Search results for: "Greed"
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- Death Is Normal… It takes us off into greed, into aversion, into delusion—all kinds of places where we really don’t want to go. So we need the ability to step out. You jump out when you realize it’s not a good car to be in and the driver’s not trustworthy. This is how you jump out safely: You just jump back to the …
- Today Is Better than Yesterday… In the same way, your mindfulness and concentration working together enable your discernment to pierce through all the flimsy arguments that greed, aversion, and delusion will churn out. It’s in this way that, regardless of how good yesterday’s meditation was, today’s meditation is going to be better. Not only because it’s today’s meditation, the one that you can actually …
- Adjust the Flame… That’s one of the reasons why, when the Buddha gives instructions on mindfulness practice, he says to put aside greed and distress with reference to the world. Because wherever there’s a world, there’s a state of becoming. At first, you’re putting aside concern for worlds outside, and you actually want to stay in this world, the world of your body …
- Evident Inequality… The Buddha explained that he was victorious over his greed, victorious over his stinginess. When the king saw that the man didn’t even have an over-robe to wear anymore, he gave him a large amount of wealth to the man. The man gave it all to the Buddha. The king doubled the amount of wealth, and the man gave that to the …
- The Pleasure of Concentration… The Buddha speaks of the pleasure of concentration as a way of pulling yourself away from your sensual desires, your lust, your greed: the things that create trouble in the world. Wherever you go looking for something, somebody else has already laid claimed to it, which means you have to fight other people to gain those pleasures. And when that pleasure comes, it just …
- Good Fences… If it gives rise to greed, if it gives rise to fear, you’re looking at it wrong. After all, if arahants were looking at it, they wouldn’t feel these things. And they’re the ones who are looking at things in the right way. So you have to realize that there’s something wrong. You also realize that you can hold yourself …
- Meditators at Work… Then you can get into the issue of when you have a vagrant thought, what happened to the breath? How does the breath relate to the types of thoughts that come up into the mind? Some ways of breathing tend to aggravate anger and irritation; other ways of breathing tend to aggravate greed or fear. How can you tell when you’re slipping into …
- Strengthening Concentration… Why is it that greed, aversion, and delusion can still have power over the mind even when you’ve learned so much about their drawbacks? What’s still their gratification? What can you do to wean yourself off that? Can you teach yourself new ways of feeding? This is up to your own ingenuity. But that’s how you strengthen your concentration. You come …
- The Dhamma Protects… Buddha’s not saying that you simply put up with everything. Again, there are things in the mind, he says, that you don’t want to just sit there and watch. Greed comes, aversion comes, lust, jealousy, fear: You don’t just sit there and watch them overcome the mind. If you can’t figure them out, you watch them for a while—but …
- When the Mind Is Still… You put aside greed and distress with reference to the world. So you decide with any other thought that comes up in the range of your awareness that you want to stop it in its tracks—like that game of whack-a-mole. When a thought appears, look for where in your sense of the breath and the body there’s a tightness or …
- Thinking & Evaluating… The same with anger, the same with greed, the same with any of the unskillful thoughts—even the seemingly skillful ones, like equality or justice. For right now, you just put them aside. Even our best values have to have their time and place. When, as right now, you’re trying to get the mind quiet, they’re not going to be helpful, because …
- The Right Time at the Right Place… Think about how much you use your eyes especially, now in this age of screens, taking in all kinds of harmful information—things that are designed to give rise to greed, aversion, and delusion. Those nerves need to be rested. They need to be soothed. So here you have the chance to close your eyes, soothe those nerves, soothe all the different organs in …
- What You Can’t Change, What You Can… We take our greed, aversion, and delusion for granted. We take our normal everyday state of mind for granted, thinking that that’s the way things are. And yet that’s something that can be changed. So we have to stop and take stock: What are the things we can change, what are the things we can’t? The fact that things are inconstant …
- Overcoming Delusion… when you don’t have to. And a large part of the meditation is recognizing the qualities of mind that get in the way of being skillful. There are basically three: greed, aversion, delusion. And of the three, delusion is the hardest, because by definition you don’t know when you’re deluded. It’s not that you don’t know anything at all …
- Training in Happiness… Is this a reliable voice? Who’s speaking in here? Is it greed speaking? Is it laziness speaking? Or is it wisdom speaking? Wisdom looks at things in terms of long-term happiness. The basic question wisdom asks is, “What when I do it will lead to my long-term welfare and happiness?” So learn how to recognize that voice in your mind and …
- Addictive Thinking… Thoughts of greed, thoughts of aversion, thoughts of delusion—thoughts by which we harm ourselves—are addictive. You wouldn’t think that we’d develop these addictions, but we do. It’s partly out of force of habit and partly out of an inability to imagine ourselves doing anything anyway else, thinking anyway else, feeling anyway else. So in the meditation, we have to …
- Respect as a Sign of Intelligence… They’re trying to go straight for your greed, aversion, delusion. So you have to resist their message. This is why we try to keep the Buddha’s teachings in mind. He says true happiness is possible. Sometimes it comes by having to do without, but you gain a lot in return. There are greater happinesses and lesser happinesses in life, and the wise …
- Goodwill All Around… Because one of the big problems we run across in our meditation is thoughts of greed, anger and delusion. And one way to overcome them, or at least to keep them in check, is to remind yourself you’ve already wished happiness to these other beings. So why do you want to be greedy for their things? Why do you want to get angry …
- New Feeding Habits for the Mind… You begin to look back upon thoughts of lust, thoughts of anger, thoughts of greed, and you begin to wonder: “Why did I ever want to feed on those? What kind of nourishment did they provide?” Nothing really solid, nothing really substantial, nothing really healthful at all. Once you learn how to let go of those things, you learn to stop feeding on things …
- All Winners, No Losers… And when you meditate, you’re gaining some control of your aversion and delusion, which means that other people don’t have to be victims of your greed, aversion, or delusion. So you’re looking for happiness the way that doesn’t have any boundaries. It’s not a case where you win and somebody else loses. Everybody wins. This is not like the …
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