Search results for: "Becoming"
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- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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.
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
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