Search results for: "Persistence"
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- Breath Meditation: The Third Tetrad… The ones that lift you up are persistence, rapture, and analysis of qualities—i.e., when you try to figure things out in the mind. For example, if your mind is sitting here getting kind of sluggish, you give it work to do, to figure out something. What’s going on? Is the breath getting to the right places right now? Which parts of …
- Path & Raft… If you can learn how to develop the patience and persistence needed to use the raft—or to walk along the path—some day it will get you there. It may not be as quickly as you’d like, but the fact that you know you’re on a path, not wandering lost through the jungle—or you’re on the raft and not …
- Respect… But here you’re developing kindness, compassion, mindfulness, discernment, alertness, persistence, reliability: all good qualities, qualities that feel good in and of themselves and are conducive to true happiness. So it’s not only a good goal, but it’s also a good path. And you develop a greater sense of self-esteem, self-worth as you follow the path. That’s the beginning …
- Appropriate Attention… You want to have the desire to work on the skill, you want to be persistent, stick with it, and be intent on what you’re doing. Be really observant. Then finally use your intelligence to ask questions, bring that property of appropriate attention to what you’re doing. When things don’t work, use your imagination, use your ingenuity to figure out other …
- Imagine… desire, persistence, intentness, and ingenuity. In terms of concentration, the first step corresponds to giving rise to a nice pleasant state right here in the present moment. Can you do that? If you want to, you can. As the Buddha said, all phenomena are rooted in desire. So how are you going to use desire to give rise to that pleasant state? You can …
- The Mind’s Eating Disorders… Make it persistent, be mindful, develop concentration so that you can develop the discernment that sees these things clearly. This is how you strengthen the mind to the point where it finds something inside that doesn’t need to feed, and that’s when all your eating disorders, subtle and obvious, will end.
- The World Is Swept Away… Then there’s the determination on truth, which includes the perfection of truth, the perfection of virtue, and the perfection of persistence. There’s the determination on relinquishment, which includes renunciation and generosity. And there’s the determination on calm, which includes endurance and equanimity. Look at these as qualities you could develop in life. When you develop them, they’re really yours. Once …
- Wake Up from Addiction… This is what the factor of persistence is: If you see something that’s unskillful, take it apart. Don’t simply fall in with it. Step back from it. And the more you can analyze it into discrete sensations, discrete feelings, or discrete thoughts, the less power it has. It’s because these things connect up that they create a strong impression, an overwhelming …
- Acceptance… That leads to the next strength, the next empowerment, which is persistence, energy, the effort we put into the practice. We realize that we can do this, and we don’t have much time, so we’d better get right to it. And stick with it. We practice when we feel like practicing, and we also practice when we don’t. We can’t …
- The Raft of Concepts… In the beginning, you begin to see that this belief does help here, it does help there, so you pursue it more and more persistently. Then ultimately you discover that it’s a big help in putting an end to suffering. That’s your real proof that the concepts work — and only then do you get beyond concepts. Even when you’re in concentration …
- Audacious & Undaunted… It leads to persistence, it leads to mindfulness, concentration, discernment. This is relevant to us, because the Buddha’s message was that he found it and we can find it too. On the night of his awakening, he learned some important insights. After getting the mind into solid concentration, he turned the power of that concentration to the question, “Is death the end, or …
- Attention to Your Potentials… On this follows persistence, and here again you look for the potential for energy in the body. This factor for awakening counters sloth and torpor. The remaining factors have to do with getting the mind into good concentration: rapture, calm, concentration, equanimity. These are things you develop. You look for the potentials there in the mind for it to settle down—because the mind …
- Watching Over Time… When the mind is too sluggish, you should try to develop qualities that are more enlivening, like actively analyzing what’s going on in the present moment, putting in effort, being really persistent in what you’re doing, and trying to develop a sense of rapture with the meditation—rapture is enlivening. So it’s good to get a sense of where your energy …
- Feelings of Pain… the desire to do it, the persistence, being intent on paying careful attention to what’s happening, and using your powers of analysis to figure out what might work. Ajaan Fuang used to say, with regard to the powers of analysis, that they also include your ingenuity. Sometimes you have to come up with new techniques, new approaches. Be willing to try something new …
- May I Look After Myself with Ease… But you just have to be persistent and patient, and after a while you find that they go away. So here you are with a good shelter, a comfortable home with good food. That sense of ease and rapture is very nourishing. But there will be the part of the mind that says, “Wait a minute. I’ve got other things I’ve got …
- Cleaning up Your Personal Environment… But by steady persistence and by doing what they do best, they create a space for themselves. And so it should be with your practice. There’s a set of instructions for new monks that helps new monks get started on their way as new monks, but it’s also a useful list for lay people as they go about their practice outside of …
- Inner Strength, Inner Wealth… Built on that is your persistence: your willingness just to stick with it, stick with it. If you find yourself falling down, falling off the path, you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and just keep on going. You don’t let yourself get discouraged. There was a woman who’d be practicing with Ajaan Fuang many years. She had good powers of concentration …
- Filling in the Buddha’s Outline… The same with the other bases of success, like persistence: Your efforts may be too much, too little. The focus of your intent may be too narrow or too broad, and your analysis may be too much or too little. So you’ve got to figure out what’s right for here right now, and the results will be the means by which you …
- Clinging & Feeding… Then we feed the mind with conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment, all of which are good food for the mind. These are the things that strengthen us, so that we can manage the path. So the Buddha doesn’t try to starve us right from the start. He simply tells us to take a different approach to our feeding. Feed on good food …
- Guarding Against Trouble… That’s persistence as a factor for awakening. When you do it right, it should lead to a sense of rapture, a sense of fullness, sometimes a sense of energy coursing through the body, and that can lead to calm. Sometimes the rapture can get you stirred up, but it nourishes something in the body and the mind. When you don’t need that …
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