Search results for: "Greed"
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- In Alignment… What you want is the Buddha’s middle, and it may be a little bit hard to get used to if we’ve broken precepts in the past, or if our life is involved in a lot in greed, aversion, and delusion. It’s like any process where, say, you try to get your body into alignment. You go for a treatment, and the …
- Using Perceptions… the perceptions that tell you that greed is good, anger is good—or maybe this case of greed is good, this case of anger is good or justified. The same for jealousy, fear, envy: There’s part of the mind that likes these things. It feeds on them. What’s the perception that makes them glamorous? What’s the perception that makes them attractive …
- Unskillful Thinking… The diseases here, of course, are greed, anger, and delusion; or passion, aversion, and delusion. If you learn how to develop your mindfulness, alertness, and discernment, you build up your resistance, so that when a sight comes into the eyes, you can see it for what it is. It’s just a very ephemeral kind of thing. It’s there for just an instant …
- The World Does Not Endure… You’re concerned just with, “What is it like having a body right here, right now?” The other thing you’ve got to do is to put aside greed and distress with reference to the world. To keep the mind on one topic, you have to remind yourself that there’s nothing out there in the world that’s really worthy of greed or …
- New Feeding Habits… Persistence requires that you learn to understand: “Why do I go for anger? Why do I go for greed?” When you come to understand these things, then the next time there’s a temptation to go for them, you realize, “No, I don’t need to go there.” You understand what the allure is, you understand the drawbacks, and you understand that you can …
- The Lessons of Good Kamma… It gives you practice in overcoming your greed, your aversion, and all the other unskillful attitudes that would get in the way of being generous and freely giving something away. You’ve lifted yourself above your defilements, and it was a free choice. This is why there are lots of rules for the monks around how they treat the generosity of lay people. Monks …
- The Joy of Heedfulness… no inordinate greed, no ill will, and developing right view. These are the things that you shouldn’t underestimate. They can do a lot of good for you. Even little things, like generosity: You think of ways in which you can add to the goodness of the world, even if it’s just immediately around you. When I was at Wat Dhammasathit, especially during …
- Desire Is Part of the Path… In the description of right mindfulness, which is basically the Buddha’s prescription for how you do right concentration, he says you keep track of the body in and of itself—and an aspect of the body would be the breath—ardent, alert, mindful, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. Greed and distress cover all the unskillful attitudes you might …
- As They’ve Come to Be… One is staying focused on, say, the body in and of itself, or feelings in and of themselves, or the mind in and of itself; and the other is putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. The first emphasizes the focus; the second protects the focus, but each combines tranquility and insight in a different way. The Buddha recommends a five …
- A Willingness to Learn… learning how to read the mind, how to notice, okay, when there’s greed, when there’s anger, when there’s delusion, when there’s too much desire, when there’s too little desire in the practice. Because the whole purpose of meditating, giving the mind a topic to focus on, is not that you study just that topic. You also learn how to …
- The Equanimity of a Victor… As he said, it’s “the unexcelled victory in battle.” We’re doing battle with our defilements, battle with our misunderstandings about what happiness is, our misunderstandings about what suffering is, battle with our greed, aversion, and delusion—which means that there’s work to be done. It’s in this context that we develop equanimity: the equanimity of a searcher, the equanimity of …
- Dedicating Merit… If you have less greed, aversion, and delusion in your mind, you’re not the only one who’s going to benefit. Other people will benefit from the fact that they’re not the victims of your greed, aversion, and delusion anymore. The second way is when you’re more deliberate and conscious of what you’re doing to spread that goodness to others …
- The Body In & Of Itself… This is called putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. After all, at the moment, all those worlds are just fabrications, total fabrications. You think about your friends: Your friends aren’t here right now. You think about issues at work: They’re not here right now. They’re just baggage you’re fabricating and carrying around. What is here right …
- For Your Benefit Here & Now… The voices that are on the side of greed, aversion, and delusion don’t advertise themselves as greed, aversion, and delusion’s henchmen, but they are. You have to learn how to recognize them. Ajaan Suwat used to say that our problem is that we see pain as our enemy and craving as our friend. It’s actually the other way around. If you …
- Undomesticated Happiness… It’s when you get them to break the precepts, get them to give rise to greed, aversion, and delusion in their minds. You avoid that. You help yourself by observing the precepts and getting rid of greed, aversion, and delusion in your mind. That’s how far our responsibilities go. When we try to extend them beyond that, it all gets very vague …
- Blessings… You want to see where it is in the thoughts where they hook you—especially things like greed, aversion, delusion, fear, grief, or jealousy: When they hook you, why do you go with them? What’s the appeal? And if you go with them, what are the results? The Buddha himself said that he got on the right path to awakening when he learned …
- Expanding Your Awareness… When you focus on looking at things in such way as to give rise to lust or anger or greed, you narrow your awareness down to very small details, the little things that excite lust, the little things that provoke your anger. You lose sight of the larger picture. Expanding your awareness helps to keep that larger picture in mind. At the same time …
- Chanting Before Meditation… The other function of right mindfulness is what the Buddha calls putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world, which is one of the reasons we have chanting before the meditation to bring our minds away from the concerns of the world, and more to the concerns of the Dhamma. We start out with reflections on the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the …
- Antidotes for Narcissism… If we can get to the point where we have less greed, aversion, and delusion, we’re not the only ones benefiting. Other people are suffering less from our greed, aversion, and delusion. If we get to the point where we don’t have to feed at all, it takes a huge burden off of everyone else. So instead of thinking about yourself as …
- The Inner Saboteur… not that there’s anybody standing behind us shaking us, but there’s a part of us that’s actually afraid of what would happen if we no longer had any greed, aversion, or delusion. What would happen if we really got good at the practice? What then? There’s a part of us that’s afraid that we would get away, depriving us …
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