Search results for: "Form"

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  2. Radiating Goodness
     … Generosity, virtue, and meditation are all forms of merit. Even stream entry is a form of merit, so you can’t look down on it. What that means is that you look at the world as an opportunity to gain the happiness that comes from doing good. So if unexpected things happen, look at them as an opportunity to make some merit. A lot … 
  3. The Path to Stream Entry
     … There’s no form, no feeling, no perception, no fabrication of anything, and no consciousness of the six senses—and yet there is an awareness. As a result, there’s no tendency to want to identify yourself with any of the aggregates ever again. You still have a lingering sense of self that hovers around them, but you never hold to the view that … 
  4. Views & Vision
     … He simply developed qualities of the mind that all of us have in potential form. So that raises our sights as to what we can do with our lives. You can think about the Dharma, in that it recommends a totally harmless form of happiness, a happiness that doesn’t pose any danger to you, doesn’t pose any danger to anybody else, doesn … 
  5. The Return of Chickens from Hell
     … Those five activities—form, feeling, perception, fabrications, and consciousness—are the aggregates. And as the Buddha said, if we cling to them, we’re going to suffer. Particularly if we cling to them with ignorance. If we cling to them with knowledge, there’s still going to be some stress, but we can turn them into a path. So the choice is ours. And … 
  6. Tranquility & Insight
     … Our whole experience of the form of the body, our feelings, perceptions, thought fabrications, even our consciousness, has an element of intention in it. We’re doing it for a particular purpose. We want happiness out of these things, in line with whatever we conceive the happiness to be. And we shape these things because of our passion for the happiness. It’s a … 
  7. Brahmaviharas on the Path
     … So if you see that you’re engaging in any forms of wrong resolve, you can develop the brahmaviharas to counteract them. You have to realize, of course, that the brahmaviharas are not the natural, innate quality of the mind, any more than their opposites are. Ill will comes to the mind just as easily as goodwill. Thoughts of harmfulness come just as easily … 
  8. Proving the Teachings
     … As you focus on that issue, then you become more and more sensitive to the subtler forms of harm and stress you cause. You keep up the same process: Wherever you see it, whether it’s in your thoughts, in your words, or in your deeds, that you’re causing harm, causing any stress that’s unnecessary, just drop it. When you can do … 
  9. Pleasure on the Path
     … the pleasure that comes from what he calls form, your sense of the body as you feel it from the inside as you’re working with the breath. As you breathe in and out, notice the flow of energy, not only the flow of the air, but the flow of energy through the body that allows the air to come in, go out. Notice … 
  10. The Riddle of Freedom
    The Buddha’s teachings on karma are often presented as a form of determinism—fatalism even: What was done in the past is going to determine what you’re going to experience in the present, and if you do something in the present moment, you have some hope that it will have an effect on the future. But there’s that question: Well, do … 
  11. Battling Negativity
     … Our sense of “I am this” or “I am that” can be centered on form, feeling, perception, thought-constructs, or consciousness. And as soon as we slap the label of “I am this” or “I am that” onto something, we’re going to cling to it. And there you are: suffering. Suffering is bound up in how we define ourselves. So when we start … 
  12. Taking the Long View
     … But the Buddha is saying that if you really want to comprehend clinging, you have to see that all of those things are composed of just form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness—things that are pretty ephemeral. When you see how ephemeral they are, you realize that this reality you cling to so much may not be so real at all, not so dependable … 
  13. Faith in Goodness
     … basic, basic forms of goodness—the implication being that if you have faith in goodness, you should have faith in the principle that we do have choices, and that the choices will give results depending on the quality of the motivation behind the choice. When talking about having faith in the principle of karma, or conviction in the principle of karma, it sounds rather … 
  14. Expanding Your Skill Set
     … You don’t want a happiness that’s going to turn on you and leave you more disappointed than before, which is the way most forms of pleasure in the world deliver. So this is called the self as the governing principle. It puts your desire for true happiness in charge of your practice. Then there’s the reality check of what the Buddha … 
  15. Mastery
     … Those are the only forms of stress and suffering that really weigh on the heart. Once the stress and suffering that comes from craving is done with, then the stresses of the world don’t weigh on the heart at all. That’s an important lesson. If there were stresses and strains in the heart that we couldn’t do anything about, that’d … 
  16. Wise About Pleasure
     … You may think that being reborn as a deva in Zion National Park might be a good thing, but the devas in Zion National Park have their own forms of suffering, their own forms of stress. So you’ve got to keep those limitations in mind, which means that you’ve got to develop another type of pleasure that’s actually part of the … 
  17. Right View Comes First
     … It’s not a sensual object, it’s a pleasure of form—the body as you feel it from within. It doesn’t have most of the drawbacks of sensuality. It doesn’t require that you take anything much from anyone else. The breath is yours. The way you feel the body from inside, that’s your territory. Now, in giving this talk, when … 
  18. The Triple Training
     … Well, those are all different forms of fabrication, and as the Buddha said, when you see things in terms of fabrication—what you’re intentionally doing in the present moment, whether the intention is clear or not, you’re trying to make it clear in that act of clarifying your intentions in the present moment: That’s what insight is all about. So the … 
  19. Working Through the Breath
     … States of becoming like this—What are they? How are they made? As you learn how to do it skillfully in the concentration, then you’re going to learn about other states of becoming as well, along with the processes by which they’re formed.” As he said, it’s like having a chicken laying eggs. If you destroy the eggs, you’ll never … 
  20. High-Level Dhamma
     … It’s considered poor form. When I wrote Ajaan Fuang’s biography to be handed out at the ceremony when his body was placed in the mausoleum, people were surprised that I put in some incidents he had told me about, times when his practice hadn’t gone well, when he’d made mistakes. I thought the stories were inspiring, because seeing that he … 
  21. Respect for Emptiness
     … We look at these things in this way to see through them, to realize that our attachments, our clingings, are nothing but forms of confinement for the mind. When we have concentration as a counterbalance, it’s easy to follow through with this sort of analysis and not get depressed, for it opens the mind to stronger, more lasting, more solid, more spacious states … 
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