Search results for: "Greed"
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- A Sense of Yourself… You can’t just give in to your greed, aversion, and delusion. You need to have a sense that you are competent to take them on. You have the tools you need. If you don’t have the tools you need, you’re going to work on them. This is where having a sense of yourself comes in: knowing what inner tools you have …
- Establishing Priorities… Is it greed, anger, delusion, lust, fear, jealousy? What are the things that spark these emotions? You see the defilements in real-time. If you’re able to do this, then the next time you sit down it’s going to be a lot easier to stay with the breath more continuously. But if you develop the habit of throwing away your concentration as …
- Setbacks… Otherwise it all gets too facile—you know this and you know that—but do you really know it? Have you ever been in the middle of trying to figure out your greed or figure out your anger or figure out your delusion? Have you really wrestled with these things? It’s only when you wrestle with them that you learn what their weak …
- Catch Yourself Lying to Yourself… So when there are times, as he says, that telling the truth would give rise to greed, aversion, or delusion, either in your mind or the other person’s mind, so you avoid talking about those things. In avoiding them, you sometimes have to avoid them in a way that the other person doesn’t catch you avoiding them, because then they’ll know …
- To Delight in the Path… In other words, you delight in abandoning your greed, your lust, your aversion. You see it as a victory in the mind when you’re able to pull yourself out of these things. As for delight in developing, of course, that means delight in developing skillful qualities—things like mindfulness and alertness, based on goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity. There are lots of …
- Preparing to Meditate… When you’re holding on to a good state of concentration, then it’s a lot easier to let go of things like lust and anger and fear and greed and all the other things that we tend to hold on to if we don’t have anything better. So latch onto the breath. As Ajaan Fuang used to say, it’s like putting …
- Introduction… As Ajaan Lee once said, “When you practice, the first thing you learn to see is your own defilements”—your own greed, your own anger, your own delusion, all the unskillful qualities in your mind that you don’t like to see. You have to learn how not to get discouraged by them. Remember that everyone meets up with these things in their meditation …
- Seriously Happy… And often they become the target of other people’s jealousy or greed. This is what happens when you aim for a happiness that doesn’t last, a happiness that’s unsafe. So even though the practice of generosity, virtue, and the brahma-viharas may seem like just the very beginning steps, if you really focus on doing them well, you gain a lot …
- Mindfulness of Death… keeping focused on the body in and of itself—ardent, alert, and mindful—putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. The same with feelings in and of themselves, mind-states in and of themselves, dhammas in and of themselves. As for alertness, you’re alert to the postures of the body, the movements of the body as they’re happening, so …
- Between Either & Or… In terms of the mind, the Buddha said, inordinate greed, ill will, wrong views are never right. So these are areas where there’s a clear right and wrong. But then there are a lot of areas where “right” is at that point of “just right” in the middle. That’s where you have to watch for your intention; you have to watch for …
- The Middle Way… As Ajaan Suwat would often point out, once the mind really gets still with that sense of well-being, then the idea of running after the kind of pleasure you used to get out of greed and aversion and delusion just loses its appeal. You can see that it’s pointless effort. This put you in the right frame of mind to look in …
- Customs of the Noble Ones… In fact, it becomes your sport, to see how you approach the issues of greed, anger, and delusion in the mind, all the various cravings in the mind, but not as someone who’s hungry. After all, that’s exactly what craving means. It’s a kind of hunger, a kind of thirst. If you see a craving arising, but you’re feeling full …
- Standing Outside Your Thoughts… Where is it going to take you? What kind of qualities is it developing in the mind as you pursue that line of thought? Which defilements? Greed? Aversion? Delusion? And what would it lead you to do if you were to think about it for a long period of time? Keep examining the thought in that way until you decide that you really don …
- Creativity & Play… You’re winning out over greed, anger and delusion. But in the meantime the important thing about playing is that what you’re doing isn’t drudgery. It’s fun. Researchers have found that people whose work doesn’t challenge them, doesn’t inspire them, are the ones most likely to get Alzheimer’s, because the brain isn’t engaged. Playing requires intelligence. It …
- Why the Breath… When there’s greed, when there’s anger, when there’s delusion, they’ll show up in the breath. You find, though, that not only does the breath reflect the mind, but you can also use the breath to have an effect on the mind as well. Say, when there’s anger, you consciously change the rhythm of your breathing. That will have an …
- In Search of What’s Skillful… Are these good results? Are these bad results? If there’s something that’s bad, try to figure out what went wrong. “Was it the intention? Was it the implementation of the intention? Was there any greed, anger, or delusion in the mind that I didn’t see?” When we start getting knowledge in this way, the next question is, “What do you do …
- Mindfulness as Refuge… You develop this by, as the Buddha says, keeping track of the body, ardent, alert, and mindful, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. That means you focus on an aspect of the body like the breath and you stay there. You hold on. You don’t let any thoughts of the world come in right now. If they do come …
- The Skills of Truth & Calm… The intention, of course, is your intention is to stay with the breath, to stay with one object, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world so that the mind can settle down. Contact is the contact between these mental events and also between mental events and the body as you feel it from within. In this way, these processes that we …
- Trading Up… You strip things away, all your greed and distress with reference to the world. You stay simply with the breath in and of itself, the mind in and of itself, as you’ve got it right here. When things are stripped down like this, you find that the sense of well-being that can be developed as you stay focused can grow really, really …
- Dharma Medicine… But as long as the mind still has its suffering, still has its greed, anger, and delusions, it still needs medicine. He provides the medicine with some instructions on how to use it, but it’s up to us to figure out when it’s beneficial and when it’s timely and how to apply it to the specific diseases we’re suffering from …
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