Search results for: "Greed"

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  2. High-Level Dhamma
     … When we read about high-level Dhamma, all we get is just perceptions, labels, but when we look at our practice, we see we’re dealing with very simple greed, anger and delusion: anger about this person, frustration about this—common everyday defilements. We don’t like to have to deal with those. We want to go straight to the higher levels. But it … 
  3. The Second Noble Truth
     … You stay, for instance, with the body, in and of itself, as you’re ardent, alert, mindful, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. The mind gets more and more absorbed in the body, to the point where mindfulness, alertness, and ardency shade into jhana, or right concentration. The breath, for instance, gives you a sense of solidity so that you … 
  4. The Economy of Goodness
     … Ajaan Suwat used to like to make the point that when you’re developing good qualities like this—wanting to develop them, wanting to have a lot—it doesn’t count as greed, it counts as initiative, which the Buddha said is one of the causes for happiness. So do your best to make yourself wealthy in this way. It’s good to think … 
  5. The Lightning Bolt
     … finding someone who’s a person of integrity—which the Buddha defines in one of the texts as someone who doesn’t have the sort of greed, aversion, or delusion that would cause him or her to claim knowledge that he or she didn’t have: You find a person of integrity, you listen to the person’s Dhamma, you apply appropriate attention to … 
  6. Determined on Awakening
     … The letting go of all greed, passion, aversion, delusion: That’s the highest possible relinquishment. And of course, the calming of all the disturbances in the mind that comes with nibbāna is the highest possible calm. So those are the things you’re determined on, the things at which you aim. But you use those qualities as well. You have to develop them in … 
  7. Dealing with Confusion
     … Everybody had the same kinds of greed, anger, delusion, fear, jealousy, pride, hypocrisy: all the things we don’t like about ourselves. These are not recent inventions. They’ve been with the human race since who knows when. This is why it’s useful, when you sit down to meditate, to think about the Buddha’s awakening. His first knowledge had to do with … 
  8. Hunting & Foraging
     … Anger may be your problem or lust, fear, greed, jealousy, thoughts about the past that you don’t like to dwell on, incidents that you go over and over again in your mind. In cases like that, you have to ask yourself: What pleasure do you get out of this? The Buddha would actually have you ask five questions there. The first two questions … 
  9. An End to Suffering
     … That’s because the mind always gets some pleasure out of greed, gets some pleasure out of anger and delusion. If it didn’t get some pleasure out of these things, it wouldn’t indulge in them. So you’ve got to look for what that pleasure is. What is the mind feeding on when it’s feeding on lust? What is it feeding … 
  10. Choosing Your Allies
     … Try to act in ways that are not overcome by greed, aversion, or delusion, and you find that you really will benefit. You’ve got that power within you. So here’s a wisdom that comes from the desire for true happiness. The Buddha’s question is what gives the right direction to that desire. Compassion comes from the desire for true happiness, too … 
  11. The Power of Intention
     … It’s when you can admit to yourself, “This is why I like greed, this is why I like anger, this is why I like delusion,” at the same time that you see that these things have definite drawbacks: That’s when you get past them. And notice the word the Buddha uses there. It’s not so much that you kill them—you … 
  12. Nuclear Thinking
     … thoughts that pull you off into greed, anger, and delusion, thoughts that stir up any of the unskillful potentials in your mind. So this particular step in the meditation — once the breath gets comfortable, start spreading your awareness to fill the whole body and then allow that comfortable breath to fill the whole body as well — is an extremely important part of the meditation … 
  13. A Path Under the Trees
     … You stay focused on, say, the breath in and of itself—ardent, alert, and mindful—putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. That’s the formula. What it means is that you focus on the breath simply as it is, as you experience it right here, right now. You’re not concerned about whose breath it is, or anything else. Just … 
  14. Worldly Equanimity & Its Uses
     … The awakening itself isn’t equanimity—it’s the highest happiness—but when you reflect on your mind afterward, seeing that it is now freed of greed, aversion, and delusion, you can either feel joy, rapture, or equanimity. That kind of equanimity, you don’t create. It just happens. The other two kinds of equanimity you have to fabricate. Notice that the first one … 
  15. Right Effort
     … In other words, when you see greed or anger or delusion arising in the mind, ask yourself, “How is the breath going right now?” See if you can change the mind state by changing the way you breathe. That, of course, will involve verbal fabrications: directed thought and evaluation. Instead of chattering on to yourself about how much you want something, how much you … 
  16. All Three Functions of Mindfulness
     … that you keep track of the body in and of itself, ardent, alert and mindful, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. The same formula is repeated for feelings, for mind, and for mental qualities. But then the sutta addresses only one part of the formula: What does it mean to keep track of these things in and of themselves? It … 
  17. Protection
     … But if you give into greed, aversion, and delusion, and you kill somebody else, that could pull you down. So the main dangers are inside. When you have conviction in the Buddha’s awakening, all the other strengths follow, if you’re heedful. You realize that you have to do what you can to abandon unskillful qualities in your mind, because that’s where … 
  18. To Escape the Prison of Time
     … We give them trust because the basic principle they teach is that actions based on greed, aversion, and delusion will lead to suffering. Actions based on an absence of those mental qualities will lead in the direction of happiness. So we have to look at the intentions in our minds, and the motivations for why we’re acting. That’s where we’ll find … 
  19. Reflect on What You’re Doing
     … And two, you put aside greed and distress with reference to the world. In other words, you focus exclusively on the breath, as it is right now, without reference to anything outside at all. Just what have you got here with the breath? Then the Buddha says you apply three qualities: mindfulness, alertness, and ardency. The mindfulness keeps you directed, reminding you of what … 
  20. In Line with the Truth
     … Even though our greed, anger, and delusion may have other ideas about where true happiness might be found, we’ve followed them long enough. We’ve associated with them long enough. We’ve listened to them, followed them, and where do they take us? Just back to more and more suffering, again and again and again. And yet we never seem to learn. Now … 
  21. Friends Inside & Out
     … So you want to look for someone who would not make false claims to knowledge out of greed, aversion, or delusion, or would recommend to other people that they do things that are in those people’s not best interests. Now, to know that sort of thing about someone, you have to watch that person carefully. You have to be careful about who you … 
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