Search results for: "Becoming"
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- Cutting New Paths in the Mind… What often happens is that when those thoughts become very painful, you try to deny them, to bury them away. The more painful they are, the more they get buried—and of course, the more they get buried, the harder they are to deal with. They don’t really help you. You want your memory of your mistakes to be near at hand but …
- Succeeding at Happiness… In other words, it becomes a genuine source of happiness. The same with the precepts: Don’t regard them as a chore, or as onerous rules that are forced on you. Here’s your opportunity to live in the world in a harmless way and you’re trying to be meticulous in it. Cultivate the desire to be harmless. For example, with the precept …
- Animals in the Mind… It becomes your place. When you fully inhabit your body, nobody else can invade your space. And you have a good leash for the mind. There’s an image in the texts of six different animals, all leashed together. There’s a crocodile that wants to go down in the water. There’s a monkey that wants to climb up into a tree. There …
- The Dhamma Eye… We’re trying to create a state of mind here, which is called “becoming,” *bhava, *because we want to understand what it means to create a state of becoming. As the Buddha said, the cravings that lead to becoming are the source of suffering. So we have to know: What is this process that the Buddha’s talking about? Basically, you have a desire …
- A Seeker’s Habits… And as with any tool, the more you work with them, the more skillful you become. The more skillful you become, the more you see. So even though this does require work—and often it requires really heavy, heavy effort—still it’s all worthwhile. And it’s all a way of showing true goodwill for yourself, true compassion for yourself. Always keep that …
- Doubting the Buddha… Suddenly the issues in the thought become very real, very important. So it takes a real reorientation to get out of those thought worlds, simply to see them as processes: the mind’s habit of fabrication, its way of putting things together. You put feelings and perceptions together, you add a little salt, a little pepper, and you want to eat them. When they …
- The Freedom to Give… And after a good long joyride through samsara, when you’ve decided you’ve had enough, okay, then you’re ready to become an arahant. And if you want to become a special arahant, well, it’s going to cost you a little extra but it can be arranged.” The going price to be an arahant with special distinctions was seven days worth of …
- You Can’t Eat the Buddha… That way you become a refuge, both for yourself and for others. You join the noble Sangha and become a refuge to other people in the sense that you become an example to them as well, so they can learn how to feed and strengthen themselves. This is how the Dhamma is passed on. So even though our pursuit may be for something very …
- Truths of the Will… So learn to be clear about your intentions, recognizing which ones you should cultivate, which ones you should drop, so that the truth of the path, that fourth truth, becomes a reality in the mind—and the third noble truth, the end of suffering, will become a reality in the mind as well. That way, nibbāna, unbinding, total freedom from suffering, which actually goes …
- Light Your Way… He ended up becoming an ajaan that we all bow down to, because of his goodness. That’s a case of coming in dark and going in light. In the same way, when people come in light, it doesn’t mean that all their past karma is good. They may have some past bad karma, but it’s just not showing yet. The problem …
- Friends with The Breath… Learn the extent to which you can make changes right here, right now, in the way you relate to this breath that you’re trying to become friends with. The breath does its thing. The problems in the friendship are all on our side. But as we become more sensitive to what we’re bringing to the friendship, we can actually make it a …
- Oneness… This is how the breath, the object of your conversation, becomes one: It fills the range of your awareness. Think of the whole body breathing in, breathing out, and let the whole-body breath flow as comfortably as you can. Then, after a while, when you’ve been evaluating the breath, and it really feels good as you’re breathing in, breathing out, there …
- Actualizing Your Potentials… craving for sensuality, craving for becoming, craving for non-becoming. It’s not that all desires are bad. In fact, the desire to get rid of unskillful qualities and the desire to encourage skillful qualities are part of the path, under right effort. We’re not here just watching things coming and going, arising and passing away, in a passive way. We want to …
- Layers of Selves… One of the reasons why the Buddha has you focus on pain as a large issue is because your sense of self, or whatever identification you may have, is going to become very clear around the pain. All your clingings are going to become very clear. The problem in dealing with pain is that, in the very beginning, it’s hard to take. In …
- Vows… When the going gets tough, how do you keep going? How do you talk yourself into staying encouraged? In other words, how do you become your own best friend? How do you become your own teacher? How do you learn the strategies for training yourself so that you really do grow in the practice? This is important to remember. When the Buddha was teaching …
- Kindness in the Light of Karma… Have another chocolate.” From there, the idea of being kind to others becomes basically indulging them, doing things they like. But if you think in terms of karma, kindness is something else. Being kind to yourself means looking at your thoughts, looking at your actions, and figuring out where they’re still lacking in skill, so that you can do something about it. A …
- The Three Perceptions & Their Opposites… But you’re going to try to work with the breath so that it does become more constant. The mind’s concentration becomes more constant. There’s a sense of ease in body and mind, and you gain some mastery over it. So there you are: constant, easeful, under your control. Now, eventually, you’re going to have to let go of the concentration …
- A Heart Set on Goodwill… That way you’ll get to become king, and I’ll get to become Buddha.” When the prince tried to kill his father, the father found out why, and so he handed the kingdom over to him. But then the prince didn’t trust him and he ended up putting his father to death. So now he was a king who had conspired against …
- Responsible Happiness… If you do it with wisdom and heedfulness—in other words, thinking about the long-term—it can actually become a happiness that spreads around. After all, we’re not going to become happy meditating and then being mean and stingy in daily life. Part of the practice is also being generous and being virtuous. This is the kind of happiness that helps to …
- The Uses of Equanimity… Train yourself to become sensitive to where there’s pleasure, to where there’s a sense of refreshment or rapture in the breathing. Notice how these feelings have an effect on the mind and then allow them to grow calm.” What this means is that, building on equanimity and patience, you become proactive. In other words, the equanimity and patience are designed to make …
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