Search results for: "Equanimity"
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- Permission to Play… This way you get a sense of when you should try to change things, and when you shouldn’t; which problems in the body or in the mind respond to active intervention, and which ones respond better when you simply watch them with equanimity. As you put the mind in a better mood through giving it a good comfortable place to stay, or giving …
- Directly & Indirectly to the Breath… In addition to generosity and virtue, these qualities include a sense of conviction in the Buddha’s awakening, learning about the Dhamma, developing your discernment, developing the attitudes of unlimited goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity. These are the things that raise your level while you’re here as a human being. And again where do they come from? From the qualities you develop …
- Self-Correct… And you have qualities of the mind developing, particularly trying to develop equanimity with regard to the world. So all the frames of reference for your mindfulness are right here at the breath. Which means it’s a good place to focus. To keep focused here, the practice of mindfulness requires three qualities, beginning with mindfulness itself, which—unlike what you may have heard …
- Perfecting the Mind in an Imperfect World… And you have to learn how to develop some equanimity around areas of the world where you look at them and say, “That’s really sad that that’s the way things are.” But you have to look at how much effort you would have to put in to change those things and ask yourself, “What would actually happen if I did make that …
- Diagnosing the Mind… Sometimes it requires learning to take a different topic for your meditation for a while, like goodwill, equanimity, any of the brahmaviharas. Or you can use contemplation of death, or what they call the four guardian meditations. There’s recollection of the Buddha, which is for encouragement, to inspire you to practice; development of goodwill, when you’re dealing with anger; contemplation of the …
- Blessings… The skillful ones were the ones imbued with renunciation—in other words, not getting fascinated with thinking about sensual pleasures; non-ill will, actually thinking thoughts of goodwill and equanimity; and harmlessness, with thoughts of compassion. So the Buddha judged his thoughts on where they came from and then also where they went. If they were coming from the unskillful motivations, he would hold …
- Why We Train the Mind… As the Buddha noted, there are some problems in the mind that go away when you simply watch them with equanimity. Other times, you have to fabricate, as he says, an effort, or fabricate an intention to do away with them, or to develop whatever is needed. So that’s the second part of right effort: figuring out exactly what kind of effort is …
- Working at Home… the Dhamma of generosity, the Dhamma of virtue, the Dhamma of patience, equanimity, goodwill—all these other virtues that are an essential part of training the mind. The idea of creating meditation retreats came basically in the late 19th or early 20th century, the same time when the assembly line was invented, breaking jobs down into little tiny parts that you do repetitively. This …
- Breath, Tranquility, & Insight… He said, “What kind of breath meditation do you do?” The monk said, “I try to let go of any concern with the past, let go of any hankering towards the future, and try to be equanimous to whatever comes up in the present moment, as I breathe in, breathe out.” Which sounds like the way breath meditation is ordinarily taught these days. But …
- Fear of Concentration… Then you finally get the mind to the purity of mindfulness and equanimity. In other words, things settle back to a very normal state, simply that you’re fully inhabiting the body and it’s very, very still. You want that to become your normalcy, because it was at that spot that the Buddha gained all of his knowledges that lead to his awakening …
- The Path of Happiness… Its mindfulness is pure; its equanimity is pure; and it can see very clearly what’s going on—see what’s skillful, see what’s not. So the sense of pleasure is an important part of the path. As long as you see it as a means to a further end, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Sometimes you see in modern teachings …
- Wide-open Awareness… But when you learn how to bring some compassion to the whole process of opening up to yourself, when you learn how to bring some understanding and maturity and equanimity to the process, you find that you’re much better off working through these things than you were when you tried to keep them hidden. You’ve now got the tools where you can …
- Conviction & Confidence… Pose the question in your mind and just watch, try different approaches, because the Buddha didn’t stop his meditation instructions with equanimity and patience. He went on to teach the 16 steps of breath meditation, most of which involve training, experimenting, and using your ingenuity. There’s an intentional element to this practice. You’re trying to figure out a skill, sensitize yourself …
- Safety… And then, he says, you develop this concentration with directed thought and evaluation, with a modicum of directed thought, with no directed thought, no evaluation, with pleasure, with ease, with rapture, with equanimity. In other words, he’s talking about jhana, right concentration. So this is your safe space, your safe territory: getting the mind settled in right here. It’s not totally safe …
- A Better Place to Feed… One is developing attitudes of goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity in a really expansive way, extending them to yourself and to all other people, all other beings. He doesn’t say to start with yourself, but later commentators say it’s good to start with yourself because all too often, when we think about goodwill for everybody, we tend to forget ourselves. We …
- Practicing for Dispassion… We develop thoughts of goodwill, thoughts of equanimity to cut through ill will. We work with all the techniques for giving rise to energy when we’re sleepy, and ways of talking to ourselves when we feel restless or anxious or overcome with uncertainty. We have to realize that no matter what’s going to happen in the future, things are very uncertain. You …
- Balancing Tranquility & Insight… When the pleasure seems superfluous, and you simply want to settle in and be very, very still, you get the mind to a state of equanimity. What you are doing is allowing the mental fabrication of feeling to calm down. At the same time, you allow your perceptions to calm down, and this can actually take you deeper into the formless jhanas. If you …
- Enlightenment is Not a Hot Dog… We may have an idea that we want a particular insight, great insights into anicca, upekkha, impermanence, equanimity, dependent co-arising, but you don’t get there unless you focus on the nitty-gritty of everyday life. When greed arises, how does it arise? If you want to understand dependent co-arising, you’ve got to look at your greed. You’ve got to …
- Reflections on Kamma… In one context, it’s listed as a reflection for equanimity. What this means is that there are times when you want to help somebody and you can’t. Either they refuse the help, or no matter how much you try to help them and no matter how much they’re willing to get your help, something still gets in the way. That’s …
- Read the Breath… having abandoned unskillful qualities in the mind, you can settle down until you develop pure equanimity and mindfulness. As the Buddha said, there’s no right concentration without a certain amount of insight, a certain amount of understanding. You can’t get the mind to settle down unless you understand it. So all these factors that go into right concentration—right effort, right mindfulness …
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