Search results for: "Delusion"
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- Persistence… The ease may continue for a while, but as it gets very fuzzy you get into a state called delusion concentration, where you’re sitting here very still but not really alert. Sometimes, when you come out of it, you’re not even sure whether you were asleep or awake. It’s hard to tell. That’s not the kind of concentration that leads …
- Establishing Priorities… Is it greed, anger, delusion, lust, fear, jealousy? What are the things that spark these emotions? You see the defilements in real-time. If you’re able to do this, then the next time you sit down it’s going to be a lot easier to stay with the breath more continuously. But if you develop the habit of throwing away your concentration as …
- Setbacks… Otherwise it all gets too facile—you know this and you know that—but do you really know it? Have you ever been in the middle of trying to figure out your greed or figure out your anger or figure out your delusion? Have you really wrestled with these things? It’s only when you wrestle with them that you learn what their weak …
- Catch Yourself Lying to Yourself… So when there are times, as he says, that telling the truth would give rise to greed, aversion, or delusion, either in your mind or the other person’s mind, so you avoid talking about those things. In avoiding them, you sometimes have to avoid them in a way that the other person doesn’t catch you avoiding them, because then they’ll know …
- Introduction… As Ajaan Lee once said, “When you practice, the first thing you learn to see is your own defilements”—your own greed, your own anger, your own delusion, all the unskillful qualities in your mind that you don’t like to see. You have to learn how not to get discouraged by them. Remember that everyone meets up with these things in their meditation …
- Birth Is Suffering… We’re really good at falling for the traps laid out by greed, aversion, and delusion. What we’ve got to learn now is to get good at renunciation, goodwill, and compassion even when they’re really difficult. What’s going to be more difficult than death? If you can’t master these things in the relative difficulties of life, when the difficulties of …
- Learning from Desire… So as soon as there’s a sense of ease and well-being, we wallow in it and we get drowsy or we drift into delusion concentration. So there’s the desire there—the desire not to have to deal with anything. That, too, leads to a state of becoming. Then of course there are the more obvious states of becoming where you think …
- Sorting Yourselves Out… That way, when greed, aversion, and delusion do come up, your allegiances are more on the side of the quiet, the stillness, the concentration, the mindfulness. The Buddha does give you lots of tools to deal with these seeming friends inside, but the important factor always is that you try to identify with the parts of the mind that really do want the tools …
- The Middle Way… As Ajaan Suwat would often point out, once the mind really gets still with that sense of well-being, then the idea of running after the kind of pleasure you used to get out of greed and aversion and delusion just loses its appeal. You can see that it’s pointless effort. This put you in the right frame of mind to look in …
- Significance… As for the recipient, as the Buddha said, the best recipients are those who are free from greed, aversion, and delusion and those who are practicing for that purpose. Those are the people who will make the best use of the gift. But all this is optional. It’s up to you to decide how much skill you want to bring to the act …
- Customs of the Noble Ones… In fact, it becomes your sport, to see how you approach the issues of greed, anger, and delusion in the mind, all the various cravings in the mind, but not as someone who’s hungry. After all, that’s exactly what craving means. It’s a kind of hunger, a kind of thirst. If you see a craving arising, but you’re feeling full …
- Standing Outside Your Thoughts… Where is it going to take you? What kind of qualities is it developing in the mind as you pursue that line of thought? Which defilements? Greed? Aversion? Delusion? And what would it lead you to do if you were to think about it for a long period of time? Keep examining the thought in that way until you decide that you really don …
- Creativity & Play… You’re winning out over greed, anger and delusion. But in the meantime the important thing about playing is that what you’re doing isn’t drudgery. It’s fun. Researchers have found that people whose work doesn’t challenge them, doesn’t inspire them, are the ones most likely to get Alzheimer’s, because the brain isn’t engaged. Playing requires intelligence. It …
- Why the Breath… When there’s greed, when there’s anger, when there’s delusion, they’ll show up in the breath. You find, though, that not only does the breath reflect the mind, but you can also use the breath to have an effect on the mind as well. Say, when there’s anger, you consciously change the rhythm of your breathing. That will have an …
- In Search of What’s Skillful… Are these good results? Are these bad results? If there’s something that’s bad, try to figure out what went wrong. “Was it the intention? Was it the implementation of the intention? Was there any greed, anger, or delusion in the mind that I didn’t see?” When we start getting knowledge in this way, the next question is, “What do you do …
- Examine Your Happiness… If there’s any harm involved in what you’re doing—either harming yourself by breaking the precepts, trying to incite yourself to passion, aversion, and delusion, or harming others by getting them to do those things—then there’s something in your happiness that’s not pure. There’s also the issue of the effort you put into that happiness. Is it worth …
- Right View & Right Resolve… If you get distracted by the pleasure, it turns into what Ajaan Lee calls delusion concentration, moha samadhi, where you leave the breath and just wallow in the sense of ease. Things get very blurry and ill-defined. You’re quiet, but you don’t really know where you are. When you come out, you ask yourself, “Was I awake? Well, I wasn’t …
- Anxiety… Either that, or you lose your focus and get into what’s called delusion concentration. So you’ve got to do something with that comfort. The act of evaluation tries to figure out what that is. Mindfulness helps. You’ve heard the directions about spreading the comfort around. Think of the breath energies going down the spine, out the legs, down the arms, out …
- Dharma Medicine… But as long as the mind still has its suffering, still has its greed, anger, and delusions, it still needs medicine. He provides the medicine with some instructions on how to use it, but it’s up to us to figure out when it’s beneficial and when it’s timely and how to apply it to the specific diseases we’re suffering from …
- Smoothing It… A lot of them have to do with greed, aversion, and delusion. Our problem is that we delight in developing those things—the wrong things. We should learn how to delight in developing mindfulness—catching ourselves when the mind is about to go into something unskillful, and being able to say No. The developing and the abandoning go together there. Learn to see that …
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