Search results for: "Form"

  1. Page 37
  2. Potentials for Rapture
     … All the forms of what they call fabrication are right here when the mind is with the breath. All the potentials for the path are right here as well. It’s simply a matter of familiarizing yourself with the potentials you’ve got here and, over time, making the most of them. That’s how the practice works.
  3. Don’t Leak Out Your Ears & Eyes
     … But whichever form of mindfulness immersed in the body you practice, you’ve got to use it as your foundation post. That’s the Buddha’s image. He says our mind is like six different kinds of animals, and they all go off in their different directions through the six senses. If you were to tie them all to a leash, but there was … 
  4. Selfing & Not-selfing
     … And what have you got? You’ve got these five aggregates—form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, consciousness. The Buddha calls them twigs and branches. You bind them together as a raft. And one of the ways of binding them together, of course, is to get the mind into concentration. You’ve got the form of the body. You’ve got the feeling of pleasure that … 
  5. Serenity
     … But this form of well-being is skillful. It’s worth developing. The danger of getting stuck here is extremely minor compared to the dangers of looking for your pleasure elsewhere. Because the nature of the mind is that it wants pleasure. If it can’t find it inside, it’s going to go looking outside. If you can’t produce your own food … 
  6. The Bright Tunnel
     … There’s form affected by clinging, feeling affected by clinging, perceptions, thought fabrications, consciousness, all of which are affected by clinging. The clinging is what turns them into suffering. The clinging is what tries to wring a happiness out of them that they simply don’t have to offer. Having to run around clinging to things all the time puts the mind in a … 
  7. Seeing with the Body
     … A lot of the Buddhist texts, when they talk about the knowledge you gain from meditation, express it as a form of vision, something you see. You’re working toward knowledge and vision, they say. The first experience of Awakening is the opening of the Dhamma Eye. Full Awakening comes with knowledge and vision of things as they have come to be. But there … 
  8. Self Esteem
     … And it’s one of the few forms of self esteem that actually keeps you open to change. For many of us, self esteem means thinking that basically we’re good people — which means that we have to keep trying to look back on our past actions to see evidence of that. And then, of course, we run across things that don’t support … 
  9. A Quality of the Character
     … Those are the qualities that form the context of the Dhamma, and it’s within those qualities that you then learn about specific instructions: how to analyze things, how to focus on the breath, how to develop concentration. But it always has to be within that context of virtues. And these are best picked up by being around people who are virtuous. Part of … 
  10. Pay Careful Attention
    We live in a culture where people tend to be careless about what they say—saying things that are not true, saying things that are divisive, saying things with the intention of hurting other people’s feelings, or just opening their mouths and saying whatever comes out—all of which are forms of wrong speech. When people are careless of what they say, we … 
  11. Equanimity & More
     … As the Buddha pointed out, there are skillful and unskillful forms of equanimity. So do your best to develop the kind of equanimity that really is skillful. That gets you focused.
  12. To Disturb Your Complacency
     … What’s this? What’s happening here in your mind right now? What’s your experience of form right now? What kind of feelings do you have right now? What are your perceptions right now? What are your thought constructs, your intentions? How about your consciousness right now? How do you experience these things? Are you suffering from them? If you are, what are … 
  13. Wilderness Lessons
     … Civilization formed the islands, and the wilderness was the sea. We have a slight taste of that here in the monastery. We’ve got chaparral on three sides. We live in an orchard but it’s an orchard surrounded by wilderness. There are wilderness animals out there, and often they come infiltrating into the orchard, foraging for what they can find. They draw no … 
  14. A Refuge in Mindfulness
     … This is how a thought forms.” And then you see, “Where is this particular thought going?” Is it going someplace that will actually be useful? Okay, you can step in, but always be ready to step out when it starts getting weird. As for thoughts that you know are unskillful to begin with, you have to ask yourself, “Why am I cluttering my mind … 
  15. Don’t Limit Yourself
     … This enables you to see more and more clearly how thoughts form. And to what extent things coming up in the mind are intended right now, which things were intended from the past, and which things are things you can’t remember the intention at all. You start sorting out present karma from recent karma, and both from long-time-ago karma. The word … 
  16. Unchanged by Loss
     … And it’s interesting that those two qualities that the Buddha said are most important to protect—your virtue and your right view—are also the qualities he said form the basis for right mindfulness. Right mindfulness, of course, is a series of instructions on how to get the mind into right concentration. You need something inside that’s solid so that you’re … 
  17. Staying in Position
     … You begin to see the processes of the mind as it forms a thought, as it drops a thought. You see more and more clearly the point where you choose to go with a thought. You see where that little decision is made when you’ve dropped your intention to stay with concentration, and you decide you want to go off with something else … 
  18. Meaning in a Meaningless Universe
     … Then you look at stars and planets forming and then blowing up. Where are you going to go to find any meaning or purpose in this? There’s nothing there. What kind of accomplishments do you want to make? The things you work on can easily get snuffed out—which is why it makes all the sense in the world to look inside, to … 
  19. The Four-in-One Establishing of Mindfulness
     … All these things are right here, at least in potential form. This is one of Ajaan Lee’s favorite themes: Everything you need to be mindful of is right here, right now. That’s when your mindfulness is established, when you stay with these things right here, right now. In the texts, the Buddha talks about how when you’re with the breath, following … 
  20. Your Quiet Corner
     … What is there in this world? There are the eyes and there are forms. There are the ears and there are sounds. Nose, aromas; tongue, flavors; body, tactile sensations; mind and ideas: That’s the world. In other words, the Buddha never deals with the question of whether there’s something behind our experience. Is there a real world out there that’s in … 
  21. Go in Brightness
     … the pleasure of form. So you aim here. This is one of the meanings of what the Buddha calls having yourself well aimed, having yourself well directed. You aim at a pleasure that’s harmless and blameless: harmless in that it doesn’t intoxicate the mind, blameless in that you don’t create any bad kamma. Nobody gets harmed by your pursuit of pleasure … 
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