Search results for: "Delusion"
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- A Soiled, Oily Rag… The Buddha’s talking about a way of perceiving that helps you see through your attachments, that helps you see through your delusions about where you can find happiness, so that the question that lies at the beginning of wisdom—What when I do it will lead to my true long-term welfare and happiness?”—finally gets its answer in the skills you’ve …
- Endurance & Restraint… The Buddha didn’t believe in burning away karma, but he did believe in burning away your greed, aversion, and delusion. And you do that through patient endurance. But the trick to patient endurance is not just putting up with things. You learn how to talk to yourself in a way that makes you eager to be enduring, eager to have that strength, because …
- Shaping the Present… However, these calming qualities are not always desirable, because sometimes the mind just gets very sluggish or it goes into denial or you begin drifting off and don’t know where you are—what some of the forest ajaans called “delusion concentration.” You’re still; everything’s quiet; everything’s comfortable, but you’re not really clear about where you are. You come out …
- The Return of Chickens from Hell… What are the raw materials that we turn into, say, greed, aversion, or delusion? What are the raw materials that we’re holding onto? And by looking at their arising, you catch sight of them before you’ve made much of them and you can begin to see that some things are actually eggs and some things are not eggs—they’re chicken shit …
- Ironies… At first, you’re a slave to your emotions—a slave to your greed, anger, and delusion—but you also have this way of developing your own inner wealth, the wealth of mindfulness, the wealth of concentration, the wealth of discernment. And through that wealth, you can buy yourself out of slavery. That requires patience, requires dedication, the kind of patience and dedication we …
- Metta Metacognition… And when you meditate, you’re reducing the number of times you give into greed, aversion, and delusion. You benefit; the people around you benefit as well. And you benefit not only now, but also in the long term. These practices get you to think in the long term. That’s another important part of spreading thoughts of goodwill. As the Buddha said, this …
- Distractive Thoughts… Especially if it’s an obvious defilement, like greed, anger, delusion, or lust: If you thought about it for a while, you’d develop ruts in the mind that would be hard to get out of. Like driving through snow: You suddenly find yourself falling into some ruts, and the ruts take you right into the back of a parked car. So think about …
- Self View & Conceit… ll sit here for a while in a nice hazy buzz, but when you come out, you won’t have any sense of where you were. That’s concentration lacking alertness. Delusion concentration. So you learn how to be with the pleasure but not overcome by the pleasure. Then you can ask yourself, “Is this as still as it could be? Or is there …
- Proving the Teachings… When you get all wound up in greed, lust, anger, delusion, or fear, sometimes that mental state leads to uncomfortable breathing. Sometimes it’s the uncomfortable breathing that creates a bad mental state. When you notice that, then you can start exerting more control over your mind simply by the way you breathe. This gives you a back door into getting some measure of …
- Pleasure on the Path… This can lead to what Ajaan Fuang or Ajaan Lee would call delusion concentration, where things are very still in the mind, all very pleasant, but you’re not really sure where you are or what you’re focused on. Sometimes you can stay in that state for a while and, when you come out, you ask yourself if you really were awake or …
- Treasure Island… Is it something really honorable? Or is there some greed, aversion, or delusion in there? And when you hold on to these views, what kind of actions do they inspire? Do they actually inspire you to act in skillful ways? If you believe, for instance, that everything is determined by material or physical laws, what impetus is there to go to the trouble of …
- 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 …
- Taking the Long View… In other words, you want to understand it till you get past any passion, aversion, or delusion for it. Its cause is to be abandoned. Its cessation is to be realized, and you do that by developing the path. So, again, you’re taking initiative here, exercising your agency. After all, the present moment is not just a given, as I said. It’s …
- 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 …
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