Search results for: "Form"

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  2. A Heart Set on Goodwill
     … Universal goodwill is also a form of mindfulness. You have to keep it in mind, that regardless of what other people do you’ve got to have goodwill for them. That means you’ve got to understand what goodwill means. It’s a wish for happiness. And you’ve got to understand that wish for happiness in line with right view. One of the … 
  3. Use Your Imagination
     … Greed, aversion, and delusion can come in 108 different forms, and maybe 108 is too small a number. If you want to just memorize a few principles and hope that those few things will take care of everything, the defilements will eat you up. You’ve got to be willing to come up with new ideas on your own. When you stop and think … 
  4. High Level Metta
     … You’ll notice that these three forms of fabrication work together. The image you hold in your mind is going to have an effect on how you breathe. The way you breathe is going to have an impact on the feelings: You sense a pleasure here or tightness there. And then directed thought and evaluation go through and try to straighten things out—evaluating … 
  5. In Harmlessness Is Strength
     … This is why developing the pleasure of concentration is not a bad form of clinging. You may be clinging to it, but you’re clinging to something good. It’s a good attachment. If you don’t have this form of pleasure, you’re going to go sneaking out and finding your pleasure in other places, not all of which may be skillful, and … 
  6. Safe at Home
     … One of the purposes of meditation is to be able to sit here in the present moment and see a thought form and to decide very clearly whether it’s worth going with or not. After all, some thoughts really are useful. They can help give rise to discernment, give rise to concentration, give rise to understanding. They can be very useful. Others are … 
  7. The Buddha Didn’t Play Gotcha
     … Repeatedly, the Buddha talks about analyzing the concentration in and of itself, seeing what in the concentration is form, feeling, perception, thought fabrication, or consciousness. You realize that even when you let go of outside aggregates, or the grosser aggregates, there are still these subtler aggregates inside. It’s right here that the work can be done. So the Buddha’s teachings are very … 
  8. Audacious & Undaunted
     … You begin to see that this is how an intention forms, this is how a craving forms, and this is how the mind is in collusion with its unskillful states. This is how you can get it so that it doesn’t want to fall into unskillful states again. That’s how concentration leads to discernment, as your actions come more and more in … 
  9. Noble Right Concentration
     … The breath is part of form. The feeling of pleasure that arises as you stay focused: That’s feeling. The mental image you have of the breath: That’s perception. Directed thought and evaluation as you try to adjust the breath, play with the breath, make the most of the sense of pleasure that comes from being with the breath: That’s fabrication. Then … 
  10. A Friend When You’re on Your Own
     … They form the foundation on which you continue to stand. So look carefully for who you take as your friend. We miss a lot of this nowadays in Dhamma circles because the pattern has changed from apprenticeship to mass production. We have a mass-produced Dhamma for mass retreats. There are techniques that were developed in the nineteenth century. The Asians were very impressed … 
  11. The Pursuit of Pleasure
     … That’s the kind of pleasure that actually forms the path to the end of suffering. And this is what we’re working on as we meditate. It’s a pursuit of pleasure. It’s instructive to know that in Pali, they don’t have different words for pleasure, happiness, bliss, ease, and well-being. These are all one word, sukha. They do distinguish … 
  12. Safety All Around
     … Then, of course, the Buddha’s teaching on the Triple Training teaches you other forms of protection as well. With the training in heightened virtue, where you observe the five precepts, you observe them strictly. If you’re consistent in holding to the precepts, you’re providing safety to everybody. They don’t have to fear anything from you. They don’t have to … 
  13. Concentration Food
     … These three forms of craving are part of the cause of suffering. Those are to be abandoned. But the desire to do this well is part of the path. Which means it’s to be developed. So, we work on mindfulness. We work on ardency. We work on alertness. We work on using our directed thought and evaluation, our inner conversation, in a way … 
  14. Calm
     … Some people have it in a very mild form; other people, in a very strong form. As long as you feel refreshed, alert, active, and energized, you’re off to a good start. Then you come to the factor of calm. Once the body’s been energized, you want it to calm down. When the mind has been energized, you want it to calm … 
  15. Restraint
     … What kind of generosity are you still weak in? Probably the most important form of generosity is forgiveness. It’s often the hardest, so you have to look into why. What pride is keeping you from being forgiving? What offended sense of honor is keeping you from being forgiving? Is it worth holding on to? If it’s getting in the way of your … 
  16. Not-self in Context
     … Just as you engage in other forms of clinging on the path, you’re going to cling to a sense of self for a while. But you’ve got to change your sense of self to make it a healthy one, just as you change your views to be healthy views and your habits and practices to be healthy habits and practices. Those are … 
  17. In the Context of the Deathless
     … Aggregates like the form of your body as you feel it from within, as you’re sitting here right now, working with the breath. Feelings: You hope to create feelings of pleasure. There are perceptions, the labels you apply to things that identify them, give them meaning. Here you’re identifying the breath as the topic you want to stick with. There’s fabrication … 
  18. Overcoming Complacency
     … From the potential for form, we create forms. From the potential for feeling, we create feelings. And so on with perception and consciousness as well. An act of creating that’s going on all the time. And then, on top of that, once we have those aggregates, once they’re present to our awareness, we can create our sense of self out of them … 
  19. Informing the Whole Committee
     … Any of the forms of religion that require you to focus on an outside power to come in to save you have as their premise the idea that your self is a single solid thing that’s corrupt and can’t possibly save itself. That’s where the question of self power and other power gets born. But the fact is that your self … 
  20. Prepare to Die
     … The mind is free from every form of restriction, every form of limitation placed on it by space and time. Free from fear. Free from attachment. This is why the Buddha said that when you contemplate death, it doesn’t just lead to more depression, it doesn’t make you morose. You contemplate death in the correct way and it leads to the deathless … 
  21. Meaning & Becoming
     … Each of the factors of the noble path will involve some form of fabrication. So you take these processes: When you hold on to them and try to keep them, it causes suffering. But when you learn how to use them to get out, they form the path. It’s in following that path that you end this crazy paradox where in our search … 
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