Search results for: "Greed"

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  2. Elemental Energy
     … They’ll keep you in the present, give you a handle for dealing with anger as it arises or greed or lust or fear or whatever the emotion may be, and if nothing is arising, you’ve got the breath. It gives you a good place to stay. It’s a home for the mind. In Pali, they use the word *vihāra-dhamma, *which … 
  3. Focus on What You’re Doing
     … that we can get good at fabricating a good state of mind and get more conscious of what it means to engage in fabrication. We’re always fabricating different mental states: greed, aversion, delusion—all kinds of things. We’re doing it all the time, to the point we’re not really conscious of what we’re doing. So when we sit down to … 
  4. Grasping the Snake
     … To what extent do you allow anger to come in and take charge? To what extent do you allow greed to come in, or feelings of being slighted, or of not being respected? Those feelings, the Buddha said, come under restlessness and anxiety, which are hindrances. So as you go through the day, watch out for them. If they’re allowed to take root … 
  5. Conditions for Concentration
     … things like greed, anger, antagonism, dismissiveness, stubbornness, deceit, intoxication, heedlessness. If you can identify any of these traits in your mind, you can say, “For the time being, I’m just going to drop that. I’m not going to go there.” And you see that you can actually drop it. I remember once overhearing Ajaan Fuang teaching some lay people. He’d have … 
  6. Noble Priorities
     … After all, national customs—the usual civilizations of human beings—are based on greed, aversion, and delusion. They’re based on defilement. Their priorities are different. So as you take on the practice, you have to realize you’re changing your priorities, and you’re going to have to step outside of your culture. This was one of the things I appreciated about Ajaan … 
  7. The Cool Fire of Jhana
     … As he says, unlike the hot fires of your greed, aversion, and delusion, or passion, aversion, and delusion, it doesn’t wear out your nerves. It’s actually good for the body, good for the mind, and it brings light into areas of the mind that have long been dark. You can read your mind because the flame is steady. Of course, it’s … 
  8. To Discern Suffering
     … you can step outside of your thoughts. Most of the time we’re buffeted by our thoughts like strong winds coming from all kinds of directions. Anger comes from one direction. Greed comes from another. Sadness. They blow us around. What we need is a place where we can stand and get outside of our thoughts—which is what the breath provides. You can … 
  9. Goodness
     … As the Buddha said, one of the best ways you can benefit others is to get them to be interested in getting rid of greed, aversion, and delusion; to get them interested in following the precepts, so that they can take care of the one person that each of them is responsible for. But that’s an area where you have to use your … 
  10. Use Your Imagination
     … the case there’s just one way that things will work in the mind, because the mind doesn’t have just one set of defilements. It has lots of different defilements. Greed, aversion, and delusion can come in 108 different forms, and maybe 108 is too small a number. If you want to just memorize a few principles and hope that those few things … 
  11. For Your Future’s Sake
     … You could say No to your greed, No to whatever selfish ideas you might have. This gives you a sense of power. You know you’re doing something good for other people, and it’ll serve you well down the line. You learn that over time. The same with the precepts: There are lots of things you may like to do right now that … 
  12. Distractions
     … On the one hand, you try to keep track of one object in and of itself, but on the other you’re also trying to subdue greed and distress with reference to the world. In other words, you know there are distractions that will pull you out into the world, so you’ve got to be prepared to subdue them. Be on the lookout … 
  13. Recognizing Fools
     … He said, “It’s a good thing that you didn’t kill the monk.” But it shows that devas still have greed, aversion, and delusion. Even the great Brahma has defilements. There’s the story of the monk who goes to visit the great Brahma after getting visions of many levels of devas. He’s been sent up the deva bureaucracy because he’s … 
  14. Imagine Your Breath
    Keep focused on the breath, in and of itself—ardent, alert, mindful—putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. That’s the formula. What it means is that you put aside all your concerns about the world right now. You can think of the world as anything from starting from the skin around your body on out, except for the cocoon … 
  15. Disposable Worlds
     … Lust, greed, anger, delusion, fear can arise from these world-constructs that we’re so adept at making. You hop into a thought and think it’s going to take you someplace you’d like to go —to the Rocky Mountains, to the Grand Canyon—and it ends up taking you down to hell. One thought leads to the next, leads to the next … 
  16. A Refuge from Karma
     … We put aside greed and distress with reference to the world. This world outside that we’ve been taking as our standard: We’ve got to put that aside, at least for the time being, and just look inside. The mindfulness is what remembers the Dhamma, the alertness is what watches what we’re doing, and the ardency is what tries to bring that … 
  17. Inquisitive
     … As the Buddha said, we can use concentration as a pleasant abiding—in other words, just a nice place to settle in—but we can also use it to develop mindfulness and alertness, and to figure out how the mind can free itself of greed, aversion, and delusion. The breath is going to teach you those last two things only if you ask questions … 
  18. Fixing the Present
     … pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain—and looking at your perceptions, the images running around in your mind, giving rise to greed, anger and delusion, fear, panic, whatever. You want to calm both the feelings and the perceptions. And a first step in that direction is simply to see what perception’s operating there in the background. One of the ways you do that … 
  19. Noble Right Concentration
     … Stay focused on the body in and of itself—in this case, it’s the breath—ardent, alert, mindful, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. In other words, you’ve got one topic that you’re focused on. If anything else comes up that’s related to the world, you put it aside. That’s the formula for establishing mindfulness … 
  20. A Friend When You’re on Your Own
     … Having lived with someone who embodied the Dhamma so much, it was striking to find someone who actually had a lot of greed and was not ashamed to show it. I realized I couldn’t stay around that person. I didn’t want to pick up his attitudes. That’s one of the lessons you want to take with you, both as you go … 
  21. The Pursuit of Pleasure
     … These are the kinds of pleasures that are bait for the mind, to get you stuck on the hook of greed, anger, and delusion. Obviously, you don’t want to fall for them. But the opposite is niramisa sukha, a form of pleasure that’s not baited at all, doesn’t depend on the flesh at all. It starts with right concentration and goes … 
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