Search results for: "Becoming"
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- Gratitude to Things… Then you ask yourself, “What am I doing with their good intentions? Am I just wallowing in the comfort, or am I actually trying to create some goodness on my own to dedicate to them?” As the Buddha said, this is one of the motivations for actually becoming an arahant, so that all the good things that people have done for you will bear …
- Self-Control… We don’t let somebody else’s injustice make us become unjust. We don’t let somebody else’s misbehavior become an excuse for our misbehavior. We learn how to resist these things. We learn the skills in resisting. In other words, you have to learn what things you have to stand up for, and what things you have to make yourself as streamlined …
- Focused on Your Duties… You suddenly find yourself going back into that state of becoming. If you happened to die at that moment, that’s where you’d go, in line with that idea—maybe to get revenge, maybe to go back and relive the issue, try it out in a new way, neither of which is going to be very helpful. So you want to get practice …
- Potentials for Refuge… That’s how the skills of breath meditation become your own. In Thai they have a pun around the word patipat. To patipat something means to practice it, but to patipat a person means that you look after the person, to serve his or her needs. And as they often say, when you patipat the Dhamma, you also patipat yourself: When you practice the …
- Character… But if you think of your activities in terms of developing the qualities that you’ll take with you, then the work of the world can become part of the practice. And see it as an opportunity to develop your persistence, patience, and endurance. That way, you have something solid. Because when we leave this life, the qualities of the mind are what go …
- Monotasking… They become tasks with one dimension, or at most two. But when you stay with the breath, it’s an all-around task that requires your full attention. On the body side, you’re trying to be aware of the full body as you breathe in and breathe out. You gain a sense of how the breath has an impact on the different parts …
- Delight… In other words, you think in terms that have nothing to do with becoming—a self or a world—and that cut through the processes of becoming. And you find that there’s no conflict. You can delight in that. As you take these different kinds of delight, they give you the energy you need in order to practice. You’re doing a good …
- The Power of Intention… The central factor in the path is right concentration, so work on this, because it’s right here where things will become apparent. You use your intentions to create the concentration, and then once the concentration is there, it allows you to see the power of intention even more clearly. The more clarity you bring to this, the more your actions do become a …
- Asalha Puja… The cause of stress and suffering is craving—the kind of craving that gives rise to becoming. He listed three kinds: the craving for sensuality, the craving for becoming, and the craving for no becoming. The truth of cessation was the abandoning of those forms of craving. In other words, to get rid of the stress of suffering, you don’t abandon the stress …
- Patience & Tenacity… So this is how you become patient. This is how you become enduring. Not by talking to yourself about how long a slog it’s going to be, but by reminding yourself that the stuff weighing you down in the past is gone. The stuff weighing you down in the future is nowhere to be found. It’s not here yet. All you’ve …
- An Island in the Flood… If you can stay steadily with an area that’s sensitive like that, the breath will have to become more refined, more comfortable. It’s when you’re not paying careful attention to the breath that it can get rough, harsh, or restricted. So you want to stay continually. This is where the ardency comes in again. It’s one thing to be mindful …
- Encouragement… What am I becoming right now?” And of course, what you become is based on what you’re doing. And what you’re doing is based on a sense of what your capabilities are. It’s in this scenario where the Buddha’s full of encouragement. We can all develop mindfulness; we can all develop alertness. The efforts we put in to become more …
- Two Guardian Meditations… That’s going to become your bad karma. So when you extend thoughts of goodwill, there may be a lot of people you think don’t really deserve to be happy. But the Buddha never taught in those terms. When he taught people about the path to the end of suffering, he didn’t first say, “Only those who deserve not to suffer can …
- The Stages of Meditation… You have to become familiar. You have to become friends with the body—the kind of friend who sticks with a friend no matter what happens, the kind of friend you’d like to trust. Try to be that kind of friend with the body. When you do that, you find that the breath in the body reciprocates. It becomes a good place to …
- You Are Not a Textbook… You become more conscious in thinking about the different parts of the body and how the breath relates to different parts of the body and how you can breathe in a way that’s more nourishing for, say, your toes and your feet and legs and pelvis, torso, arms, your head. Try to get the whole body involved in the breathing process. That way …
- Ready for the Truth… The mind has become intoxicated with pleasures, so that when you fall, it really hurts. Ajaan Fuang used to have some students who were very difficult people to get along with, and it was very hard to please them. He made the comment a couple of times that they had been devas in a previous lifetime. They were used to having things go their …
- Thoughts, Wanted and Unwanted… It’s going to happen again, and you simply have to try to recover more quickly the next time, and more quickly the time after that, until it becomes one of the habitual skills of how you deal with your mind – learning how to step back from a thought, and go back to something that’s better to think about. Now you’ll find …
- Gratitude for Birth… He becomes an arahant. So there are cases where people are disobedient to their parents and it’s good. There are also cases where people obey their parents and it’s bad. Ven. Sudinna is the prime example. He’s the monk who’s the star of the origin story for the first pārājika rule against having sex. It’s a case similar to …
- Respect for the Training… Now, the effluents—sensuality, becoming, ignorance—are done away with only with arahantship: sensuality with non-returning, but becoming and ignorance with arahantship. Those are high levels of attainment, which means that the rules are not a little thing. Even something as basic as contemplation of the food: As the Buddha said, if you really comprehend physical food, you’ll comprehend the five strings …
- Persistence… This is especially important as the movement of the air in the nose becomes very, very soft and gets harder and harder to follow. It’s very easy to get lost. But if you’re with the body—your sense of your hands, your feet, your legs, your arms, your torso, your head, all the parts of the body— those parts can be very …
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