as well. But it requires a lot of discernment. This is why in every description of the path discernment is necessary. And why all the teachers talk about how discernment is what makes all the difference. This is not just the discernment that … 
  8. Talking to Yourself
     … There will come a time when we’ve talked enough, and the mind and the breath seem to become one. When they become one like that, then there’s no need to chat. There’s a real sense of stillness and solidity because you’ve make friends with each other. But until you reach that point, try to talk yourself in a way that … 
  9. A Path Rooted in Desire
     … The cause is the craving, the thirst that wants to feed off these things—for the sake of sensuality, for states of becoming, or to destroy a state of becoming you already have. That craving is to be abandoned. Abandoning is done through dispassion for the craving: That’s the cessation of suffering, and it’s something you want to realize—in other words … 
  10. The Karma of Pleasure
    A couple years back, when the psychology of happiness was beginning to become popular, I was asked to review a book on the topic to give a Buddhist perspective on the issue. I said one of the things the book was missing was an understanding of karma, that in your pursuit for happiness, you do things that have an impact on other people, and … 
  11. A Safe Harbor
     … Then right mindfulness, in the establishing of mindfulness, becomes the theme for your concentration as you’re focused on the breath, focused on the body in and of itself, developing these qualities of ardency, alertness, mindfulness: That becomes a theme of your concentration. The Pali word for “theme” here is nimitta. Sometimes people talk about the nimitta of concentration as being a light or … 
  12. Seeing Danger in Birth
     … The second proof is, if you believe in the possibility that there is a path that leads to awakening, to the end of becoming, you open more possibilities for what you might achieve in terms of a real happiness than if you assumed that there was no such thing as awakening or the end of becoming. At the very least, if you open yourself … 
  13. Truth
     … In that way, the truth becomes your refuge. Your truthfulness becomes your refuge. Otherwise, how are you going to know what’s skillful and what’s not? How are you going to know whom you can trust and whom you can’t? You have two basic sources of knowledge: what you gain from other people, and what you gain from yourself. Both have to … 
  14. Passion, Dispassion, Compassion
     … The Buddha calls compassion of this sort an ornament of the mind—an ornament of the mind that’s become cleansed of its passions. So it’s not that you become hard-hearted or unfeeling. It’s simply that you don’t need the same play of emotions, the same play of feelings, in order to get yourself to do the right thing. As … 
  15. Developed in Body & Mind
     … In the same way, the more the mind stays with the breath, the more the breath seeps into the body, the mind seeps into the body, until everything becomes one. The breath fills the body, your awareness fills the body, a sense of well-being fills the body. And then try to stay balanced right there. And don’t ask where this is going … 
  16. The Making Of
     … As a meditator, you want to learn how to step out of that, because those thought worlds are states of becoming. As the Buddha said, when you have a craving for becoming, that craving is also going to create suffering. So we have to change our values. Often we like our thought worlds because they’re entertaining. We use our thoughts to figure things … 
  17. WYSIWYG
     … So if you get some hands-on experience here, it’ll serve you well as the mind begins to fabricate a new state of becoming as you realize that you can’t stay in this state of becoming anymore. So you’re learning a lot of important things. There’s a lot to see here if you learn how to look. This is one … 
  18. Work & Play
     … Then the concentration becomes an exercise in sheer will power: How long can you force the mind to stay here in spite of its impulses to wander away? But if you can see that by staying with the breath, working with the breath, playing with the breath, you’re actually making the present moment a more interesting and more pleasant place to stay, then … 
  19. Focus on the Doing
     … When you’ve learned how to tap into that skill, then the desire to practice becomes more strongly based, and the path becomes enjoyable in and of itself. As it becomes enjoyable, then the second base for power—persistence—gets more constant, more reliable. You want to keep at it. This doesn’t mean just going off to do nothing but meditate, closing your … 
  20. Strength of Conviction
     … Your sense of here or there is part of the process of becoming, and the things you latch onto become the seeds for different worlds of becoming. Fortunately, you have choices. Your past karma is like a field, as the Buddha says, filled with all kinds of potential seeds. What you water right here in the present moment: That’s the seed that’s … 
  21. Your Tranquility & Your Insight
     … This is precisely what you need in order to become discerning. There’s no foolproof method for giving rise to insight. If there were, then even fools could gain insight and still be foolish. You have to practice getting more and more discerning, asking the right questions, exploring, trying things out, so that your concentration becomes your concentration, not somebody else’s idea of … 
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