Search results for: "Becoming"

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  2. Rooted in Desire
     … In that way, desire becomes your friend. The same in the path as a whole: We want peace of mind, but if all you do is sit around and think about peace of mind, peace of mind, how much you want peace of mind, and yet it’s not coming, that kind of desire is not helpful. Instead, if you want peace of mind … 
  3. The Right Attitude to the Body
     … Nanda got really embarrassed about the whole thing, so he got more serious about the practice and ended up becoming an arahant. He went back to see the Buddha and said, “About that promise—the heavenly nymphs: I release you from the promise. I don’t need them anymore.” That’s Nanda’s story. Rupananda’s is not in the Canon. There’s one … 
  4. Honest & Observant
     … But as the Buddha discovered, our being is becoming, and becoming is a kind of doing. You want to be sensitive to that all the time. As you meditate, you’re trying to develop three qualities around your actions that lead to knowledge: You’re mindful, ardent, and alert—alert to watch what you’re doing; and mindful to remember what you’ve learned … 
  5. Use Your Imagination
     … It’s part of the anticipation that gives rise to states of becoming in the mind. We anticipate that a particular thought world is going to be fun, so we create it. And if you don’t like your creation, well, you change it here and you change it there a little bit. Then you get in and you ride. If you can do … 
  6. Harmony
     … This doesn’t mean that you become totally passive, it means simply that you learn how to be non-reactive. When the mind doesn’t react, when it’s not quick to be triggered, then you can see more easily what should and what shouldn’t be done. Your sense of shame, your sense of compunction, can have some time to work so that … 
  7. Issues of Control
     … You’re taking things that are not-self and you’re learning to influence them so that they can become part of the path. There will come a point where you realize you can take these things only so far, but it’s far enough to get into a good state of concentration. It’s far enough to become part of the path to … 
  8. The Noble Eightfold Path to the Deathless
     … Concentration then becomes a basis for more discernment. When the mind is still, it can see itself a lot more clearly, and you begin to see that the suffering the Buddha identified as the clinging-aggregates is there even in the concentration. Remember the other image the Buddha has of the path, which is that it’s like a raft, a raft made out … 
  9. In Harmlessness Is Strength
     … This is how you become harmless. This is how you become strong—because the strength lies in the harmlessness. When the Buddha began to get disillusioned with his austerities, he recalled the time when he’d gotten the mind spontaneously into jhana when he was a young child. The first question he asked himself was, “Why am I afraid of that pleasure? Is there … 
  10. Taking Apart Suffering
     … This way, by taking things apart, you find that you become a lot more manageable. Once you’ve cobbled together a skillful mood in one part of the mind, then you can look at the unskillful mood and see how it’s created out of little bits and pieces: a little thought here, a little physical sensation there, and they get glommed together. That … 
  11. Disposable Worlds
     … And after getting the mind to settle down, he said, “Aren’t we creating a state of becoming?”—which is another technical term for these worlds in the mind—“I thought we were supposed to practice to let go of becoming.” And Ajaan Lee said, “Well, if you’re going to let them go, the first thing you have to do is learn how … 
  12. A Refuge from Karma
     … It’s as if you’re taking the qualities of the Buddha, the teachings of the Dhamma, and you’re steeping your body, steeping your feelings, steeping your mind in those qualities, so that each time that you sense yourself breathing in, breathing out, you can remind yourself, “Oh right, there’s the Buddha, there’s Dhamma, there’s the Sangha.” These things become … 
  13. Noble Right Concentration
     … The mind can go through various stages as you let go of the directed thought and evaluation, and are simply there with the breath, becoming one with the sensation of the breath. If the sense of rapture becomes too intense, you drop that. Go for a sense of pleasure. Finally, even the sense of pleasure becomes gross. You settle down with a sense of … 
  14. Learning from the Precepts
     … You become strong, and your strength doesn’t become a burden or an actual hindrance. So. What do you learn? Well, one thing: You learn about being mindful. You have to keep the precept in mind. And you have to be alert, because things are going to come up fast, both inside and outside. I find this particularly relevant in the case that the … 
  15. Understanding Aggregates
     … Because there’s so much that you have to do in order to take the raw data from splotches of color coming into the eye and building them into a three-dimensional world that you can actually move around in, and the question sometimes becomes, “Does that world actually exist? Are there any things out there that really lie behind, say, your visual image … 
  16. The Pursuit of Pleasure
     … We’ve all known instances of pleasure that carried a high price, and there are times when we even become afraid of them. There’s the story of the Buddha, going through those six years of austerities before his awakening, doing everything he could not to let his mind get overcome by pain or by pleasure, submitting himself to an awful a lot of … 
  17. Ultimate Reality
     … Craving for becoming: taking on an identity in a world of experience, centered on a particular thing that you want to get or want to gain. And craving for non-becoming: You’ve got a becoming — a world or a sense of self — that you want to destroy. These three kinds of craving are the cause of suffering, and you have to learn how … 
  18. Discerning Actions
     … It’s through the practice of concentration that restraint becomes possible— and it doesn’t feel like a burden. It becomes something that you can do and not feel strung out. The other healthy ego functions—compassion or altruism and humor—have to come in as well, so that the path is not a burden. It doesn’t become something really hard to take … 
  19. Concentration Food
     … Tell it to be shorter, it becomes shorter. Deeper, more shallow, heavier, lighter: The breath responds. You can tell it to go to different parts of the body. Here, of course, we’re not talking about the air coming in and out through the nose. The Buddha classifies the in-and-out breath as part of the wind property in the body itself. It … 
  20. The Sport of Wise People
     … But if you can keep a light spirit about things, a long trail becomes shorter, and a heavy load becomes light. So do what you can to keep your spirits up and to enjoy the meditation as a game. Building a Home for the Mind November 25, 2015 The texts often talk about concentration as being a home for the mind—vihara-dhamma—the … 
  21. Who’s in Charge Here?
     … the person you become; the world you experience. So you’d better be careful about what you do and say and think. As the Buddha said, this principle of heedfulness is what underlies all skillful activity, all skillful qualities in the mind. Then, based on that, you can develop other skillful qualities, too. One is compassion for yourself, compassion for people around you, realizing … 
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