Search results for: "Equanimity"
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- Strength to Be Good… That’s not mindfulness, that’s equanimity. Mindfulness is keeping things in mind, particularly what’s skillful and what’s not skillful. You learn this either from listening to others or reading books, or from your own experience. And you want to have that at your fingertips, so that when something bad comes up in the mind—greed, aversion, delusion—or something good comes …
- The Wisdom of Ardency… The equanimity of putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world is a mental quality. So you’ve got body, feelings, mind, and mental qualities—all four frames of reference for establishing mindfulness—all right there. You can see their interactions, and seeing their interactions is what enables you to gain insight. Remember, insight is not just seeing things as they are …
- Thinking About Rebirth… You’re realizing that the only proper attitude is to have a lot of goodwill for everybody, followed by a lot of equanimity for everybody, yourself included, but then focusing on the desire not to go back and settle old scores, but to wipe the slate clean. When you reach the deathless, none of your karma can follow you in there. Everybody’s mind …
- No Foolproofing… If your energy is too scattered, you want to develop more the qualities of serenity, concentration, equanimity. The one thing the Buddha has you develop at all times is mindfulness. But mindfulness is not simply awareness of the present moment. It means keeping in mind what you need to know. So mindfulness is not simple. You have to keep these instructions in mind. It …
- Solid in the Face of Death… When it’s easier to bear, you can look at it with a lot more equanimity and see, “What are the general patterns here? How can I get a handle on the fact that there is suffering here and I can relieve it?” Part of the answer lies in realizing that you’re adding unnecessary suffering on top of the pain that’s already …
- Staying on Track… Think thoughts of goodwill for everybody, thoughts of compassion, thoughts of empathetic joy, thoughts of equanimity. Try to make your mind unlimited so that the pain of having made a mistake like that doesn’t overwhelm you. The important thing to realize is that whatever unskillful things come up in the mind, there’s always a skillful antidote. In some cases, the Buddha just …
- Metta Math… universal goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity. Because we do it every day, it’s all too easy for us to simply mouth the words without really thinking about what we’re saying, even though it’s translated into English. So it’s good to stop and think: One, why do we have the chant? And two, are we getting the most out of …
- All for the Sake of Freedom… the feeling of pleasure or equanimity. Perception: the perception of breath, or—as the sense of the body begins to dissolve away—the perception of the space that permeates the body and then spreads out, so that it seems like the skin turns into nothing more than little dots of sensation, with no clear boundary between space inside and space outside. There can also …
- The Path of Action… Sometimes they talk about the aggregates, sometimes he talks about sense-media; sometimes they stress equanimity, other times they stress effort. Attempts to map out the whole teaching and make it into a consistent system have always been problematic. There’s no final word on what Buddhist philosophy should be. People keep coming up with new ideas, new interpretations, new frameworks. But the Buddha …
- Detail Work… You can think about unlimited goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, equanimity, in very vague terms, like a big cloud of goodwill. But it’s also possible to think about them in more specific terms. For instance, you can think of all the people you know who are in the east: Spread goodwill to them. Then ask yourself, “Who do you know who’s in the …
- Why We Bow Down… a state of good concentration, a state of equanimity.” But the Buddha said No, there’s something more, something better, which comes from not fabricating at all. Believing this requires a lot of dispassion. It requires that we accept a lot of value judgments about things we tend to hold on to very dearly, particularly when it tells us that they’re not worth …
- Resisting the Germs of Defilement… rapture, serenity, concentration, and equanimity. Those can help build up a lot of resistance. But the first three factors—mindfulness, analysis of qualities, and persistence or right effort—are the factors that help you recognize the germs that you didn’t recognize before, the things that you for a long time thought were okay or normal, but now you suddenly realize are the beginning …
- Not Resolved on Self… Or if you can’t muster goodwill, work on equanimity. Being resolved on harmlessness means finding your happiness in ways that don’t cause long-term harm to anybody. This relates to the practice of virtue. So right resolve is basically taking the insights that come from the four noble truths and applying them to your practice of virtue, concentration, and the discernment that …
- Large Perspective, Small Focus… That reflection on equanimity—realizing that happiness has to be based on your actions—keeps bringing you back from everything out there to what you’re doing right here right now. I know a lot of people like to stay with that larger picture, but the larger picture is there just to give you a sense of perspective. The real work is right here …
- The Pleasure Principle Made Noble… They just identify the jhāna as pleasure or equanimity, as the case may be. At any rate, he asked himself why he was afraid of that pleasure, and he realized there was nothing to be afraid of—it was blameless: both in that it didn’t harm anybody and in that it didn’t harm his own mind. In other words, there are some …
- Comfortable as an Outsider… We have the chants on the different parts of the body to gain a sense of distance from the concerns of the body, the concerns of consuming; reflections on aging, illness, and death, and the fact that our actions are our only possessions; reflections on goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, equanimity. We develop the right attitudes toward the people around us. We wish them well …
- The Creator of Worlds… It was here that his equanimity and mindfulness became pure. You’re feeding the mind on skillful pleasures. You’re going to be holding on to this, but it’s a skillful thing to hold on to. You’ve got a sense of well-being that nourishes the mind, so that you don’t have to go feeding in hidden corners, feeding off of …
- Guilt & Shame… Thoughts of unlimited goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity all help to strengthen that resolve. So when you find your mind in a spiral of guilt, remind yourself that even though some ways of thinking would encourage that and tell you that it’s a good thing, but the Buddha’s way is not one of them. Because again, the question of justice doesn …
- Learning Through Healing… And especially if you’re doing the meditation not just while you’re sitting here, but also as you try to keep the mind centered, alert, and equanimous as you go through the day. You begin to see the different things that have an impact on the mind. You also begin to see the extent to which the mind goes out and creates trouble …
- The Dhamma Bucket List… Generosity, virtue, renunciation, discernment, persistence, endurance, truth, determination, goodwill, equanimity: Which of these qualities is lacking in your mind? See if you can squeeze some of that out of your activities. And how would you go about developing those qualities? You can develop them in daily life. You can develop them by making up your mind you’re going to make a special donation …
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