Search results for: "Delusion"
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- Strong Through Admirable Friendship… Some magazines should be called Greed, others should be called Anger or Delusion, Sloth and Torpor, Doubt. All the hindrances, all the unskillful mind states: There’s a magazine for them, and websites for them, and apps. When we spend so much time with our cell phones, our screens, those become the people we associate with, so you have to be very careful about …
- Judicious vs. Judgmental… That way your choice is based on knowledge, not on greed, aversion, or delusion. This is why the Buddha, in his analysis of the four truths, said that our task with the regard to the first truth — the truth of suffering or stress — is to comprehend it. All too often we treat pain in the same way we treat anything we don’t like …
- Virtue Contains the Practice… So even though there are lots of skills that the Buddha recommends for holding to the precepts—learning how to say No to our greed, No to our anger, No to our delusion—we apply those teachings in only a half-hearted way. Then we say that the Buddha’s recommendations are not working, so we go and give in to the temptation. But …
- Common Sense… They can spark all kinds of greed, anger, and delusion. Sometimes the mind gets set on fire by just a single glance, or by listening to a single sound. It’s not the sights or the sounds or the smells that are the problem, though: The problem is the way you look at them, the way you listen. So you’ve got to be …
- Love is Conditional, Goodwill Is Not… You have to be careful here, because if you get too indulgent with the pleasure and forget the breath, then you’re going to get into what Ajaan Lee calls delusion concentration. You want to appreciate the pleasure and stay with the breath at the same time. This sense of appreciation will then allow you to develop your skill even further. Otherwise, you can …
- Customs of the Noble Ones… I’ll put up with having delusion and I’ll put up with the suffering that comes from these things.” That’s not what you do. You’re discontent with the fact that the mind is creating suffering for itself. To stop that suffering, you want to learn how to delight in abandoning unskillful qualities and developing skillful ones, which often is the opposite …
- Motivation… This is a wonderful Dhamma we’ve got here, taught by someone totally free from greed, aversion, and delusion. It’s timeless. That points to the positive aspect of the practice. Then the third governing principle is the world. This is the unusual one. The Buddha says that there are people in the world who can read minds. How would you feel if they …
- To the Far Shore… That means to understand it so well that you get beyond any passion, aversion, or delusion around it. The duty with regard to the cause of suffering is to abandon it. The cessation of suffering is something you should realize, and you should do that by developing the path. When you use the four noble truths to divide things up in this way, it …
- Getting Back on Your Feet… When you’re looking, why are you looking? What’s the motivation? Greed? Aversion? delusion? Okay, don’t look in that way. Don’t let those members of the committee be the ones who take over your eyes. Also look at the impact that whatever it is you’re looking at has on the mind. Here again, if you see that it tends to …
- Mastery… You may have good intentions, but if the results don’t come out well, maybe it’s an example of something you couldn’t control, or maybe it’s an example of an area where you had some delusion. It takes experience to be able to tell which is which—the experience of testing and experimenting over and over again, until you finally reach …
- Not Crushed by the World… So, you want to make sure that wisdom is looking, discernment is looking, not your greed, aversion and delusion. You have to see the way you engage with your senses as a cause-and-effect process. What you’re looking for, what you’re listening for, will have an impact on the mind. So be very careful about how you go about these things …
- High-Level Dhamma… When we read about high-level Dhamma, all we get is just perceptions, labels, but when we look at our practice, we see we’re dealing with very simple greed, anger and delusion: anger about this person, frustration about this—common everyday defilements. We don’t like to have to deal with those. We want to go straight to the higher levels. But it …
- The Lightning Bolt… finding someone who’s a person of integrity—which the Buddha defines in one of the texts as someone who doesn’t have the sort of greed, aversion, or delusion that would cause him or her to claim knowledge that he or she didn’t have: You find a person of integrity, you listen to the person’s Dhamma, you apply appropriate attention to …
- Worldly Narratives… The same goes with power and all the other delusions that we put ourselves through around youth, beauty, and our sensual pleasures. The question is, what happens when those things leave you? There’s a huge sense of emptiness—not only in the sense of loss, but also in the sense of how empty those things were all along. Then you look back on …
- Determined on Awakening… The letting go of all greed, passion, aversion, delusion: That’s the highest possible relinquishment. And of course, the calming of all the disturbances in the mind that comes with nibbāna is the highest possible calm. So those are the things you’re determined on, the things at which you aim. But you use those qualities as well. You have to develop them in …
- Adjusting the Flame… If you focus there, you can easily get into what’s called delusion concentration, where things are quiet but hazy. You’re not quite sure where you are, what you’re focused on. It’s concentration without mindfulness and alertness. So the first thing to remember is always to stay with the sensation of breath. Don’t leave that. And the second thing is …
- An End to Suffering… That’s because the mind always gets some pleasure out of greed, gets some pleasure out of anger and delusion. If it didn’t get some pleasure out of these things, it wouldn’t indulge in them. So you’ve got to look for what that pleasure is. What is the mind feeding on when it’s feeding on lust? What is it feeding …
- The Noble Eightfold Path to the Deathless… You see the harm that comes from wrong livelihood—engaging in a livelihood that either breaks the precepts or intentionally gives rise to passion, aversion, or delusion in your mind or in the minds of other people. So you abstain from wrong livelihood. This is where you’re actually carrying through on your resolves. And as you’re carrying through, you begin to realize …
- Choosing Your Allies… Try to act in ways that are not overcome by greed, aversion, or delusion, and you find that you really will benefit. You’ve got that power within you. So here’s a wisdom that comes from the desire for true happiness. The Buddha’s question is what gives the right direction to that desire. Compassion comes from the desire for true happiness, too …
- New Feeding Habits… greed, aversion, and delusion. You know you have them, but you don’t really know them, you don’t really discern them. Persistence requires that you learn to understand: “Why do I go for anger? Why do I go for greed?” When you come to understand these things, then the next time there’s a temptation to go for them, you realize, “No, I …
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