Search results for: "Becoming"
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- Sensitivity & Skill… The story illustrates an important part about becoming. Where your desires are focused is going to determine who you are, the identity you take on. The lower the level of the desire, the lower the level of happiness, pleasure and well-being you’re looking for—that’s all covered by one word in Pali, sukha—then the lower the state of your mind …
- For Goodness’ Sake… We have that phrase in English, “for goodness’ sake.” It’s been repeated so many times that it’s become just a matter of emphasis. It’s lost its real meaning. The real meaning is that you do something because it would lead to good results, for the sake of the goodness it would yield. That’s your motivation. So ideally, you want to …
- Integrity — In Memory of Luang Loong… Everything that’s yours becomes not-yours. So it’s not all that consoling a thought, because all the things that you shore up here on this earth in this lifetime to provide for yourself in the future: Once you leave the body, you don’t have any guarantee that that stuff is going to go with you. In fact, you’re going to …
- Joyous Discernment… That way, your concentration really does become an effective way of seeing what’s going on in the mind, rather than something that simply blankets over what’s going on there. If it’s a blanketing kind of concentration, all it does is keep things still and under control for a while, but it never uproots anything. In fact, it’s like the kind …
- Can All Beings Be Happy?… As the Buddha said, when you become generous, it’s also good to encourage other people to be generous as well. When you’re virtuous and you see the rewards of virtue, you try to encourage others to be virtuous, too. As you gain more conviction in the Buddha’s awakening and see in particular the results of holding to the principle of action …
- Not Getting What You Want… The joy becomes the basis for concentration, then discernment, then release. So that version of dependent co-arising ends positively, with suffering leading you ultimately to follow the path that gets you to something that’s not dependent, something independent—which is total release. It’s interesting to think about how that connection between suffering and conviction comes about. Remember, in suffering there’s …
- Calm in the Storm… The breath energy and the meditation as a whole become more interesting when you see that you’re exploring, experimenting, trying things out. When you learn how to develop the kind of focus that, instead of tightening up around the spot of the focus, actually helps to disperse things—to disperse tension, to disperse feelings of dis-ease—then you’ve mastered a really …
- Chewed Up by Your Food… The more you’re open to the idea, the more likely that the possibility really will become an actuality for you. Always keep in mind it is possible to become totally free. This is the Buddha’s guarantee, the guarantee of all the noble disciples. It’s up to each of us to test that guarantee for ourselves.
- Nobility Is the Best Policy … The question then becomes, “How do I get the most out of them before the separation?” And here, “getting the most out of them,” means getting both the most happiness and the most goodness. Think of Ajaan Chah’s image of the broken cup. He picked up a good cup one day and told his listeners, “This cup is already broken.” Then he explained …
- A Questioning Attitude… There are lots of cases of people who stayed in strong states of concentration and then become Brahmas. Then they fell from that state. And as we’ve seen in the jhana wars, people can get very, very attached and very, very proud of their jhana attainments. The Buddha talks about what he calls a person of no integrity who takes his jhana attainment …
- A Position of Strength… You realize that your center of security is in here, first with the breath and then, as you develop it, it becomes more centered in the mind itself. That’s when you can learn how to trust yourself. So take advantage of the different potentials you have here right now. When the Buddha taught mindfulness, say, of feelings or mindfulness of mind states, he …
- Play with the Breath… You become friends with the breath; the breath becomes friends with you. You spend more and more time together because the friendship is rewarding.
- In Accordance with the Dhamma… You become dispassionate and you become unfettered. When you develop dispassion for the way you’ve been feeding, and you decide that you’ve had enough of this because it’s not worth it, that’s when you let go. And when you let go, you’re freed. The fetters fall away. This is why the Buddha used the image of a flame going …
- Pleasure from the Body… Ajaan Lee gives the image of waking-up the elements of the body—in other words, becoming sensitive to all the different areas where energy flows in the body, where it’s been blocked, what you can do to unblock it, and trying to keep yourself as fully aware of as many of these spots as you can, all at once. When you do …
- Isolating the Aggregates… You have to realize that there are lots of little centers in the body, little sensation centers, and all you have to do is give them a little bit of space, and then a feeling of what seems like neutrality to begin with will actually become pleasurable—if you give it space, if you’re not pushing and pulling it around too much. Then …
- Sucked into the Tube… This is how discernment develops, and this is how discernment becomes the kind of discernment that can liberate you. If you want to see fear or anger happening, you want to see it while it’s actually happening. You don’t want to go through instant replays, because your video machine has its defects. It’s not nearly as effective when you see it …
- A Special Time… What’s the right amount of pressure? And what’s the right way of conceiving what you’re doing, conceiving the breath? As you evaluate these things to see what works and what doesn’t work, this is how meditation becomes a skill. In the Canon, the Buddha uses a lot of analogies to describe meditation with processes drawn from skills. For instance, it …
- Centered… And instead of being nourishing and refreshing, the concentration will become tiresome. But if you can think of all the scattered tentacles of your awareness coming back into the center and leaving everything on the periphery very relaxed, it creates a kind of stability that’s easy to maintain. It may not be easy to get used to this in the beginning, especially if …
- You Can Do It… That was one of the questions apparently that Mara asked him: “Who are you to become Buddha? Who do you think you are?” Tradition has it that the Buddha touched the ground, and the Mother Earth Goddess came up and squeezed out her hair. All the water of all the goodness he had done over those many eons came out and washed away all …
- Right & Right… How do you become mature? You don’t bring maturity with you, but you keep looking at what you’re doing and keep being mature enough to admit when you’ve made a mistake. That’s how this larger quality of maturity is going to develop. So you don’t throw away what you’ve learned, but you realize that it has to be …
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