Search results for: "Impermanence"

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  2. Sensitivity Through Generosity
     … When he asked the people at the center about it, they said, “Well, that’s impermanence,” which is not the Dhamma of the Buddha. There’s a danger in trying to boil the Dhamma down to just a few principles – like the idea that all the Dhamma teachings come down to the three characteristics, that you just have to accept that things are impermanent … 
  3. Unchanged by Loss
     … spreading goodwill for all the people who’ve harmed you, spreading goodwill for all the people you’ve harmed, spreading goodwill for yourself; reflecting on impermanence, the inconstancy of things; reflecting on not-self—all of the things inside and out that are beyond your control. Then, as the mind begins to accept these truths, it develops a greater solidity inside. At the same … 
  4. Questioning Impermanence
    Someone once asked Ajaan Fuang what kind of food he liked. And his answer was, “The food in front of me.” And that’s the attitude you’ve got to take toward your meditation. What kind of breath do you like? Well, learn to like the breath in front of you. What kind of meditation do you like? Learn to like the meditation you … 
  5. Awaken to Your Potentials
     … His brother asks him, “What did you learn over in Thailand?” The ajaan says, “Everything is impermanent.” And the brother says, “Well, duh, yeah. Anybody can see that.” But the Buddha saw there was something more important: that within these impermanent things, these inconstant things, there is a potential to create a path to the end of suffering. And that’s not a “duh … 
  6. Balancing Tranquility & Insight
     … You start out being aware of impermanence or inconstancy. In the early stages of the meditation, this means focusing on the inconstancy of anything that would pull you away from your concentration, so that you can develop a sense of dispassion for whatever it is: all the stories we bring with us; all the concerns we bring with us that tend to pop up … 
  7. Delight in the Path
     … They had resigned themselves to the impermanence of things, didn’t have any large scale hopes or expectations—life was gray. That’s what happens when you put the three characteristics first. The Buddha was not the sort of person to resign himself to those things, and he doesn’t advise us to, either. He tells us to delight in the Dhamma, to delight … 
  8. Alert
     … But the fact that the seed itself is impermanent means that the tree will be impermanent. It’s going to have to end someday. What this means is that, at any given moment, you’re faced with results of actions you’re doing right now and the results of actions that you did a while back. These include many different actions over time that … 
  9. A Meditator is a Good Friend to Have
     … That, too, is impermanent. The sense of identity you would build around that is impermanent, too. Let go of it. If the person can follow you all that way, then he or she can gain total release from all kinds of suffering. That’s a huge gift you can give to someone who’s dying. It’s not always the case that the person … 
  10. From Inconstancy to Dispassion
     … It’s not the case that all our defilements and all our problems are based on tour thinking that impermanent things are permanent. There are a lot of things that we know are impermanent, and yet we still go for them. Just look at the houses built on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. We’ve seen many houses slide down the hills on … 
  11. Nuts & Bolts
     … There are certain things out there that you know are impermanent, but compared to your life, you can say, “Well, the mountains over there may be impermanent, but they’re permanent enough for me to build a house on them.” Yet if the mountains are shifting all the time—and that’s what inconstant means—then you realize that this is no place to … 
  12. Training Your Desires
     … They don’t say, for instance, that you simply have to accept the fact that there’s going to be change in life, so just accept the change; or that things are impermanent and stressful, so accept the impermanence and stress; or that things are not-self, so accept that they’re not-self and content yourself with that. That’s not what they … 
  13. Steering the Raft
     … Things like this, if they’re based on impermanent causes, will give results that have to be impermanent, inconstant, unsatisfactory. But not totally unsatisfactory—if everything were unsatisfactory, we’d have to give up. There is the path, and this is where the Buddha’s genius comes in, realizing that we can use the processes of fabrication in the mind to take us to … 
  14. Neither Here nor There
     … It’s not just impermanent, because some impermanent things could be good. An impermanent illness would be good. But inconstancy gives the impression of being unreliable, undependable. And if they’re undependable, are they stressful or easeful? They’re stressful. And if they’re stressful and inconstant, is it worth calling them “me,” “mine”? Well, no. So you’re focusing on the present moment … 
  15. The Duties of Compassion
     … It’s a lesson in impermanence.” The other night I was reading one of the Dhamma talks by Upasika Kee, and she was making this point, that you’ve got to keep your awareness as solid and continuous as possible. If you find that it comes and goes, you don’t just say, “Well, that’s impermanence, that’s inconstancy,” and just let it … 
  16. Train Your Hunger (The Sea Squirt)
     … Well, to give up feeding on the world out there simply because there’s no permanent self, or because nothing out there is permanent, is like saying you’re going to stop feeding on food because you realize that your stomach is impermanent and food is impermanent. That’s not going to work. Our hunger drives us. As the Buddha said, it’s our … 
  17. The Kamma of Self & Not-Self
     … If you look at events, if you look at your life and realize that everything is impermanent, then there can be no separate permanent self, they say. Your sense of self is just a series of actions. There’s nothing substantial there, and because actions are ephemeral you just give up identifying with them. Then you’ll be okay. That’s what they say … 
  18. All About Change
     … You can see that it’s built out of impermanent things, things that can’t last. Not just impermanent, but also inconstant. They waver. You have to be constantly adjusting them. They’re minor, minor adjustments, they’re very subtle, but they’re there. And it’s the subtle things in the mind that you need to see. So in this case, you’re … 
  19. The Dhamma Mirror
     … This sala we’re in right now, actually was built to be inconstant—impermanent. It was supposed to be just a quick sketch before we got some money to build a real sala. And here it is, thirty-some years later. Well, now we’re told that it’s going to be torn down in a couple weeks. All those things are inconstant, but … 
  20. Cheerfully Ardent
     … But the fact that the seed is impermanent means that the tree is going to be impermanent, too. Someday the tree will end. Which means that right now what you’re dealing with is a combination of two types of causality, experienced as a combination of three things: the results of past actions, your current intentions, and the results of your current intentions. A … 
  21. The Good Fight
     … But that’s like saying, “Realizing that my food is impermanent and my stomach is impermanent, I’m not just going to eat anymore.” As long as there’s hunger, there’s going to be eating. As long as there’s greed, aversion, and delusion, there’s going to be a sense of self that you’ve got to defend. Of course, there’s … 
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