Search results for: "Becoming"

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  2. A Legacy of Strengths
     … So ask yourself, what are you developing as you go through life? That question, “Days and nights fly past, fly past, what am I becoming right now?” Well, the kind of person you’re becoming depends on what you’re doing, what you do again and again. That’s your becoming and it’s also your legacy. So act in such a way that … 
  3. A Mind like Wind
     … This is why mindfulness practice shades ultimately into concentration practice because you’re sticking with one thing as your frame of reference and it becomes continual. The Buddha himself never drew a sharp line between mindfulness and concentration. Mindfulness as it grows stronger becomes concentration. It becomes purified in concentration, steadied so that your discernment can start doing its work; figuring out where there … 
  4. Skillful in Everything
     … If you want to become a better meditator, it’s also good to become more skilled at the things you do in the course of the day. Having a sense of skill, of what’s skillful and what’s not skillful, is very useful. It sets up the right attitude in the mind. One, it gives you high standards: There are ways of behaving … 
  5. Remarkable Qualities
     … It’s simply a matter of putting them to use, exercising them here with the breath, so that they become strong. That way, these qualities of mind which at the beginning may not seem special remarkable themselves, will become remarkable, to the point where you learn how to depend on them to deal with all the life and death matters you’re going to … 
  6. Meditation as Play
     … It’s through this exploration, this playing around, that you become sensitive to begin with. The methods that tell you, “Don’t think. Just do what you’re told,” don’t make you sensitive to cause and effect. The methods that tell you simply to accept don’t make you sensitive, either. **Years back, I was being taken through the public library in Seattle … 
  7. Healthy Conceit
     … But they delivered to some extent, so that they’ve become part of the committee. Then one desire will come and then another desire. That’s where the critic comes in, as the members try to jostle among themselves for who’s going to get attention, who’s going to dominate the discussion. A lot of the training in the meditation is training the … 
  8. An Hour of Bliss
     … The way to do that is to learn how to train the mind so that it doesn’t become prey to greed, anger, or delusion, because those are the mental qualities that lead you to do things that harm yourself, harm people around you. The first weapons you need in fighting them off are two very simple mental qualities: mindfulness and alertness, motivated by … 
  9. Building a Home for the Mind
     … The more precise your awareness of what’s going on, the more precise your sensitivity to what’s going on, then the more solid and balanced the breath becomes, the more solid your concentration becomes. The more solid your concentration, the clearer your awareness of what’s going on inside. So you’re evaluating the breath, evaluating the way the mind relates to the … 
  10. Monastery Standard Time
     … Then the understanding becomes more important than whether there’s an up or a down. You see the pattern. You see how the mind works. And as you see through it, it becomes less and less of a deceiver. It’s less likely to hoodwink you, to take you in. So it’s important that you develop this sense of the observer that can … 
  11. Shame & Compunction
     … When we can understand these emotions, then we can use them properly, and they become an important part of our practice. As the Buddha said, in a world where there’s no shame and compunction, all kinds of horrible things can happen. In fact, we look at the world around us right now: It’s becoming a shameless world, and we can see the … 
  12. Don’t Focus on Jhana, Focus on the Breath
     … The more you can get interested in the breath, the easier it will be to stay here and the more snug your concentration will become. It’s not like you’re forcing the mind to stay with something that it’s not really interested in or doesn’t really care about. Your breath is your force of life. Care about that. It’s free … 
  13. Breathe Easy
     … You can have the breath on your side, you can breathe easy in the midst of difficult situations and those situations will become a lot easier to endure. You can stick with difficulties for a much longer time. This is especially important now, as the pandemic seems to be going on and on and on. I was talking today with someone who was saying … 
  14. On an Even Keel
     … Part of it has to do with being sensitive, when you breathe in, to how long a breath feels good, and at what point the in-breath becomes too long. Or if it’s not long enough, how do you tell that? You’ve got to learn how to be sensitive to this area of the body: the breath energy flowing through it. We … 
  15. No One Size Fits All
     … The concentration itself becomes more sensitive. Your insights become more sensitive. And that sensitivity is what will take you where you want to go.
  16. Karma-ism
     … As the Buddha once said, there’d be no point in his trying to teach people to be skillful if they couldn’t actually become more skillful. But we can become more skillful. By being observant, by watching, by being mindful and alert, by making an effort, we can develop more and more skill in the way we act, and in particular, in the … 
  17. Beginner’s Mind
     … If you can’t get enjoyment out of it, the breath becomes a task master; your meditation object becomes an adversary. It’s as if it has guardian demons at the door, like the guardian demons in the temples in Thailand. Just the thought of meditating brings to mind the snarls and the angry faces of the guardian demons, and you get repelled. So … 
  18. Dealing with Pain
     … If, while you’re trying to develop this level of concentration, you find that the pain becomes unbearable, or if it becomes hard to stay focused on your comfortable spot, sit with the pain for maybe about five minutes or so and then shift your position. You’re not ready to do battle with the big fighters right now. You’re trying to work … 
  19. Dispassion Isn’t Depression
     … meditating to become sensitive to your own actions as you learn to become more and more skillful in what you do, say, and think. When you can create a good state of mind through your actions, be careful to maintain it. Ajaan Fuang had some students who were complaining one time that they’d been meditating with him and had gotten into a really … 
  20. Put the Other Person’s Heart in Yours
     … The biggest danger that faces you in the world is that you might do something unskillful under the influence of ill will, because that then becomes your own kamma and it becomes a habit in the mind. It bends the mind, as the Buddha said. When your mind is bent in that direction again and again and again, your views are going to be … 
  21. Admirable Friendship, Inside & Out
     … That’s when the discernment we learn from our admirable friends becomes appropriate attention within us, so that both principles—the foremost outside practice and the foremost inside principle—become one in our thoughts, words, and deeds. That’s why we have that fifth reflection. It teaches us to look in the right place, to look in our actions and to reflect on the … 
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