Search results for: "Becoming"

  1. Page 38
  2. Get Out of Yourself
     … Now, the workings of kamma can be very complex, but they determine where we go, what we are, and what we become. He realized that the big issue was action, and the general pattern of action was something we all have in common. Then, in the third watch of the night, he expressed the knowledge he gained, not in terms of “I did this … 
  3. A Timeless Foundation
     … That’s how the breath becomes a good place to be. That’s how it becomes your foundation. As it gets more and more quiet inside, you can see events in the mind a lot more clearly. This is why the stillness of concentration, getting fully absorbed in the breath like this, is such an important part of gaining discernment. To begin with, when … 
  4. Directing the Flow
     … So it becomes a battle of the wills. Part of you wants to go whatever old way you went before, the way an untrained horse would just want to run around the meadow, and part of you realizes it needs to be trained. So there’s always going to be this tension in the practice. And an important part of gaining the upper hand … 
  5. Goodness & Goodwill
     … And yet, before the punishment for having killed those people came to him, the Buddha encountered him and got him to lay down his weapons, to meditate, and to become an arahant. So the king forgave him and decided not to punish him. There were a lot of people out there, though, who were not happy for him. Their relatives might have been among … 
  6. Top Priorities
     … At the same time, when it has first priority in that way, it can develop a momentum because it becomes more and more continuous. The training of the mind becomes 24/7. There’s a continuity, a momentum that builds up, which you can’t have when everything is chopped up and squeezed into this corner here or that crack in your daily life … 
  7. Metta Through Samvega
     … And as you look at your actions and realize that they don’t get into conflict with anybody, your confidence in the path becomes more than just confidence. It becomes something you really know. So on days when you find yourself tied up in thoughts of ill will, think about that image of the fish, realizing that you don’t want to be one … 
  8. Cook Your Mind
     … There comes a point when the path is fully developed, and although it requires passion to develop the path, there comes a point where that, too, has to become something you comprehend and abandon. You have to develop dispassion for it. As Ajaan Mun says, there comes a point where all four noble truths become one. And the duties become one: Let go. But … 
  9. Think Calmly about Death
     … The mind becomes a blank. It can’t remember anything. So you’ve got to practice ahead of time. Learn how to breathe calmly and then work your way up to thoughts of dangers. Years back, when I was in college, my name got drawn to be part of a psych experiment. Fortunately, it was after I’d started meditating, and the experiment was … 
  10. Over the Pass
     … Just take these things on their own terms, before they turn into becomings, so that you can hold them back. Look at the Buddha’s analysis in dependent co-arising: Right after ignorance comes fabrication, and after fabrication comes consciousness, and then name and form. These are just events. Form is your sense of the body as you feel it from within. Name is … 
  11. Kindfulness
    Kindfulness May 1, 2010 As you train the mind, focusing on the breath, allowing the breath to be comfortable, trying to become friends with the breath, it’s a very direct way of showing goodwill to yourself and to the people around you. Goodwill for yourself in the sense that you learn how to develop a source of happiness that comes from within. Your … 
  12. Mindfulness & Effort
     … If all you have are comfortable sensations in the sense of beautiful things to look at or nice things to listen to, but the mind is empty of good intentions, it all becomes very meaningless. You begin to realize: This is just physical stuff. And the physicality of it all, the brute unknowingness of the physical world, begins to get to you. It doesn … 
  13. How to Listen to the Dhamma
     … That way, in the Buddha’s terms, you get sensitive to what the talk is aiming at, you get sensitive to the Dhamma and its meaning, and that’s what gives rise to the joy that later becomes one of the causes for concentration, and the concentration can become a condition of a further insight. This means, of course, that you approach the Dhamma … 
  14. Get Real
     … As you allow yourself to become more and more sensitive to what you’re feeling, the tension in the body can begin to relax. You’re not here trying to prove anything or to force anything. You’re here to explore: What have you got right here right now? If there’s a sensation of tension or tightness in any part of the body … 
  15. Gaining the Dhamma Eye
     … So our practice should be aimed at becoming certain in this way, gaining the Dhamma eye, seeing the deathless. The purpose of the four noble truths is to focus us in that direction, to get us there. But more is required than just knowing the four noble truths. The Buddha said there are four qualities that help get you to that first taste of … 
  16. Lessons in Happiness
     … Then you allow the breathing to calm down so that it becomes gentler, there’s less intentional fabrication, and the breath can get more and more quiet, more subtle. As you allow the breath to get more subtle, there’s a greater sense of fullness in the body. One way of inducing this fullness is to remember that when you’re breathing out, don … 
  17. Healing Awareness
     … So it’s a good topic for becoming sensitive to what your awareness is like, what your focus is like. As you get more sensitive to the breath, you become more sensitive to the mind in a way that heals both sides.
  18. Food Insecurity
     … These are the things we feed on, and from this feeding we create our states of becoming: the worlds of experience in which we move, where we’re going to find our food, and our sense of what has to be done within those worlds, what opportunities they open, what opportunities they close. As the Buddha pointed out, once you get to this stage … 
  19. Heedfulness
     … You have to learn from all of these things so that you can become more and more skillful. And that looking requires a lot of heedfulness. Because we do have this tendency to trust in our intentions. “We mean well,” we think. “What looks good to us must be good.” And yet we have that problem with delusion. We have to keep watch over … 
  20. Voices in the Mind
     … They’re still in there and they’ve managed to become part of your identity or part of the many identities inside you. It’s the same old stuff over and over and over again. See that these are just old movies and you know how they’re going to turn out. You’ve seen them many, many times. And where do they go … 
  21. A Full Range of Archery Skills
     … That way, things become clearer and clearer in the mind. There’s a passage where the Buddha compares the skills you learn through doing concentration to the skills of an archer. You can shoot long distances, fire shots in rapid succession, and pierce great masses. Those are three very different skills. Firing shots in rapid succession means that you’re alert to see things … 
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