Search results for: "Equanimity"
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- Exploring Fabrication… I try to be equanimous toward the present as I breathe in and as I breathe out.” The Buddha said, “Well, there is that kind of breath meditation, but it’s not how you get the most out of breath meditation.” Then he described the sixteen steps, four tetrads of four steps each. What’s interesting about the steps is how much they focus …
- Goodwill & Kamma… If your mind is narrow, your goodwill is narrow, your compassion is narrow, your empathetic joy is narrow, your equanimity is narrow. Your ability to deal with pain and not be overcome by it, your ability to deal with pleasure and not be overcome by it: Those are narrow as well. And as a result, any little act of bad kamma from the past …
- Training in Right Resolve… As for harmlessness, that’s basically thoughts of either compassion or equanimity. That’s for cases where you see that somebody’s down. They’re in a weak position, and you’re not going to try to take advantage of that weak position to harm them. Either you develop thoughts of equanimity toward them or actively try to develop compassion. These are the standards …
- Patient & Inquisitive… He’s basically teaching him patience, equanimity, but then he applies it to instructions on breath meditation. And his instructions on breath meditation are not just to be patient with the breath, be equanimous about the breath. You actively take an interest in the breath to see what you can do with it. So when he’s saying to be like earth, he’s …
- Streams of Anger… We’ve heard many, many times that the antidote for anger and irritation is goodwill combined with equanimity. But just thinking thoughts of goodwill and equanimity won’t be enough. You have to learn how to think more precisely when you’re feeling irritated, feeling angry: You’ve got something you’ve got to take apart—the feeling of anger itself. The Buddha recommends …
- An Island of Concentration… goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, equanimity. What’s interesting is when the Buddha talked about the establishing of mindfulness to this monk, he said that when you’re focused on the breath this way, being mindful of the breath this way, you develop the concentration with rapture, with pleasure, without rapture, without pleasure, with directed thought, without directed thought. In other words he was talking …
- When You’ve Played Enough With the Breath… calm, concentration, equanimity. In other cases, though, he treats the factors for awakening in a linear way. You start out mindful and alert and then you go straight for the analysis of qualities—analyzing what’s skillful and unskillful in your mind—and then make an effort to give rise to what’s skillful in a way that gives rise to rapture. That would …
- Judging Your Meditation… It helps you to be more patient, more equanimous. It strengthens your powers of mindfulness, concentration, and discernment, and allows you to tap into sources of happiness and well-being that you might not be able to tap into otherwise. Yet often, when you begin to meditate, you’re told that there’s no such thing as good meditation or bad meditation, that you …
- Chronic Pain… You don’t view it with equanimity. As the Buddha said, he taught suffering and the end of suffering, and he offered the end of suffering as something you would want. It’s okay to want to put an end to suffering, but you have to do it wisely. You have to attack the problem at the cause. We’d like to get rid …
- Success Through Maturity… And one monk said, “Yes, I practice breath meditation.” The Buddha asked him, “What kind of breath meditation do you do?” The monk replied, “I put aside hopes and expectations for the future, thoughts about the past, and—equanimous in the present moment—I breathe in, I breathe out.” Which sounds like a lot of the meditation instructions you may get at a meditation …
- Pleasant Practice, Painful Practice… a sense for rapture when you need extra energy, a sense of equanimity when you want the energy level to calm down? You bring all these things together with the breath because these are the different ways we shape our experience. If we do* any* of them in ignorance, there’s going to be suffering. So we try to do this with knowledge and …
- Merit: Actively Happy… What that vision of happiness actually describes is equanimity, and not even a good kind of equanimity. It’s more resignation. When the Buddha talked about happiness, he talked about ultimate happiness, absolute happiness, a happiness that doesn’t change. He never said that things are outside of your control. In fact, the whole path is learning how to take control of your life …
- Goodwill as Restraint… If any aversion comes up for anybody, the Buddha says to develop equanimity. They’re all very interesting pairings: especially the equanimity for aversion. We’re usually told that goodwill is the antidote for anger. But sometimes there are cases where someone has done something and it’s really hard to feel goodwill for that person. But at the very least you can say …
- Truths of the Will… What are the perfections? Generosity, virtue, renunciation, discernment, energy, tolerance or endurance, truth, determination, goodwill, and equanimity. Sometimes when conditions are difficult, you’ve got to work on the equanimity and the endurance. Other times when opportunities are good, you have to work more on the energy, not to let good opportunities pass you by. When you keep these qualities in mind, you find …
- Right Livelihood… The Buddha himself compared the happiness, pleasure, and equanimity that come from concentration to kinds of food. His image was of a fortress at the edge of a frontier, and different qualities in the path correspond to different aspects of the fortress. There’s discernment, which is like a slippery wall that the enemy can’t climb up. Learning is like a range of …
- Goodwill for the Real World… In those cases, you’re not going to do anything to harm them, but at the same time, you have to develop an attitude of equanimity. Equanimity isn’t cold-heartedness. It’s just realizing that there are some people you cannot influence, no matter how intense your goodwill, so you have to focus your efforts on people who will respond to your goodwill …
- On the Path of the Breath… You can develop qualities of goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, or equanimity. You can think about the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha. All of these are valid topics of meditation. They’re there to inspire the mind, to gladden the heart. You can think about the good times you’ve been generous in the past, when you didn’t really have to share something but …
- Pain & the Middle Way… We don’t just sit here saying, “Well, I’m just going to be equanimous about everything that comes up and patient with everything that comes up.” That can last for the amount of time your determination is strong. But the mind gets hungry. Without some sense of well-being that it can go for blatantly, it’s going to go secretly, when you …
- Past Intentions, Present Intentions… This is where equanimity is important in the meditation. Whatever’s going to come up from past intentions, you’ve got to have a lot of equanimity toward it. You don’t get excited about it, you don’t get depressed about it, you just note that it’s there and work on what you can do right now. All of this is part …
- Voices in the Mind… Another’s to try to develop thoughts of compassion; thoughts of equanimity; paying them no mind and no attention. And then reflecting on the principle of karma, that if you get involved with them it’s just going to be an endless round. Whatever they may have done to you can probably be traced back to some old karma of yours. So the reflection …
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