Search results for: "Becoming"

  1. Page 44
  2. On Deserving to Be Happy
     … You have to become more intelligent in how you learn. The Buddha outlines four of what he calls the bases for success. They’re four ways of practicing concentration that emphasize different aspects of concentration or what can get the mind into concentration. But if you line them up as a list, they work pretty well as a guide to what you have to … 
  3. Dhamma in Line with the Dhamma
     … Yet you try to get it to realize that there are rewards from becoming trained. You feed it well; you play music to soothe it. Gradually, it becomes more and more willing to be trained. In the same way, even though it’s difficult in the beginning to get the mind to stay here, you try to reward it with interesting breaths and pleasant … 
  4. Conviction in Charge
     … He said that this conviction is a strength, and that we should develop that strength to the point where it becomes what he called a faculty—(indriya) in Pali, which is related to the word Indra, the name of the king of the devas. When a strength becomes a faculty, it basically takes charge of the mind. It becomes the major determining factor in … 
  5. Fabricating the Present
     … People often talk about how, when they’re practicing a skill, if they get really good at it, there come times when they get into what they call the zone, where everything seems automatic and even the slightest things become apparent — where they’re one with the baseball, or one with the bat, or one with the basketball. In the same way, when you … 
  6. All-around Eye
     … You’re not practicing to become famous or to stand out. You’re trying not to be entangled with people. You don’t get involved in a lot of projects that entangle you in the affairs of society and pull you away from the practice. There’s a nice passage in the Canon describing the monk who’s practicing unentanglement: When he has visitors … 
  7. Wisdom Through Training
     … This is how you become your own refuge, how you become reliable: You learn how to watch what you’re doing, watch the results, and then figure out ways of doing it better. That’s how the mind can train itself. Sometimes you hear that the human mind is so defiled that it can’t possibly lift itself out of its defilements. Actually, though … 
  8. Dhamma Medicine for Free
     … You learn the basic principles and then you apply them to what’s happening right here, right now, so that the skill becomes your skill, not just something you’re imposing on the body and the mind, but something that feels good from within. That way, sitting here just breathing, if you do it with enough knowledge and enough skill, becomes a really pleasant … 
  9. A Haven for Inner Wealth
     … That well-being, again, becomes food for the mind. It encourages you to stick with good intentions all the more. Finally, there’s discernment, when you see what is actually skillful and what is not, and you pursue that into more and more subtle levels. These are the qualities we want to protect because they protect our good actions. That’s why they’re … 
  10. Your Game Leg
     … Well, learn how to question those agreements—these little pacts the mind has with itself—so that your looking and listening at the very least don’t damage the state of the mind and can actually can become part of the practice. Moderation in eating is the third principle. How much do you need? When you fill up your bowl or your plate, are … 
  11. On Top of Your Actions
     … Even if things don’t become a turmoil here, your body is a turmoil waiting to happen. Aging is going to happen, illness is going to happen, death is going to happen, all because of this body. You have to ask yourself, “Are you ready for it?” If not, what needs to be done? What work do you need to do on your mind … 
  12. Surveying the World
     … This is a point in his life that the commentaries get all upset about, because after all, he was going to become the Buddha anyhow, right? He was going to teach, but after his awakening he began to realize how difficult it was going to be. You look at the remainder of his life and you can see that it was full of difficulties … 
  13. Shaping the Present
     … So here you try to reclaim your breath, become sensitive to how the breath is feeling, and then try to calm it down. Realize that you do have a role in this. You have some choices you can make. Try to choose to breathe in a way that’s going to calm the mind down, soothe the mind, bring it into concentration. As for … 
  14. A Quiet Spot
     … Of course, there will be other dangers, but the most difficult part in the beginning is just getting the mind to settle down, to become established with a proper sense of balance - not too little energy, not too much energy, just right. And until you get that sense of ‘just right’ there’s going to be a lot of trial and error. Sometimes it … 
  15. Deep Time
     … They have to fall down from heaven and become human beings for a while. They’ll be in love as human beings as they were when they were devas, but they’ll have to be separated three times. Then, after the third separation, they can come back to heaven. The body of the poem—and it’s a long narrative poem—is a very … 
  16. Inner Worlds
     … You need a space in the mind where things outside don’t matter, because otherwise the mind becomes a slave to things outside. It becomes their servant. It needs its time alone where the clamoring of the world outside just doesn’t matter. What matters is the survival of your goodness, your ability to live with yourself. And that takes work. So take this … 
  17. Working Hypotheses
     … And we’ll find that as we follow the practice ourselves, we become more trustworthy, too. Fortunately, the path doesn’t save all of its rewards for the end. There are lots of good things we develop within ourselves as we follow the path. We become more generous, more virtuous, less harmful. We find that our goodwill can extend further than it ever had … 
  18. The Quest for Inner Happiness
     … That way, the simple act of sitting here and watching the breath becomes something special. It can become a foundation for a happiness that’s genuine, a happiness that’s harmless, a happiness that’s actually a gift to yourself and to other people. For most us, our quest for happiness is not a gift to anybody. It’s a process of taking. But … 
  19. Respect for the Path
     … And our search for happiness becomes something noble, because we realize that what’s getting in the way of our happiness is our cravings. As the Buddha said, cravings are the cause of our suffering. And to admit that to yourself, and to be willing to overcome some of your cravings, is a noble act. All too often we just want to follow our … 
  20. Getting Your Head Around the Goal
     … It also becomes sensitive to more refined levels of stress, dis-ease, or disturbance in the mind. It’s when you can see those things that you’re more likely to be able to see things that are deeper still inside. So we focus on following the path. We don’t try to turn the path into the goal. That would be like wanting … 
  21. Ironies
     … As it happens, the further you get away outside, the less certain things become. Yet those are the things we seem to be most interested in. We miss what’s happening right inside us, right next to the mind. So change your focal point. Bring it right here. There are lots of ins and outs to the breath. You can make it longer, shorter … 
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