Search results for: "Form"

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  2. Rhythms of the Mind
     … It’s not the case that there’s just one ideal form of concentration or one ideal form of meditation, just as there’s no one medicine that cures all your illnesses. The breath is useful in that it can provide many of these different functions. There are ways of focusing on the breath that are just really, really still. Nothing much happens. You … 
  3. The Buddha Aimed High
     … In the form of desire, he said it’s the root of all our experiences. So as you meditate, think about why you’re here. The reason you came to the meditation may have been one thing, but maybe you might want to raise your sights to something more radical. If you want to get the most out of meditating, realize that it has … 
  4. Determined Goodwill
    Determined Goodwill August 20, 2021 The Buddha speaks of goodwill as a form of mindfulness—something you have to keep in mind—which means that it’s not an innate quality of the mind. If it were innate, you wouldn’t have to be mindful. It would just be there, constantly expressing itself. But the fact is that the mind has both goodwill and … 
  5. For What It’s Worth
     … In maintaining it, you’ll run into other thoughts, other intentions, and you want to learn how to see how they form. In the beginning, you’re sitting here with the breath, and then, not knowing what happened, you’re someplace else. The mind just blinded itself, created a big blank. So you have to realize, the next time you get the mind still … 
  6. Ask the Right Questions
     … It’s just that for the time being—if you’re looking just at the atoms—the type of rock it is, how it got formed: Those things are all irrelevant. You’re trying to focus on the problem that you’re interested in solving, so don’t let yourself get distracted by other problems that can get in the way. Learn to treat … 
  7. Warm Your Heart
     … When you’re generous, when you’re virtuous, when you develop thoughts of universal goodwill, it’s a form of goodness. The Buddha himself offers another translation, when he talks about how acts of merit are another word for “happiness”: so, “the happiness that comes from goodness.” But even with the new words, when you look at what the Buddha has to say about … 
  8. Doing
     … You’ve got the form of the breath, which shapes your sense of the body. You’ve got the feelings that go with the breath, and we’re trying to give rise to comfortable ones. How much can you play with the breath? How much influence do you have on the breath? How much does the breath lie under your control? In the beginning … 
  9. Questioning Your Way to Certainty
     … You see form, feeling, perception, fabrications, and consciousness, and you ask yourself, “Are these things constant?” Well, no. And the Buddha here is not asking in the abstract. He’s asking you to look: to look at your sense of form, your sense of the body that you’re experiencing right here as you sit here. Look at the feelings that arise and pass … 
  10. Pain
     … As the comfortable breath goes through, make sure it goes through and doesn’t stay stuck at the wall formed by the pain. You may sense that as you breathe, you’re using the painful parts of the body to do the breathing. They’re the most obvious parts when there’s pain in different sections. So think of the more comfortable parts doing … 
  11. Empathetic Joy
     … It’s a form of generosity, a generosity of spirit: that you’re happy to see other people doing something that might be better than what you’re able to do. That generosity of spirit is a good aid to the meditation, so that when you stay with the breath and it feels comfortable, you don’t feel guilty about the fact that it … 
  12. You Should Heed These Shoulds
     … Recently, someone explained the Buddha’s recommendations for being content with your lodgings by saying, “If you tell yourself, ‘I have to be content,’ you’re imposing the ego on things, and it’s a form of grasping. Because no matter what you become, it’s all subject to being inconstant, stressful, not-self. Instead, you should simply reflect: If you have some discontent … 
  13. The Meaning of Happiness
     … The act itself is a form of happiness, a form of sukha. The same with virtue: This has more to do with refraining from things where you could harm other people or yourself, or you could do something that was for your advantage that would take something away from someone else. You may find yourself in a situation where you could do something of … 
  14. Five Strengths
     … That’s a form of strength. The second form is persistence, as when you’re sticking with the breath here. Each time you slip off, you just come right back. Don’t let yourself get discouraged, don’t get frustrated. Just keep coming back again and again and again. That quality of coming back again and again is going to strengthen all the good … 
  15. Learning by Doing
     … All the different forms of fabrication, all the different aggregates: They’re right here. You’ve got the form of the body, you’ve got the feelings of pleasure or pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain. Hopefully you can work with the breath so that you can give rise to a greater sense of pleasure. Then there are the perceptions that hold you here … 
  16. Right Questions in the Right Order
     … But the aggregates are the aggregates of form, feeling, perception, fabrication, and consciousness. Clinging is clinging to these things in any of four ways: through either through the desire for sensual fantasies, the desire for views, clinging in terms of habits and practices concerning the way things should be done, or clinging in terms of your sense of your self. Any of those four … 
  17. The Importance of Being Truthful
     … And to recognize that they’re bad is not a form of aversion. It’s a form of heedfulness, which is the beginning of all that’s skillful, realizing that if you keep on acting in unskillful ways, you’re going to suffer, the people around you are going to suffer. But keep it on that level: just the action. When you see these … 
  18. The River Gauge
     … Your concentration is going to require form—the form of your body, the breath. It’s going to require feeling. You have to develop feelings that they call feelings not-of-the-flesh, pleasure not-of-the-flesh. Part of the motivation though, might also be a pain not-of-the-flesh, which is the reflection that, okay, this is a path you’re … 
  19. Appropriate Attention
     … You know that in those two things—the craving or the passion and desire on the one hand, and these aggregates of form, feeling, perception, fabrication, and consciousness on the other—the craving is to be abandoned, while you have to comprehend those aggregates that you’re clinging to. When you think in these ways, that’s called appropriate attention. So, as you go … 
  20. The First Noble Truth
     … Those are all forms of suffering we’re familiar with. But in Ajaan Lee’s words, they’re just the shadows of suffering. They’re not the real thing. The real thing is the clinging. That’s the heart of the suffering. We latch onto things like form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness as being us or ours. Or we latch onto the idea … 
  21. It’s All in What You’re Doing
     … When the Buddha set out his major teachings toward the end of his life— when he called the monks together and said, “These are the teaching that I want to make sure you’re all in agreement about”—he set out the seven sets that form the wings to awakening. They’re qualities. No mention of the five aggregates, no mention of the six … 
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