Search results for: "Equanimity"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. Grief & Regret
     … goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, equanimity. Because these thoughts help get you past any desire to punish yourself or punish the other person or punish anybody at all. They reinforce your desire not to make mistakes that are harmful. And they give you a much larger perspective on things. Those brahmaviharas are for everybody. As the Buddha said, they should be immeasurable. Because when the … 
  15. The Buddha Teaches a Yakkha
     … You develop the equanimity to not get provoked, and that puts you in position where you can more clearly see what would be the most effective useful thing to say at a particular time. The same with physical pain: When you’re not afraid of physical pain, then you’re not easily pushed around. That puts you more in a position of power, a … 
  16. Hindrances Based on Delusion
     … The cure for too much energy, the Buddha said, is getting things concentrated, getting them serene or tranquil and developing a sense of equanimity. But to get the mind serene, you’ve got to analyze things a little bit, to see what’s working and what’s not. Especially when it’s restless like that. Now, some people do find that simply repeating a … 
  17. Appropriate Attention Always
     … Then you can get to a state of really solid equanimity, where you can see things as they’re happening very clearly. As the Buddha said, this is where mindfulness becomes pure. These are things to develop in as many circumstances as you can muster. The Buddha’s giving us a framework to apply to every present moment so that we realize that in … 
  18. The Importance of Being Focused
     … You’re learning to develop equanimity for things that are not important, and to focus your attention, focus your energy on things that can be changed. This skill becomes really handy as you get older, as you start suffering illnesses and as you approach death. When an illness arises, it’s so easy to get upset about what you suddenly can’t do, how … 
  19. How Right Mindfulness Leads to Right Concentration
     … Then there are the chants on goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, equanimity. Those are to help you get past any anger you might be carrying around from the day. Remind yourself that however you’re going to deal with other people, you want to make sure that your goodwill comes first, so that you don’t act on ill will. If you act on ill … 
  20. Happiness Without Conflict
     … Right resolve is the resolve to renounce sensuality; to develop non-ill will, in other words good will, or at least equanimity; and to develop harmlessness, or compassion. These are the desires we want to foster. And then, based on them, then there are the desires of right effort: the desire to prevent unskillful qualities from arising in the mind, the desire to get … 
  21. Anybody Home?
     … It’s in the doing that renunciate grief turns into renunciate joy, renunciate equanimity, something that can’t be contained in any little house. The Buddha said that, while he was alive, he dwelled with unrestricted awareness, an awareness that wasn’t associated with the six sense spheres at all. So when the six sense spheres passed away, that awareness remained unaffected—if we … 
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