Search results for: "Greed"
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- Don’t Limit Yourself… This is why, as part of the meditation instructions, the Buddha says for you to put aside greed and distress with reference to the world: in other words, what you want out of the world and what you’re unhappy about not getting out of the world. You learn to put that aside. The issue is not the world. The issue is what your …
- The Power of the Will… When greed, aversion, and delusion arise, how do they arise? How do they pass away? How do they come back again? When they come back, why do you go for them? What’s the allure? Again, the texts will answer in general terms, but you want to answer yourself in specific terms on what the drawbacks are in going with them. Then it’s …
- To Be an Adult… They can get us to break the precepts, they can get us to give in to passion, aversion, and delusion, telling us that greed is good, anger is good—all kinds of horrible things they can say are good. If we believe them and act on those beliefs, that becomes our karma—and that’s the danger. So we have to look into our …
- Determined to Be Undefeated by Death… You put aside greed and distress with reference to the world. That’s the letting go. Try to calm the mind, calm the breath, calm the perceptions you’re holding in mind right now, and the mind will settle down because you’re determined, and you’re determined in the right way. Now as I often say, when you meditate, you’re preparing how …
- Producing Experience… You find yourself acting on greed, anger, passion, fear, just to get the experiences you want. So to get out of that pattern you want to develop the skills that will make your happiness more solid, longer lasting, less likely to turn on you and eat you up. This is the type of discernment that underlies development in terms of virtue and concentration. You …
- Catch It in the Act… Every now and then you catch yourself acting on greed, acting on anger, acting on fear, acting on unskillful motivations, and you see that it’s causing stress. That’s when insight really does have an impact on the mind, really does make a change in the mind, makes a change in your habits. You hit the dog right at the right spot, and …
- Taking a Stance… Some qualities in the mind — like greed, anger, and delusion — are false friends. They come promising all kinds of things, and then they don’t deliver. They run off to desert you, leaving you worse off than before. Those are your false friends inside. The true friends are the ones who are really helpful, like the good qualities we’re trying to gather around …
- In Restraint Is Strength… mind is getting strengthened by looking that way? The Buddha doesn’t say not to look, just learn how not to focus on the things that are going to stir up greed, aversion, or delusion in the mind. There are lots of things you can look at out in the world, lots of things you can listen to, and lots of things you can …
- Looking for Essence in the Wilderness… Finally, through this process of progressively emptying itself of disturbance, you can get the mind to a point where it has no more greed, aversion, and delusion for things, and that’s your dwelling. You’re not dwelling in nature anymore. You’re dwelling in emptiness. Of course, emptiness is not located anywhere. But we can use this location as a way to get …
- Heedful, Attentive, Mindful… 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 recognize there are dangers from outside. But they’re not the ones you might ordinarily expect. It …
- Friendship Leading to Seclusion… But even then as you work with the defilements that come up—the subtle forms of greed, aversion, and delusion, states of becoming—you’re going to need some good friends to talk to you: the knowledge you gained from the texts, the knowledge you’ve gained from your teachers, the knowledge you gained from your own practice It’s not the case that …
- Surveying the World… He saw beings on fire with the fires of greed, aversion, and delusion. But his fires were out. So his relationship to the world was very different this time around. Now he was free. The first time around, there was a sense of terror—samvega—because he was trapped in this world. But after his awakening, he was freed—totally free, to the point …
- A Mirror for the Mind… As you’re doing this, you’ll see a little bit of greed slipping into your actions, or a little bit of anger or fear. Other things slip in. But if you’re looking carefully, you’ll see them, and that’s the important thing: You want to see these things because they’re the factors that obscure the course of how you start …
- The Energy You Broadcast… It could be greed flowing out, or anger flowing out, delusion flowing out. Or it could be mindfulness and discernment flowing out. That’s the choice you can make. It can be compassion flowing out, goodwill flowing out, or equanimity. Again, that’s your choice. The Buddha gives an extreme example. You’re pinned down by bandits who’ve taken a two-handled saw …
- Mindful to Be Skillful… no killing, no stealing, no illicit sex, no lying, no divisive talk, no coarse talk, no idle chatter, trying to overcome excessive greed and ill will, and to develop right views. These are the areas in body, speech, and mind where you want to be careful to avoid unskillful behavior and try to develop skillful behavior in its place. Right view is where skillfulness …
- What’s Important… He fought against the institution of greed, aversion, and delusion in each person’s mind, starting with his own mind. So, when people make deprecating remarks—and it’s sad, sometimes we hear even monks making deprecating remarks—about people who sit with their eyes closed, we should remember that their attitude has very little to do with the Dhamma. After all, the Buddha …
- Noble Contentment, Noble Discontent… What in the mind can you change? What can you not change yet? Any unskillful qualities that come up in the mind, you don’t simply accept the fact: “Oh yeah, there’s a lot of greed. There’s a lot of aversion. There’s a lot of lust. There’s a lot of fear, jealousy”—whatever. You don’t deny the fact that …
- Think Like a Thief… What we see, what we hear, is only what fits in with our own ideas, what fits in with our greed, anger, and delusion. In other words, there’s actually more coming out our ears and eyes than there is coming in, more in terms of suppositions, preconceptions, liking and disliking. Even when we try to be perfectly nonreactive, the fires of delusion come …
- Rightly Directed… When greed comes into the mind, why does it come? When anger comes, why does it come? You really have to be alert to see these things, because all too often when they come, you just jump inside them, and go with them. You don’t see the steps: How is it that a thought forms in the mind? How does it become an …
- Turtle Meditation… If a thought was unskillful, if involved greed, anger, delusion, lust, jealousy, fear, or whatever, it will have an impact on the mind. The mind will quiver in a certain way that lets you know that this was unskillful. And the quivering doesn’t last just for a few seconds. Sometimes it goes on for a whole day. If you let yourself get involved …
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