Search results for: "Form"

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  2. Strong & Heedful
     … And it’s useful to look at craving and delusion as forms of weakness, because the Buddha says the qualities that counteract them are strengths. The Pali word is bala, and it’s interesting to note that in all the texts talking about developing these strengths, heedfulness is the quality that underlies them all. Heedfulness is what keeps them from simply being brute forces … 
  3. Judging Mindfulness & Concentration
     … You want to get more sensitive to the signs that a thought world is about to form, and just breathe right through them. The faster you can do that, the more interesting things you’ll find about, as I said, how the mind lies to itself, how it does something and then pretends it didn’t do it. Or denies that it did it … 
  4. Independent of the World
     … The discernment that allows you to let go of your greed, aversion, and delusion is the highest form of relinquishment. And, of course, the calm, the satisfaction, the sense of peace and security that come with attaining nibbana is the highest noble calm. So we desire these things. But in desiring them, we don’t just wait for them to come at the end … 
  5. The Path of Action
     … Because they all form part of the path—in particular, right effort. We discussed this point today. There’s a teaching you very rarely hear in the West but it’s very common over there in Thailand: Viriyena dukkhamacceti, a person overcomes suffering or stress through effort, through persistence. And not just brute effort. Look at right effort, it’s an element in the … 
  6. Shoot Your Pains with Wisdom
     … We take an active role in forming them. And the best way to understand that active role is not to try to be passive and say, “I’m not going to do anything at all. I’m just going to accept what happens.” Because what really happens is the active role you’re playing then goes underground where you don’t see it. Bring … 
  7. A Passion for the Path
     … We cling to our body, our form, our sense of the body felt from the inside and other forms we see outside. We cling to our feelings, our perceptions, our thought fabrications, our consciousness. It’s because we cling to these things that we suffer. That’s what suffering is—and we’re passionate about it until we comprehend what’s going on.—in … 
  8. Happy About Kamma
     … Intention and attention come under name and form. Based on name and form, there are the six senses, and with the six senses there’s contact. And it’s contact at the six senses, in your experience of the six senses, the Buddha said: That should be seen as past kamma. So actually your present intentions come first. This, too, is an important principle … 
  9. Not Resolved on Self
     … They’re made out of feelings, perceptions, thought-constructs, the sense of the form of the body, your consciousness. So when you start taking apart the things that disturb you, you find that it begins to have an effect on what goes into making up your sense of self: who you are, who’s doing the practice. It’s like an avalanche as the … 
  10. Doubt
     … It’ll come in different shapes and forms: doubt about different things. Some forms of doubt are more insidious than others. There are a lot of issues, the Buddha said, that you don’t have to think about. He’s not asking you to have any particular view about whether the world is eternal or not, or finite or not. But you do have … 
  11. Gratification
     … That, they say, is a higher form of happiness than simple pleasure. But from the Buddha’s point, both types of happiness involve a kind of activity. They’re just that, activities. When you enjoy a pleasure, there’s an element of fabrication even in the present moment of the enjoyment. When you try to enjoy a nice sound or a nice sight, the … 
  12. Patient & Inquisitive
     … So it’s an active form of patience that the Buddha’s teaching. Aside from that, he’s also asking you to be inquisitive. Ask questions. As in those instructions on breath meditation—the sixteen steps: There’s so much that’s not explained. Here it is, the one technique that the Buddha explained in most detail, and yet there’s still a lot … 
  13. To Practice Dying
     … Even though it’s still an attachment and a form of clinging, still it’s a lot better than most of the things that come up. My own experience of almost dying came when I was electrocuted. A lot of images suddenly came up in the mind when I realized I couldn’t move. I was probably going to die from my own stupidity … 
  14. Right Speech
     … You want to learn how to avoid these forms of speech, and also learn some of the nuances of right speech, because in some cases, it’s not very clear-cut. Now what counts as lying is clear-cut. You don’t want to misrepresent any truth to anybody, ever. That’s why the rule against lying is one of the precepts, i.e … 
  15. Calming Mental Fabrication
     … The next one is paying no attention to the perceptions of form. In other words, the sense of a boundary or a shape to the body begins to dissolve. There’s just a mist of sensations, and there’s space between the dots of the mist, so you focus on the perception of space, knowing that you could go back to the body at … 
  16. No Mistakes Are Fatal
     … the way water swirls around and forms eddies, the way it gets pushed down here, goes underground, and comes out over there. Sometimes it builds up into huge waves. I was reading the other day about enormous waves, called rogue waves, that suddenly form out in the ocean. Things come together just right — this little wave adds on to that little wave — and all … 
  17. Metta
     … After all, so many pleasures in the world, so many forms of happiness in the world, do harm. Sometimes they harm the person who’s trying to enjoy the pleasure, but often they harm other people, other beings. And to continue enjoying those pleasures, you have to be pretty blind: either denying that you’re causing any harm, or saying that it doesn’t … 
  18. All Fabrications Are Stressful
     … Everything else—even the deva worlds, the Brahmā worlds—has to be filtered through form, feeling, perception, thought constructs, consciousness. And the simple fact that they’re fabricated in this way—whatever the experience is—means that they’re going to be stressful. You can’t take them as a place where you can really rest. That’s one level of stress, one level … 
  19. Think Outside the Ruts
    Think Outside the Ruts March 26, 2022 There’s a strange passage in the Canon where the Buddha talks about how we take the potential for a form, feeling, perception, fabrication, or consciousness, and we fabricate it into an actual aggregate of form, feeling, etc., for the sake of having that aggregate. It’s expressed in a strange way in the Pali, but the … 
  20. Magha Puja
     … But if you really can find delight in concentration, you realize that it’s a much higher form of well-being, a much more satisfying, gratifying form of happiness, one that feels good all the way down. This way, you develop a mind that you can respect: your own mind that’s been trained and cleansed and lifted up beyond its ordinary concerns. You … 
  21. Abandoning Craving
     … Now, these three forms of cravings come on really strong at the time of death. If you’re in pain, you’ll be thinking about the sensual pleasures you want, the sensual pleasures you don’t have but you’d like to have. One common way of escaping the pain is to think about different sensual pleasures, and you don’t want that ability … 
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