Search results for: "Becoming"

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  2. Everything Comes Together Right Here
     … We turn them into worlds—what the Buddha calls becoming. If you get into a becoming like that, you’ve gone astray. When we’re working on the concentration, even though concentration is a state of becoming, we’re focusing on the raw materials: just the breath, just your mind talking to itself about the breath. There will also be a perception you hold … 
  3. Strengthening Discernment
     … This is how it deals with the breath, how it deals with feelings and perceptions, to create a state of becoming. Then, from that state of becoming, when you’re really solid and very clear, you can see the subtle fabrications going on that you would otherwise have missed. So, we’re focusing on the breath. This is called bodily fabrication. How do you … 
  4. Heedful, Attentive, Mindful
     … The three kinds of craving—for sensuality, for becoming, for non-becoming—are where the dangers are. The dangers multiply out from those three—you get greed, aversion, delusion; passion, aversion, delusion—all the long lists of defilements that the Buddha gives. These are things that cause suffering. To have appropriate attention, you focus inside—where the main dangers are, although the Buddha does … 
  5. Infinity
    Infinity September 26, 2023 All too often, we come to the meditation straight from the narrative of the day, and then the narrative becomes part of the meditation, where it interferes with the mind’s settling down. If you managed to do something klutzy during the day, then if your meditation is not going well, that becomes part of that same klutzy narrative. If … 
  6. The Good Fight
     … This is how it creates a world of becoming, as they say. In other words, a desire arises in the mind and then you create a world around that desire. The world is made up of the things that will help you gain what you want and of things that get in the way of what you want. As for things that are irrelevant … 
  7. Goodwill Starts with Gratitude
     … If they’re suffering right now, you hope for them to become happy. If they’re happy already, or they’re creating causes for happiness, you rejoice with them. You’re not resentful of their happiness. And this serves two purposes: One, it reminds you that you are indebted to so many people. This is how we live as human beings, through our debts … 
  8. The Pursuit of Happiness & Goodness
     … As you avoid the disturbance, you get into a higher level of concentration, and then things that were part and parcel of the previous level of concentration suddenly become a disturbance. So you’re becoming more and more of a connoisseur of the level of stress in the mind, the level of disturbance in the mind. This, too, develops your discernment, develops your alertness … 
  9. In Tune
     … If we don’t, there’s going to be trouble, there’s going to be disharmony in the group, and it becomes an unpleasant place to practice. But if we have these bases for harmony in terms of the precepts and right view, then the fact that we’re living together as a group actually becomes conducive to getting the mind still, getting the … 
  10. Protection Through Mindfulness
     … That’s how your skill as a meditator grows, so that the protection becomes more and more all-around. The meditation really does become your refuge, and you yourself become a person you can trust.
  11. Talking Among Your Selves
     … But then when you think about the different roles of self that function in becoming, you can understand. There’s the consumer self that wants to enjoy pleasure, the provider self that feels that it can provide for that consumer self by doing whatever’s needed to gain that pleasure. And then there’s the self as commentator that speaks to the other two … 
  12. Comfortable with Yourself
     … And whatever skills you learn in the course of becoming friends with the breath, you can take those with you. After all, what do you have here? The mind and the breath. No matter where you are, you still have the mind and the breath. The problem is that you let other things interfere. That’s the part of the practice that takes place … 
  13. In Times of Danger and Fear
     … The perceptions you hold in mind and the feelings you focus on all have an impact on how you relate to the breath and whether the mind can become calm, have a sense of well-being, happy to be with the breath. In other words, as you focus on getting comfortable with the breath, you’re going to begin to notice the mind as … 
  14. Questioning Impermanence
     … It becomes the least interesting thing we can think of. We find all sorts of excuses for not meditating. But where does that get you? It gets you nowhere. Time flies past, flies past. The Buddha had us ask ourselves, “Time flies past, flies past. What are you doing right now?” And your answer had better be, “I’m working on the path.” Otherwise … 
  15. Honoring the Noble Ones
     … You plant those coconuts and eventually you become a coconut-orchard millionaire. In other words, you take the sense of ease that comes with the breath and you develop it. You talk to yourself: “How do I maintain this? How do I let it spread around the body?” Then you reach a point where talking to yourself becomes a disturbance because the breath feels … 
  16. An Auspicious Birth
     … The word for developing, bhavana, is related to the word for becoming, bhava. So as we develop these qualities, we’re also taking on a state of becoming. In other words, there’s birth—and this is the auspicious birth. In the beginning, it may last just a few moments and then disappear, but you do what you can to bring it back, and … 
  17. Creating a New Self
     … This is what the Buddha calls becoming. Each self or sense of self you have also has a sense of the world. And because the self is formed around a nucleus of desire, what’s relevant in that world or that particular world is going to be what’s relevant to that desire—either things that help it along or things that get in … 
  18. Goodwill for the Breath
     … So in this way you and your breath become friends working together. The breath becomes more comfortable, the body gets healthier, the nerves get soothed, the mind has a good soothing place to stay, a restful place to stay. The breath and the body have somebody looking after them. You walk the path together with a sense of goodwill. Be friends with the breath … 
  19. One Thing Clear Through
     … You become aware of the breath energy throughout the body as you breathe in, as you breathe out. As you develop a sense of ease in the breathing, you allow that to spread so that it fills the body as well. That becomes your food on the path. But as you do this, you’re also radiating good energy out into the world. One … 
  20. Subduing Greed & Distress
     … We’re creating a new state of becoming here. There’s going to be a new world here and a new you in this world who doesn’t have to be weighed down by the “you” who’s gone through life so far—or the worlds that you’ve been through so far. To be fully in this world, you have to put those … 
  21. Evaluation
     … It’s a matter of being very sensitive to what you’re doing and learning how to evaluate the results, becoming more and more sensitive as you go along. That way, discernment comes not from following instructions, but from developing your own powers of sensitivity, catching yourself doing unskillful things that you didn’t notice before, and realizing that you have a choice not … 
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