Search results for: "Form"
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- Great Expectations… So you have to learn how to see all that narratives and any other embroidery that you place on your lust as a form of suffering. The same goes with anger. We may not like the object—the person who’s gotten us angry—but we certainly like our anger. People get very defensive when they’re told, as the Buddha said, to kill …
- Saṃvega & Pasāda… The mind needs pleasure for its food, so learn how to feed inside, on the pleasure of the form of the body as you sense it from within, so that you’re not taking food from other people’s fields. Unfortunately, we can’t see the goal. We read all these exclamations throughout the Pali Canon about what a wonderful goal it is. Think …
- Protect Your Energy… This is where the other forms of fabrication come in. First there’s verbal fabrication, which is the way you think about things and evaluate situations. Then there’s mental fabrication, the perceptions and feelings you have. Those are things you have some control over as well. Those are things that you use to shape your experience, too. If you do it with ignorance …
- You Can Do Better… It has to do with the form of the body as you feel it from within. It’s a higher type of pleasure. And unlike sensual pleasures, it’s not intoxicating. It can be very addictive—but as Ajaan Fuang said, that’s all to the good. Get crazy about your meditation. Get really stuck on your meditation, because only when you’re really …
- Dissolving Your Thoughts… And as for your commentary as to where you are or what you’re doing, think of it as another form of energy. Look for the breath aspect of that thinking. That way, you maintain your focus still with the breath, and the thoughts become less and less and less of a disturbance. This ability comes about by learning how to view your thoughts …
- Magha Puja… Skillful desire forms part of the path. It energizes the path. You have to, as the Buddha says, generate your desire, arouse your persistence, uphold and exert your intent. All these things build on the desire for what’s right for true happiness. Then, when all the elements of the path come together, it leads to a glimpse of nibbāna. When you see that …
- Against the Grain… There’s the form of the body that needs to be fed, and of the physical food that we feed on. There’s the feeling of hunger that drives us to feed, and the feeling of satisfaction that comes after we’ve fed; the perception of what kind of hunger we have and our perception of what kind of food would feed that hunger …
- Noble Priorities… ill, old, die, but that’s not the essence of the suffering. As Ajaan Lee says, those things are the shadows of suffering. The real suffering is clinging to the aggregates: form, feeling, perceptions, thought constructs, consciousness. The clinging is the big problem. That’s the suffering. What causes it? The three kinds of craving, which are things that you do. You could attack …
- Where the Brightness Is… That’s the part of the mind that forms the path.
- Expanded Possibilities… So don’t listen to the people who say that the effort put into the practice is wasted or that it’s going to be a form of stress, and you can learn how to avoid stress by just not doing anything. That’s defeatist. That’s dead, whereas the Buddha’s path is path of victory. It’s alive. It does require work …
- Choosing & Watching Your Choices… You want to learn how to see these choices you exercise even in the simple act of forming a thought. We often have the feeling that thoughts come in totally unbidden and willy-nilly. But as you begin to resist them, as you stay with your object of concentration, you begin to notice more and more: What are the processes of choice in the …
- Raise Your Standards… What are you doing right now? I was reading a letter yesterday from someone who was down on Buddhism because it was a form of self-improvement. But it’s not about self-improvement, it’s about action-improvement. Can you learn to be more skillful? Can you learn to raise your standards for what it means to be skillful? Do you want to …
- Asking the Right Questions… In other words, you’re not clearly aware of the form of your body inside here because you’ve got a more spacious sense of awareness. These moments don’t last very long, though. To get them to last long, you have to go through the steps. Otherwise, it’s like trying to jump up to the fourth or fifth story of a building …
- A Sense of Well-being… When the texts describe dependent co-arising, one of the basic patterns starts with name and form and consciousness acting together to create all the processes leading up to suffering. Well, intention is an important part of “name.” It’s one of the major causal factors in how we experience things. And you can see it operating here as you practice concentration. You also …
- Vows… through developing our own minds, all the good qualities, the skillful qualities that we have in potential form. So keep these thoughts in mind as you make your vow and as you try to keep your vow for the next three months. Begin with discernment in choosing the right vow, learning how to read yourself to see what would be a good vow to …
- Instruct, Urge, Rouse, & Encourage Yourself… We all know the four forms of clinging: sensuality, views, habits and practices, and a sense of self. There’s no room for sensuality clinging in the path. But you need right views about the nature of action, and again, that’s where the Buddha gets into a lot of detail: the nature of action. Views about other things, he puts aside: “Is the …
- Keep Your Options Open… Part of the purpose of being on the path is to create concentration as an alternative to other forms of pleasure. A lot of insight lies in seeing that certain things are worth doing, and certain things are not worth doing. Your idea of what’s worth doing will depend on your range of skills. Think about little children before they can speak: They …
- Action & Result… When you cling to form, feeling, perceptions, thought fabrication, or consciousness, there is some pleasure. The Buddha doesn’t deny that. But the clinging itself can turn things into pain and can lead to more suffering. We go around defining ourselves this way all the time. This is why we get reborn. We find that the things by which we define ourselves are falling …
- Inner Poise… That’s the process by which the mind form sentences and gets ready to tell them to other people. But it’s also the process by which you bring the mind to one thing. That means that the time spent on thinking about what you’re going to tell other people can interfere with your concentration, and of course it interferes with theirs. So …
- The Noble Truth about Craving… If you have a desire for a more formless pleasure, or a simple pleasure of form, you’re going to have to develop certain skills. Learn how to get the mind in the right stages of concentration, and then be able to maintain them. But you will become a new being, and the world in which you move will become a different world. Yete …
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