Search results for: "Becoming"

  1. Page 39
  2. Full, Focused Attention
     … Once you find a comfortable rhythm of breathing, you have to be careful not to become mechanical with it. Be alert to the possibility that what may have felt good two or three breaths ago may not be so good right now, and make whatever adjustments are necessary. That’s all you have to do, but you have to give it your all for … 
  3. Cheerfully Ardent
     … You’ll become a skilled cook only if you want to learn the skills. The path is a combination of both. Some things about yourself you simply have to accept. Other things you’re going to be able to change through your desires. It can hard to figure out which is which, but that’s what skills are: figuring out what you can do … 
  4. Wealth Worth Holding Onto
     … If I let go of it now, the banana would become mush in my hand.” It’s the same way with your mind. If you let go of the precepts, you let go of your concentration, your mind becomes mush. If you let go of discernment, your mind becomes mush. So you hold onto these things as you need them. Because they’re your … 
  5. Only Natural
     … Giving in to them quickly has become an old habit we’ve learned for who knows how long, how many lifetimes, to the point where it’s natural. We have that phrase in English where we say, “Well, it’s only natural.” That’s just an excuse for saying, “Well, that’s just the way it’s got to be.” But think of it … 
  6. Feed the Hungry Mind
     … Instead of clinging to the aggregates just for their own sake, for the sensuality you can get out of them or the states of becoming you can create, you turn them into a path. You feed on them as you turn them into a path. But then the path takes you to a place where you’re no longer hungry. You no longer need … 
  7. To Excel
     … If you’re following your laziness, your laziness is going to become strong. If you follow your conceit, your conceit becomes strong. These things then take over. And when they take over, it’s not in your best interest. So remember, you are in competition. There may not be anyone trying to pull you away from your nose so that they can get in … 
  8. Remorse
    When you sit down to meditate and settle down with the breath, the mind becomes very sensitive. Sometimes things you did in the past that you don’t feel right about will come up. And they hurt. At times like that, it’s all too easy to start feeling remorse. Remorse is not an attitude or a feeling that the Buddha recommended. Because, as … 
  9. Freedom Through Painful Practice
     … You’ve got to learn how to gauge what’s going on in your own mind and become your own teacher. One of the prime lessons we learn looking at the Buddha becoming his own teacher, was noticing where he was causing himself unnecessary stress, unnecessary suffering. In some cases, it’s obvious. In others, it’s more subtle. Sometimes you’re holding on … 
  10. Worry vs. Heedfulness
     … And if you hold on to the body for its own sake, then you’ll become like those people who die and then become worms in their own corpses. But if you use the body as a tool, you find it has a lot to offer. So think of it as a tool. It’s not your haven but it can be your set … 
  11. Friends
     … It doesn’t seem like much, but often the people who don’t seem like much are the ones who become your most steadfast friends, the ones you end up learning that you can rely on, who really are helpful. The breath is that kind of friend. When you first look at it, there’s not much there: just in and out. It doesn … 
  12. Hedgehog Knowledge
     … It’s that quality of familiarity that makes things new or allows for things to become new. There’s a story in the texts about what the Buddha calls the foolish, inexperienced cow—I’ve always liked that idea. A foolish, inexperienced cow is eating grass on a meadow on one mountainside and happens to look over to another mountainside, and there’s a … 
  13. Judging Your Thoughts by What They Do
     … He further commented that the kinds of thoughts you think become tendencies in the mind. They bend the mind in their direction. It becomes easier and easier to think those thoughts. And those thoughts will lead to actions. So what kind of actions do you want to head toward? Apply the principle of skillfulness expressed in his teachings to Rahula. You look at the … 
  14. Stand Your Ground
     … You find that that sensitive point actually becomes a position of strength. This is true not only as we go through life but as life ends. You need to have a sense of a firm foundation when the mind realizes that it can’t stay with the body any more. In Thailand, when they have funerals they’ll usually print some books, and there … 
  15. Mindfulness: The Whole Formula
     … Suddenly you’re not with the breath anymore, you’re someplace else, especially if the breath hasn’t yet become very comfortable. When there’s nothing particularly appealing to it, the mind very easily slips off. Sometimes it takes quite a while before you realize that you’ve slipped off. Then you might decide, “Well, as long as I’ve slipped off here, I … 
  16. Appropriate Attention
     … Another type of craving is the craving for becoming, where you try to take on an identity in a particular world of experience based on a desire. And there’s craving for non-becoming, where you don’t like your identity, you want to change it, destroy what you’ve got, but in the course of destroying it you take on a new identity … 
  17. Abusing Pleasure & Pain
     … This is where you become more sensitive to the breath energies in the body: the flow of energy down the back, or sometimes up the back; down the legs, or sometimes up the legs. These things really vary from person to person. You find that conceiving of the breath energy in different ways helps to modulate the breathing so that it feels good: just … 
  18. You Contain Multitudes
     … We tend to think of ourselves as having one mind, one self, but there are lots of minds in there, lots of states of becoming. It’s not always clear who’s in charge. What we’re doing as we meditate is trying to put the mind concerned about your true well-being, your long-term welfare and happiness, in charge, and get everyone … 
  19. Messaging Your Mind
     … In cases like this, with the activity in the body becoming so quiet, then whatever is going on in the mind becomes a lot clearer. This then becomes your laboratory for watching the mind, because after all, the big problem in life is that we want happiness, but we do things that cause suffering. Even though we think we’re doing things that will … 
  20. The Not-Self Discourse
     … As a result, one of his listeners in the five brethren, Kondañña, gained the Dhamma eye, becoming the first noble disciple in the Buddha’s teachings, and also the first member of the Sangha—the conventional Sangha—when he received ordination after the end of the sermon. The story doesn’t end there. It goes on to say that over the next few days … 
  21. Learning How to Talk to Yourself
     … You become conscious of the current in the same way when you say, “I’m going to breathe this way, think about the breath in this way, try to maintain a perception of the breath in this way.” And the mind says, “No, I’m going to go someplace else.” All too often, as we go through life, we don’t know what we … 
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