Search results for: "Equanimity"

  1. Page 29
  2. Marshalling the Emotions
     … That’s when your sense of nibbida, or disenchantment, can turn to the concentration, because you’ve discovered something in the mind that doesn’t need to feed on anything anymore, even on the pleasure and the rapture, the equanimity of concentration. That’s when nibbida and viraga, or dispassion, become total. That’s when they can liberate the mind. As you can see … 
  3. Just Events
     … So she went through the first treatment and was able to hold her mind in the state of very solid non-reactivity, the state of equanimity throughout the treatment. But then when she came out, she was exhausted. Ajaan Fuang went to visit her the next day, to see how she was doing, and she told him what had happened. He said, “You’re … 
  4. Doing Meditation
     … You take your equanimity and you apply it to a particular topic, apply it to a particular notion: a sense of space, boundless space, or a sense of boundless consciousness. When you see the act of putting it there and keeping it there, you realize that even these very refined, very still, very spacious states are things that are put together. That’s when … 
  5. Transparent Becoming
     … either through really self-destructive behavior, or through meditating and coming to the conclusion, “I’ll have no desires, I’ll have no wants at all, I’ll just accept whatever comes.” What happens is that they start creating a new self around the one who’s just trying to be there, still, equanimous. In other words, in the desire to destroy one bhava … 
  6. Empathetic Joy
     … People talk about goodwill, compassion, equanimity quite a lot. But empathetic joy somehow gets lost between the cracks. Which is unfortunate because it’s a very important background for our practice, a very important context for our practice. If you can’t be happy for other people’s happiness, you’ll have trouble feeling right about your own. We hear again and again stories … 
  7. To Comprehend Suffering
     … wanting things to be other than what they are, which carries the implication that if you could learn some patience and some equanimity, some endurance, some acceptance, there wouldn’t be any suffering. But the Buddha’s teaching goes a lot deeper than that. Suffering comes, he says, from three types of craving, which can be very strong. First, craving for sensuality: your fascination … 
  8. Abandoning Effluents (3)
     … From calm comes concentration, and from concentration, you get equanimity. These two sets—the destroying and the developing—go together. There is that pattern throughout the path: As you’re developing good qualities in the mind, you’re basically creating a state of becoming, but then other becomings will come up in the mind, and you can’t let them destroy the good state … 
  9. The Lightened Mind
     … You come to a state of calm, concentration, equanimity. You develop the mind in skilfulness. Then you cleanse it. This is where the Buddha says you learn how to have the theme of your concentration well in hand. Ajaan Fuang would call this lifting the mind above its object. You’re focused on your object, but you’ve lifted your awareness up a little … 
  10. Contentment
     … You’ve got the physical feelings that arise with regard to the breath and the mental feelings of happiness or sadness or equanimity that come along with the breathing. Then there’s perception, which labels things. Your main labeling job here right now is labeling the type of breath and labeling the type of feeling. It’s all here. These are all the things … 
  11. Stretch Your Mind
     … When you’re spreading thoughts of goodwill, lots of compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity, you make those large as well. In fact, the phrase mahaggataṁ cittaṁ, the enlarged mind, is a description of the mind in concentration. Sometimes, when we think about concentration, we think of the mind being focused down to one sharp point, but that’s not the concentration the Buddha was … 
  12. Getting the Most Out of the Present
     … determination, persistence, endurance, truthfulness, goodwill for the people who’d benefit from getting the duty done, equanimity toward the things that you’d rather be doing. You realize that you can’t have your druthers all the time. When you can think in this way, then everything in life becomes a part of the practice. None of your time is wasted. Our problem is … 
  13. Behind the Scenes
    One of the reasons why we start the meditation with thoughts of goodwill for all beings in all directions—along with thoughts of compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity—is to put the mind in the right frame to meditate. Otherwise, we bring the issues of the day into our meditation. Instead of focusing on the breath, we focus on what we did or somebody … 
  14. So Little Time
     … We’re encouraged to have unlimited mind-states, unlimited goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, equanimity, but our resources are limited—our time, our energy—which means that we have to choose our issues very carefully. Notice that after the Buddha’s awakening the issue that he focused on was one that all of us have in common, which is that we want happiness and yet … 
  15. Purity of Heart
     … Which would you rather be involved in? When the mind is really still, there comes a sense of ease, rapture, and equanimity from the stillness. This not only gives you something to compare, but it also gives you a perspective on your life: Do you want to spend your whole life running around feeding in these ways, knowing that if you’re dependent on … 
  16. To Be Trustworthy
     … And even though this is described as a state of equanimity, there’s a strong sense of well-being. This is an innocent pleasure. Ajaan Fuang used to say it’s the grass at the gate: the image being of a herd of cows being kept inside a corral. The owner opens up the gate, and the cows go running out to find grass … 
  17. Concentration Develops Right View
     … As for the sub-factors of name, there’s going to be attention to your topic, your intention to stay, your perception that holds you here, the feeling of pleasure that you try to maintain, or the feeling of equanimity if you get deeper into concentration, and then contact among these mental events. These sub-factors all work together. The thing is, you may … 
  18. Tenacity
     … a sense of ease, a sense of rapture or fullness, a sense of equanimity that you can develop. But it requires work. As with any skill, it takes time. There are going to be lots of mistakes, but you have to learn from your mistakes and not get discouraged by them. Stick with the determination to see things through. Ajaan Mun once said in … 
  19. Empathetic Joy
     … And you wonder what he would have said about a passage I read the other day in a Buddhist magazine—that if you can maintain equanimity during sex, that can also be a form of purification. The Buddha had no use for these ideas. You don’t have to burn off your old kamma. If you had to burn off your old kamma, he … 
  20. Asalha Puja – Completeness
     … When the mind is nourished, it can look at a situation with a lot more equanimity, a lot more objectivity, whatever the situation, and see what it needs to be done, what would be the skillful thing, the harmless thing to do right now, and it’s willing and able to do it This is how the mind achieves completion, fullness, by developing a … 
  21. Concentration: A Balancing Act
     … calm, concentration, and equanimity. If you get drowsy, and there is that tendency as things begin to calm down—you’re focused on the breath, and it seems very natural to fall asleep—you’ve got to fight that tendency. That’s when you develop the more active factors: analysis of qualities, persistence, and rapture. Analysis of qualities means reading what’s going on … 
  22. Load next page...