Search results for: "Delusion"
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- Strong Against Anger & Fear… The Buddha’s approach is counterintuitive in a lot of ways, but it’s counterintuitive only to our greed, aversion, and delusion. When you see things clearly, you see that he is really right. If you think that your wealth lies in things that people can take away, you’re constantly going to be afraid. As for the fear of death, you’ve got …
- Right Action & Right Livelihood… Is it true, as his teachers had told him, that he’s going to go to the heaven of laughter? And again, the Buddha says, “Don’t ask.” The actor asks three times, and finally the Buddha says, “Okay, if you’re trying to give rise to passion, aversion, and delusion in your audience and in your own mind, then when you die you …
- When Nothing’s Happening… Not mistakes based on greed, aversion, or delusion. Not mistakes based on breaking the precepts. Simple mistakes based on having the wrong information. That’s possible. So there is still right and wrong for them in this area. But in the area of nibbāna, there is no right or wrong. As Ajaan Lee says, right view and wrong view are matters of the world …
- Meditate to Win… If you can’t laugh at your greed, aversion, delusion, and lust, it’s going to be a grim battle. But if you can laugh, you can basically step back. That’s what discernment is all about: stepping back. I mentioned this the other day around the issue of metacognition: You watch the mind thinking, you watch the mind as it focuses, you watch …
- Believing & Knowing… The only sure way is to get rid of those defilements—your greed, aversion, and delusion—so that someday you’ll find your bull elephant. You’ll see for yourself that what the Buddha taught was true. The Buddha really did know what he was talking about. To get back to the house analogy: You’ve finally got the ridgepole in place. Everything else …
- No Dharma Without Karma… You’re not totally driven by your defilements, by greed, anger, or delusion. You have some moments of clarity and large-heartedness, you can act on them, and it makes a difference. So generosity teaches you two important lessons about the Dharma. One is that you can’t learn about the Dharma without giving. As the Buddha once said, there’s no way you …
- Warm Your Heart… In terms of the recipient, you want to give to someone who’s free of passion, aversion, and delusion, or to someone who’s working on the path in that direction. And as far as the gift itself, you want to give in season; something that’s appropriate; something that doesn’t harm you or anybody else in giving. This is all part of …
- To Comprehend Craving… You have to comprehend craving, which means ending all passion, aversion, and delusion around it. We talk about the different duties with regard to the four noble truths, and that the duty with regard to craving is to abandon it, but there’s one passage where Ven. Gavampati says he heard it from the Buddha that you should try to comprehend all four of …
- A Sense of Space Inside… If you’re focused on one little tiny point, and the breath gets more and more refined until you lose that point, you’re off into what they call delusion concentration, where you’re still but you’re not really clear about what you’re focused on or where you are. When you come out, there’s the question, “Was I asleep?” Well, not …
- Determined to be Happy… But especially meditation—getting the mind under control so that your greed, aversion, and delusion don’t take over: That’s a gift, not only to yourself, but to the people around you. So when you think about the goals you want to aim at, it’s good to think about looking for a harmless goal, a happiness that’s harmless. As for the …
- To Be Trustworthy… Your own greed, aversion, and delusion will get you. And when they get you, they make you do unskillful things. That’s our big fear: that we can’t trust ourselves not to do unskillful things. You think about what’s going to happen in society if this quarantine lasts for a long time. There’s going to be a lot of hardship. When …
- Initiative… If you wallow in the pleasure, you leave the breath and fall into delusion concentration. So have a sense of spending your pleasure in the most fruitful way. And then finally, listen to the voices inside, listen to the voices outside, that advise you how to develop your conviction even further, how to develop your virtue, your generosity, and especially your discernment even further …
- The Buddha Teaches a Yakkha… You ask yourself, “What would be the long-term consequences of following this particular idea?” This is especially important with defilements like greed, aversion, and delusion. You have to stop and ask yourself, “If I act on these emotions, what will the results be?” And you have to learn how to hold yourself in check when you see that the results would be bad …
- Inner Critics… One of the major delusions in modern Buddhism is that concentration in and of itself guarantees awakening. Still, it is part of the path and it’s one of the tools you need to use to see into your own faults. That’s why we’re here: to see our own faults, to see where we’re causing suffering in ways that we haven …
- You Should Heed These Shoulds… What does comprehension mean? It means that you understand suffering to the point of having no more greed, aversion, and delusion around it. Craving, the second noble truth, is to be abandoned. How do you abandon it? First, you have to figure out where your craving is focused. Suppose you think you have a craving for a person. But is it really focused on …
- Help Others, Help Yourself… Your greed, aversion, and delusion don’t go prowling around the neighborhood, disturbing the neighbors. Other people benefit, too, from your practice. But in that sutta, the Buddha isn’t talking just about how helping yourself helps others. He also talks about how helping others helps you. Unfortunately, there’s no image to illustrate the principle, which is why that part of the sutta …
- The Meaning of Happiness… Skillful intentions, which are free from delusion, are the ones that actually do lead to happiness. To be skillful like this, you’ve got to keep checking your actions, again and again and again, to see what results you’re actually getting, to make sure that you’re acting on your best intentions and your best understanding of what’s going to happen as …
- An Exercise in Sensitivity… You get into what Ajaan Lee calls delusion concentration, where everything is very pleasant, very misty, but you’re not really sure where you are, what you’re focused on. It’s like someone who takes on a job, gets a paycheck, and then quits the job to enjoy the paycheck. It’s pleasant for a while, but then you’re hungry again, and …
- Death Is Normal… It takes us off into greed, into aversion, into delusion—all kinds of places where we really don’t want to go. So we need the ability to step out. You jump out when you realize it’s not a good car to be in and the driver’s not trustworthy. This is how you jump out safely: You just jump back to the …
- Today Is Better than Yesterday… In the same way, your mindfulness and concentration working together enable your discernment to pierce through all the flimsy arguments that greed, aversion, and delusion will churn out. It’s in this way that, regardless of how good yesterday’s meditation was, today’s meditation is going to be better. Not only because it’s today’s meditation, the one that you can actually …
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