Search results for: "Equanimity"
- Page 21
- Mindfulness the Seamstress… The non-reactivity is equanimity combined with endurance. And you want to develop these skills before you do breath meditation, because you’re going to be trying to notice things. As you’re developing these skills, you’re getting good use of mindfulness, keeping in mind that image: either earth or water or fire or wind or space. The way the Buddha explains space …
- Attention to Your Potentials… There are qualities that sustain concentration, that sustain equanimity. You want to look for them. In some cases, he tells you outright. In terms of mindfulness, the sustaining qualities are what he calls purified virtue and views made straight. In other words, you straighten out your views in terms of what’s skillful, what’s not, and then you make sure that your virtue …
- Worth… things like generosity and virtue, persistence, patience, discernment, goodwill, and equanimity. Renunciation, truthfulness, determination. These are all qualities that the heart needs. And they’re things that stick with you, in this life on into the next life. This is where you look for value: your value as a person. Of course, it’s not something anyone else can measure, and it has only …
- Anumodana… People talk a lot about goodwill, a lot about compassion, a lot about equanimity. Empathetic joy gets pushed off, yet it’s an important attitude to develop. When you see other people doing good—not only that, but they’re also reaping the results of having done good—you realize that there’s no reason for jealousy, no reason for resentment. As the Buddha …
- A Diffuse Light… Then you calm things down with calm, concentration, and equanimity. It’s that active analysis of qualities that helps you see fabrication, while the more passive ones help you to calm fabrication down. You see the body and the mind working together in this way for the sake of a very stable, solid awareness. That allows you to pick up insights in areas that …
- Cleaning up Your Personal Environment… When you realize that your true happiness doesn’t have to conflict with anyone else’s true happiness, that thought in and of itself makes a lot easier to develop the right view that goes along with thoughts of universal goodwill, universal compassion, universal empathetic joy, universal equanimity. There’s no reason to wish anybody ill. If you see anyone you’re able to …
- Filling in the Buddha’s Outline… focusing on the parts of the body that seem more calm and getting the mind more concentrated, developing an attitude of equanimity. So you’ve got to read the situation. What’s needed right now? The Buddha makes a comparison with trying to get a fire going. If the fire is too strong, you’ve got to put ashes on it. If it’s …
- Balanced Breathing… After all, some of the things you’re bringing to consummation are tranquility, serenity, equanimity, contentment. Those are not tense qualities. One of the basic skills you need to learn in the meditation is how to work persistently and just keep at it, keep at it, but not get tense about it. When you can find that proper balance, you can stay with the …
- Self-starting… This is one of those passages in the Canon that show definitively that when the Buddha’s talking about mindfulness, he’s not talking about a nice broad, accepting, equanimous mind state. You’re not equanimous about the fire on your head. You want to put it out as quickly as you can. So what are your tools? You want to have them sharpened …
- Fabricated Path, Unfabricated Goal… It’s to motivate you so you can get to what he calls renunciate pleasure and renunciate equanimity: the pleasure that comes when you do attain the goal, and equanimity when you reflect on the sense of peace that comes with the goal. One of Ajaan Suwat’s images is that we eat food because we want to be full. Now, fullness is one …
- Mental Balance… On top of that, the Buddha notices that when you develop unlimited goodwill, unlimited compassion, appreciation, equanimity, if you’ve got any past bad karma, the effects, if they hit you when your mind is in expanded state like that, won’t be nearly as strong. He makes a comparison a large salt crystal in water. If you put the salt crystal into a …
- Respect for Concentration… From there you go to serenity, concentration, equanimity—all the factors of awakening. You can build them right here just on these four little steps. So appreciate these things. They’re not much, but they have a lot of potential if you pay attention, if you learn how to appreciate them. Don’t be in too great a hurry to push through the steps …
- Test Everything… Develop mindfulness, concentration, discernment, goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, equanimity, gratitude. All of these are good things to be developing. So we approach the path with a certain humility. On the one hand, the Buddha is encouraging us to have faith in our own abilities to test the path—it’s something we can do—but at the same time we have to remember that …
- Guarding Against Trouble… Why don’t you have discernment doing the looking? Why don’t you have goodwill doing the looking? Equanimity doing the looking? After all, the reason why you’re looking will also stir up results, and you don’t want to stir up results that go to more greed, more aversion, more delusion. So you look carefully at how you’re using your senses …
- Alone & with Others… different levels of subtlety in your focus, ease, rapture, equanimity, stillness in the concentration. And although this is not in the Pali Canon, it’s useful to put a post-it note on what you’ve noticed, because you have to remember you’re still exploring. What may seem like a really refined, still state of concentration at one stage in the practice, may …
- Character… generosity, virtue, renunciation, discernment, persistence, endurance, truth, determination, goodwill, and equanimity. These are all qualities that we can develop in daily life in our duties at work, our duties at home, and whatever other duties we have as we live in the human society. See all these duties as an opportunity to develop something good inside yourself. As one of our chants says, the …
- What to Keep in Mind… When you can breathe through the physical side of the thought, then you can turn around and look at the mental side with a lot more equanimity. Ask yourself, “Where is this coming from? What are the assumptions here?” To do this, you have to have developed really strong concentration. Otherwise, the analysis will destroy the concentration, and the mind will just be wandering …
- A Well-stocked Memory… rapture, calm, concentration, equanimity. But there’s another description in which mindfulness is defined as being mindful of the Dhamma teachings you’ve memorized, that you’ve learned: what you’ve read, what you’ve listened to. Then analysis of dhammas has to do with sorting through what you’ve listened to, to figure out what’s skillful and what’s not, what can …
- Take Down Your Sails… Know that the Buddha’s teachings on equanimity and patience are important here. If a sound comes to the ear, remind yourself, “There is a sound at the ear,” and don’t build any more stories beyond that. It may be true that so-and-so said something and it was harmful or hurtful, either to yourself or other people. But for the time …
- The Need for Right View… It’s not that you somehow reach the point of non-doing, a ground of being, or that you reach the unconditioned simply because you’re watching things with equanimity. There is a doing even in the equanimity. There is a doing in the sensation of oneness, infinite consciousness. You’ve made certain choices. And when you learn how to look at your concentration …
- Load next page...
