Search results for: "Delusion"

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  2. Focus on What You’re Doing
     … greed, aversion, delusion—all kinds of things. We’re doing it all the time, to the point we’re not really conscious of what we’re doing. So when we sit down to meditate, we want to be conscious of what we’re doing with the mind right now. That way, you begin to see the steps in the process. You’d like to … 
  3. Acceptance Isn’t the Issue
     … One of the first things he saw as he surveyed the world was that beings were on fire with the fires of passion, aversion, and delusion. So he didn’t see it as his duty to accept them. He saw it as his duty to make a change so that they could know how to put out those fires. He was really on a … 
  4. Noble Priorities
     … After all, national customs—the usual civilizations of human beings—are based on greed, aversion, and delusion. They’re based on defilement. Their priorities are different. So as you take on the practice, you have to realize you’re changing your priorities, and you’re going to have to step outside of your culture. This was one of the things I appreciated about Ajaan … 
  5. The Best Work Around
     … There is a way out of all the sufferings that the mind suffers from, and all the stress and distress and despair and delusion and depression. All these other negative things in the mind: There is a way out of the them, and it’s one of the best things you can do in life. When you have that kind of attitude, the difficulties … 
  6. A Blameless Happiness
     … If it’s a happiness that depends on passion, aversion and delusion, that’s going to be blameworthy too. At the same time, if you’re inciting other people to kill, steal, have illicit sex, lie, take intoxicants, that’s a blameworthy way of finding happiness as well. It’s interesting that when the Buddha talks about benefitting yourself, he frames it in terms … 
  7. Comprehending Clinging
     … Comprehending means putting an end to our passion, aversion, and delusion around it. In the first noble truth, the Buddha defines suffering and stress, in its short version, as clinging to the five aggregates. When we hear that, we tend to focus on the aggregates—that we need to comprehend them. Which is true, we do, but we also have to comprehend clinging. In … 
  8. Learning Right Speech
     … There are a lot of things we could be saying that either give rise to passion, aversion, and delusion, in us or in the listener. With a truth like that, you leave it unsaid because it serves no purpose. Try to speak words that are true, that are harmonious, that are easy to listen to, and that really serve a purpose. So you have … 
  9. Goodness
     … As the Buddha said, one of the best ways you can benefit others is to get them to be interested in getting rid of greed, aversion, and delusion; to get them interested in following the precepts, so that they can take care of the one person that each of them is responsible for. But that’s an area where you have to use your … 
  10. Use Your Imagination
     … Greed, aversion, and delusion can come in 108 different forms, and maybe 108 is too small a number. If you want to just memorize a few principles and hope that those few things will take care of everything, the defilements will eat you up. You’ve got to be willing to come up with new ideas on your own. When you stop and think … 
  11. Recognizing Fools
     … He said, “It’s a good thing that you didn’t kill the monk.” But it shows that devas still have greed, aversion, and delusion. Even the great Brahma has defilements. There’s the story of the monk who goes to visit the great Brahma after getting visions of many levels of devas. He’s been sent up the deva bureaucracy because he’s … 
  12. Disposable Worlds
     … Lust, greed, anger, delusion, fear can arise from these world-constructs that we’re so adept at making. You hop into a thought and think it’s going to take you someplace you’d like to go —to the Rocky Mountains, to the Grand Canyon—and it ends up taking you down to hell. One thought leads to the next, leads to the next … 
  13. Renunciation Isn’t Deprivation
     … Would he sleep well? And the young man he’s talking to says, “Well, yes.” But then the Buddha asks, “What about the fevers that are born of passion, aversion, and delusion? Could they keep him awake, keep him from sleeping well?” “Well, yes, that’s true.” The Buddha said, “In the mind of the Tathāgata, those fevers are banished.” In other words, the … 
  14. A Refuge from Karma
     … If you lose that foundation, either you go into delusion concentration, which is pleasant but it’s like falling asleep, or else the feeling of pleasure dissipates. So to maintain that feeling of pleasure, you have to remember: Focus on the causes and don’t just run off with the pleasure. All too many meditators are like people who get a job, but when … 
  15. Stepping Back
     … And without insight, you’re totally immersed in delusion. What is it like to be totally deluded? You’re totally unsure of things. Deep down inside, things don’t seem quite right, and there’s always an element of fear. As the Buddha said, “As long as you’re uncertain about the true Dhamma, there’s always the fear of death.” What’s going … 
  16. Inquisitive
     … As the Buddha said, we can use concentration as a pleasant abiding—in other words, just a nice place to settle in—but we can also use it to develop mindfulness and alertness, and to figure out how the mind can free itself of greed, aversion, and delusion. The breath is going to teach you those last two things only if you ask questions … 
  17. Fixing the Present
     … pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain—and looking at your perceptions, the images running around in your mind, giving rise to greed, anger and delusion, fear, panic, whatever. You want to calm both the feelings and the perceptions. And a first step in that direction is simply to see what perception’s operating there in the background. One of the ways you do that … 
  18. Noble Right Concentration
     … To comprehend it means to understand it to the point of getting past any passion, aversion, or delusion around it. Stress is defined as the five clinging-aggregates: form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, consciousness. Where are you going to see those aggregates? You see them in the concentration. The breath is part of form. The feeling of pleasure that arises as you stay focused: That … 
  19. Understanding Aggregates
     … Elsewhere, he says that comprehension means getting rid of all passion, aversion, and delusion around them. In his second sermon, he shows how to do that. He talks about how the five clinging-aggregates should be seen as not-self. One argument is that they don’t lie within your total control. If there’s any disease in any of the aggregates, you can … 
  20. Three Levels of Concentration
     … They fall into what Ajaan Lee called delusion-concentration: moha-samadhi. Things are quiet, pleasant, still, but you have no idea where you are. So the important thing in this stage is to give the mind work to do in the pleasure. Just as with momentary concentration you focus directly on dealing with the problem — its weakness in the face of pain or displeasure … 
  21. The Pursuit of Pleasure
     … These are the kinds of pleasures that are bait for the mind, to get you stuck on the hook of greed, anger, and delusion. Obviously, you don’t want to fall for them. But the opposite is niramisa sukha, a form of pleasure that’s not baited at all, doesn’t depend on the flesh at all. It starts with right concentration and goes … 
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