Search results for: "Becoming"

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  2. Thinking & Evaluating
     … There becomes a point where you have to take them off. In other words, you have to learn how to depend on your own powers of evaluation, to see what works, to see what doesn’t work. You may fall down a couple of times, but after a while, as your sense of balance gets more and more steady, more and more reliable, you … 
  3. Don’t Be Afraid of Mistakes
     … It means exercising your powers of discernment so that they become strong, through exercise, to the point where you can really learn how to trust them. Trust becomes one hundred percent at the time of stream-entry. Up to that point, there’s going to be a little bit of wariness. But stick with what seems best, and, as I said, give it a … 
  4. Happily on the Path
     … Everything becomes gray and equanimous. But that’s not the path the Buddha described. He does talk about equanimity—that’s the closest he gets to talking about acceptance, accepting things as they are—but equanimity is never taught on its own, and the lists of qualities that lead up to equanimity always contain something having to do with joy, pleasure, happiness. In other … 
  5. Breath Meditation
     … Otherwise, they become abstractions. Words. I once heard some people talking about the problems they had with equanimity, but what they were actually talking about were the problems they have with the idea of equanimity. But if you can learn how to embody equanimity along with friendliness, compassion, and empathetic joy with the breath, then you don’t have to worry about your reactions … 
  6. The Rivers of Karma
     … Pain becomes a tool an opportunity to learn about how the mind creates unnecessary suffering for itself around the pain. Pleasure too becomes a tool, part of the path. You don’t want to see pleasure and pain as things to run away from or to run toward, but as tools you can use to give the mind more and more freedom. That way … 
  7. In the Present
     … What am I becoming right now?” You become, of course, through your actions, so what are you becoming by the way you act, what kind of person are you turning into by the habits you’re following, and is that the direction you want to go? This, too, points to the fact that the present moment is not an isolated moment. It builds on … 
  8. Hold onto the Breath
     … That’s when the refuge really becomes powerful. That’s when the path becomes powerful, as you hold onto it not just as one of many options but as *the *option that’s going to get you out. Whatever stress, whatever difficulties there are in holding onto the path, it’s all to the good. It’s better than the needless and pointless stress … 
  9. Dhamma is Timeless
     … Your search for happiness becomes a noble search. So always keep these principles in mind. These principles make sure that your path is on the path—let’s put it that way. What you’re doing is actually leading to where you want it to go, and not wandering someplace else. We chant every night: The Dhamma is well taught. Timeless. To be seen … 
  10. Safety in Awareness
     … From that perception, you can go directly to the awareness that’s aware of this, and that becomes the object of your concentration. You learn how to trust in that. That becomes more and more your sense of home, where you belong. It comes with a very, very strong sense of oneness and of stability. Now, you don’t want to go jumping to … 
  11. The Wisdom of Ardency
     … It becomes yours through the fact that you try to do your best in being ardent in the practice. Being ardent also teaches you how to think strategically. There are a lot of things in the path that you have to develop first before you let them go. You have to develop a strong sense of self, a healthy sense of self—that you … 
  12. True Happiness Starts with Giving
     … What you’re doing is becoming a connoisseur of happiness. What does real happiness consist of? What is it like? It’s not just pleasures. It’s not power; not money, wealth. It’s a quality of the mind. And what activities foster that quality of the mind in a way that’s really stable? The Buddha lays it all out. All too often … 
  13. An Even Keel
     … That’s the kind of eye, that’s the kind of state of mind that develops a quality of solidity, becomes a mind you can trust. And when the mind becomes a mind you can trust, then whatever comes up in the meditation holds fewer and fewer dangers, because you’re less likely to jump at things. Because, after all, what is your guarantee … 
  14. A New Framework
     … So what are the qualities that help you break the curve, so that you can make a change and become skillful? I was reading an article recently that talked about the difference between really good doctors and great doctors. The author was saying that when you see a great doctor in action, you see how focused he is, how aggressive he is in getting … 
  15. Defeatism? - Anything But
     … things that will become true only if you want them to become true. If you’re going to be good at a sport, to be good at a musical instrument, to be good at cooking, to be good at carpentry, you have to want it to happen. Only then will it actually happen. And the path is that second kind of truth. It’s … 
  16. The Field Hospital
     … craving for sensuality, craving for becoming, craving for non-becoming. The first one you have to deal with is craving for sensuality. We’re attached to sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations. And we’re attached especially to our thoughts about those things, our plans for those things—we crave the craving. This is where craving gets tricky: We have to deal with many … 
  17. Perfections as Priorities
     … One is that you try to become really excellent and foremost in these particular qualities of the mind; and, two, you want to give them top priority, make them foremost in your life. When you’re working on a job, whether or not the job succeeds, you want to be sure to develop qualities like patience, truthfulness, determination, and discernment regardless. Sometimes the success … 
  18. Respect for What’s Noble
     … But, he’s saying, we learn to put an end to that clinging, first by searching for the cause, which is three kinds of craving—for sensuality, becoming, or non-becoming—and then putting an end to the cause. So the truths he teaches go against the grain, because they locate suffering and its cause in things we like, things we feed on. To … 
  19. The Spider on the Web
     … Why should you try to banish them? But actually, you want to see the process by which thoughts are constructed, how a thought world, how a state of becoming is put together, so that you can understand why the compelling ones have so much power. You want to get really quick at that to see what the different stages are, until you can catch … 
  20. When You Practice on Your Own
     … What does it mean to “wander off” to other things? What happens? You begin to see the process of becoming as a thought-world appears and you decide whether to go into it or not. If you go into it, that becomes a state of becoming and birth. You learn how not to fall for those things. You begin to learn the stages, the … 
  21. Beyond Imagination
     … The body becomes more and more of a burden the longer you have it. The current Supreme Patriarch of Thailand likes to make this point again and again. People ask him how he is, and he says, “Look, I’m a ninety-year-old man. How do you expect? The proper question is, ‘Can you bear with it?’” There are people who find that … 
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