Search results for: "Becoming"
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- Slogging Through Difficulties… That’s how a moment of patience becomes part of the perfection of patience, a moment of equanimity becomes part of the perfection of equanimity. That’s how the narrative—whether it’s fast or slow, pleasant or painful—gets good. That’s the part that you can write in the present moment.
- Detail Work… They’re about the size of rice grains, but they become enormous. Although maybe that’s not a good analogy, because it takes a long time for the trees to grow that large. The defilements, in their seed form, are more like little sparks that start a fire. The fire can spread very fast, and you don’t want to wait until it’s …
- Goodwill for Safety… It becomes more and more of a habit. That way, you can live with people who are threatening and not end up doing something unskillful to protect yourself. You can provide yourself with skillful protection. There was a woman who came to see Ajaan Fuang one time, and I’d known her for years. She’d hang around Wat Asokaram, and she’d visited …
- Balancing the Bases for Concentration… So we start out with the breath, learning how to look at the breath, learning how to ask questions about the breath, so that the process of breathing becomes more than a simple physical processes keeping you alive. It becomes something that’s really refreshing. What kind of breathing would feel refreshing right now? What kind of breathing would feel blissful? Pose the question …
- Surprise Yourself… The question is, how much of the automatic side of it really is automatic? How much of it is directed by intentions that have become subconscious? One way to learn about that is to try to adjust the breath. Find a way of breathing that feels good. The Buddha himself suggests this in one of his analogies: You’re a cook working for a …
- Looking after Yourself with Ease… If you learn how to do them with knowledge, they become part of your path. They become your refuge. If something difficult comes up, you breathe in a different way, you think in a different way, you apply different labels and perceptions. Train yourself beforehand to have a good stock of these things on hand. This is why we listen to Dhamma talks, why …
- Happy About Kamma… And of course, that becomes their kamma now. The fact that you had that past bad kamma: There are unskillful ways and skillful ways that you can think about it. The unskillful way would be to think, “Well, this person was simply carrying out the dictates of kamma. So the person’s not responsible or is actually doing something good.” That’s unskillful. There …
- A Mirror for the Mind… In this case, the perception of the breath and the different ways of perceiving the breath allow it to become more comfortable. The sense of well-being, the sense of refreshment sooth both the body and the mind. So you’ve got all the factors that the Buddha said shape the mind right here. You’ve got the breath, which influences the way you …
- Right Speech, Inside & Out… Otherwise, we become enemies of one another’s practice. So keep the Buddha’s three tests in mind each time you open your mouth. Ajaan Fuang’s test was always: Is this necessary? If it’s not, you don’t have to bother. We’re afraid that if we’re quiet, people will think bad things about us. But that’s not always the …
- Practicing Meditation to Perform at Death… You can imagine becoming the child of your niece or nephew. Or maybe nobody in the family is going to have any kids, and you become their dog. You’re very protective, but still you’re a dog. So you’ve got to cut off all thoughts of your family. They have their karma, you have your karma, and you don’t want to …
- Right View as Tool… sensual craving, craving for becoming, and craving for non-becoming. We love to think about and plan for sensual pleasures. We like to take on an identity of one kind or another in the world, although sometimes we’ve got an identity we don’t like, we want to get rid of it. All these cravings create suffering, and they’re things to be …
- Duties… If the end of suffering had to depend on the world outside being perfect, well, it’s very far from perfect and it’s certainly not going to become perfect in our lifetimes. That would mean that the end of suffering would be beyond us. But the fact that suffering is dependent on conditions of the mind and we can learn how to gain …
- The Pleasure Principle Made Noble… You actually become more discerning in how you’re going to look for pleasure. So much of what we do in our lives is driven by the desire for pleasure, and yet we very rarely sit down and think it through: what really is pleasant for us, what really does give satisfaction. You have to learn how to see the desire for pleasure as …
- The Buddha’s Metaphysics… This is where these principles become relevant to what you’re doing right now. On the one hand, you can choose to be generous, and the immediate result of generosity is a sense of well-being, a sense of your own wealth, of being in a position where you have enough to share. But the influences also ripple out into the future. As the …
- Mindfulness Island… This is where mindfulness becomes helpful—because there are values you want to keep in mind, especially as you leave the monastery and go out on your own. You have to rely on yourself to train yourself, to hold the values of the Dhamma in mind, because the world is not going to hold them for you. You can use the internet to listen …
- Being Right… You have to be generous with people no matter how wrong they might be—because otherwise, their behavior starts becoming your behavior. They’re stingy, and you become stingy, too. Then you find yourself clashing and you fall into despair. You wonder if there’s ever any way that you can come to any kind of peace. On the one hand, though, you have …
- Capture Your Imagination… See what becomes interesting. See where it becomes a good place to stay. It’s not the case that, when you meditate, you don’t use your imagination at all. Actually, you have to use it very actively. You’re creating a world in the mind—but not solely in the mind. It’s also in the body. As you may have noticed, when …
- Analyzing Suffering… It, too, becomes a means to an end. The pleasure of the practice becomes a means to an end that’s outside of the aggregates. Once you’ve reached there, then you can totally let go. It’s a more natural process, a more skillful process than just trying to drop everything and claim to be like the person who lets go of the …
- Always in Training… The new student came, wanted to become a sword master, too. So the sword master put the new student to work: carrying water, chopping wood, doing chores around the center, never once mentioning the word “sword” or “master” or “fighting.” The student was beginning to wonder if he was ever going to get to become a master or even to pick up a sword …
- Cause & Effect… This is the right thing to do, it makes perfect sense to do it—so why not do it? The Buddha says to abandon sensual craving, to abandon craving for becoming and craving for non-becoming or for annihilation. When you directly see that these are really unskillful desires and you have an alternative and you’ve got the strength to follow that alternative …
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