Search results for: "Equanimity"

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  2. The Focus on Suffering
     … serenity, concentration, equanimity. Learn how to dampen the fire a little bit so as it’s just right for what you need. On the other hand, if the fire looks like it’s dying out, you need to add more of the active qualities. As for learning what kind of fire’s just right: You can listen to other people explain the idea, but … 
  3. Patience
     … If nothing in the body right now feels good, talk to yourself in a way that reminds you that you’re developing the perfection of patience, you’re developing the perfection of equanimity, the perfection of determination. These are qualities we’re going to need in life anyhow, so here’s a good chance to develop them. It’s one of the reasons why … 
  4. Perceptions Around Pain
     … You can make up your mind that you’ll be equanimous in the face of the pain, that you won’t react. The effort put into being non-reactive* is* a type of proactivity, but there’s a lot more that needs to be done to understand the pain. You want to investigate the perceptions you have that contribute to the pain, that create … 
  5. Goodwill in Action
     … You can hope to be a good influence on them, but you have to remember that everybody has his or her own freedom of choice, which is why metta has to be balanced with upekkha, equanimity: realizing that you can have only so much influence on other people, but you want whatever the influence you have on others to be as beneficial as possible … 
  6. Rehab Work
     … I’m just very equanimous about what happens in the present moment as I breathe in, as I breathe out.” The Buddha responded, “Well, there is that kind of breath meditation, but that’s not the kind that gives the best results.” Then, he taught the monks the sixteen steps of breath meditation. If you look at those sixteen steps, you notice a lot … 
  7. A Home for the Mind
     … The reflection on equanimity reminds us that there are a lot of things in life we can’t change. If you spend your time worrying about things you can’t change, getting worked up over things you can’t change, you’re wasting the energy you could use to focus on the things you can change. All these chants remind us of the values … 
  8. The Path Is and Isn’t the Goal
     … There are feelings of pleasure that you’re inducing, feelings of ease, feelings of equanimity. There’s the perception you hold of the breath, the mental activity of adjusting and investigating, probing, learning about the breath, learning about the mind. And there’s consciousness. In other words, you’ve got the five aggregates right here in your state of right concentration. So there’s … 
  9. Anger
     … You’re showing forbearance, you’re showing equanimity, you’re showing patience, all of which are strengths. It’s when you have these virtues that you can see clearly what does and doesn’t need to be said or done. The more clarity you can bring to situations like that, the better it is for everyone around.
  10. Calming the Breath
     … So the Buddha asks him, “What kind of breath meditation do you do?” And the monk says, “I put away thoughts of past, put away thoughts of future, and let my mind be equanimous toward whatever is arising in the present, as I breathe in and breathe out.” The Buddha’s response is, “Well, there is that kind of breath meditation.” But he adds … 
  11. Standing Where the Buddha Stood
     … You take the same equanimity, the same mindfulness you developed in the fourth jhana and simply change the perception. So when you want to understand feeling or perception, this is the place to do it. Get the mind really well centered, and then you can watch these things as they affect the mind. You can see where they come from, where they go. You … 
  12. Control
     … That’s where you have to develop equanimity. In other words, let go of the things you can’t control so that you can focus your energy on the things you can. This is how the not-self teaching gets applied through the practice even when you’re not ready for the ultimate level where you totally abandon any thought of self. You learn … 
  13. Noble Standards
     … It requires that you be generous, that you be virtuous, that you develop thoughts of goodwill and compassion, empathetic joy, equanimity, where they’re appropriate. And that spreads the goodness around.
  14. In & of Themselves
     … When you find a way that you can get the mind and the breath together with a feeling of well-being, a feeling of pleasure, or a feeling of equanimity, then you can put some of the thinking aside, and just be with the sensation of the body in and of itself. You’re getting closer and closer to the “in and of itself … 
  15. Energy Channels
     … But if you learn how to relate to your breath with goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity, and you begin to combine those qualities just right in the way you relate to your own energy body, then you can begin to embody them to the rest of yourself and to the rest of the world as well. You get practice in being strategic with … 
  16. Get Out of the Way
     … This is where patience and equanimity, combined with conviction, are important elements in the path. On days when you’re down, when the mind is just not cooperating, realize that it’s a normal part of the process. The mind is a very complicated thing to train. There’s a passage in the Canon where an elephant trainer is talking to the Buddha. He … 
  17. Stay
     … The mind, itself, is equanimous. There’s a sense of ease in the body, and that gradually grows fainter and fainter, until everything just stops. The breath stops. Your thinking stops. There’s just the perception that holds you there. There’s a sense of awareness filling the whole body. The breath fills the whole body, and it’s because everything feels connected inside … 
  18. Discernment
     … learning to be equanimous, patient, accepting of everything. Suffering comes, and you tell yourself that that’s just the nature of experience, that’s the way it is. Craving comes, well, just accept the craving, that’s the way it is. Now that is the beginning part of discernment, the ability to admit what’s going on. But then as the Buddha said in … 
  19. Mud Houses
     … You can let go of the feeling of pleasure, and you’re left with a feeling of equanimity, which is even lighter. You get the breath energy to fill the body to the extent that you don’t have to breathe in and breathe out. Your sense of the boundary of the body begins to disappear. The perception that holds the notion of body … 
  20. The Buddha’s Vipassana
     … Your awareness of the mind fills the body; a sense of ease, pleasure, or equanimity fills the body. Those are the main elements. This is where mindfulness and concentration come together; how right effort and concentration come together; how vipassana and samatha come together. They all merge. And it’s when they merge that they can do good work in the mind.
  21. The Uses of the Breath
     … Spread thoughts of goodwill or equanimity when you’re feeling angry. Contemplate death when you’re getting lazy—not to get discouraged, but to remind yourself that you don’t have much guaranteed time, but you do have this moment. The purpose of these contemplations is to get you back to the breath. So try to focus your attention here to see what you … 
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