Search results for: "Form"
- Page 46
- The Conditions for Goodwill… When the Buddha talks about goodwill, he says it’s a form of mindfulness on which you should be determined—with mindfulness meaning something you keep in mind so you don’t forget. And you’ve got to be determined. You’ve got to keep working at it. You’ve got to be wise in how you understand goodwill and how you apply it …
- Who’s in Charge Here?… They’re there in potential form. And the Buddha shows that if you develop those potentials, they can take you far. So you take him as an example. You take the Dhamma, you take the Sangha as an example and try to bring those qualities into being within you. You find that you have a refuge that you can depend on inside. As for …
- Right Resolve & Right Concentration… And of these three forms of right resolve, the latter two are the easiest to see as good things. Even if you can’t bring yourself to follow through with them, it’s easy to see that they’re good. But giving up sensuality: People have a lot of problems with that one. They think, “What’s wrong with sensual pleasures? Are you saying …
- Antidotes to Craving… That’s one form of craving you’ve got to watch out for. If you find yourself clinging to it, you’ve got to learn how to pry loose the fingers of the mind. They keep wanting to hold on. Then there’s craving for becoming. You think about the different things you didn’t get to do or be in this lifetime, and …
- Right Fear… What he talked about was the precepts, because they form the foundation for any meditation practice that’s going to work. The details of when you’re going to meditate during the day and how you bring breath meditation into your daily life: Those are things that each person has to explore for him or herself. Which techniques work at which particular time: That …
- Shoulds & Wants… It’s a pleasure of form. When he realized that, that was when he got on the right path. Many of us have the attitude that if we’re enjoying the meditation and there’s a sense of pleasure coming up inside, there’s something wrong with us. We’re not doing what we should be doing. I remember when I was getting some …
- Unfabricated Happiness… As the Buddha said, it’s true happiness, harmless happiness, blameless happiness—one of those rare forms of happiness that really is more than worth the effort that goes into finding it, both for your own well-being and the well-being of people around you.
- Recollection of the Buddha… As he said, the qualities that allowed him to find that true happiness are qualities we all have in potential form, simply that we need to develop them. And developing them is something we can do on our own. Those facts have lots of implications for all of us, in terms both of the sense of the world in which we live and of …
- Priorities in Life… And he can’t even stay focused on an issue long enough to form a proper question or to really take the answer and do something with it. All he says is, “Hmm, that makes sense. That sounds reasonable.” Then he moves on. It’s a picture of the drawbacks of being in a position of power. You have to think about this as …
- Get Outside Yourself… you have to continue maintaining them — that’s the drawback. So you look at the drawback in terms of the five aggregates. These states of concentration are made out of aggregates: form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness. But those things—now that you’ve gotten good at them—you want to see them in terms of the fact that they’re inconstant, stressful, not …
- Potentials for Good… When Ajaan Lee made those comments, he was talking about one of the forms of right resolve, which is to be resolved on harmlessness. You don’t focus on your bad points; you don’t focus on other people’s bad points. You try to focus on the good points. When you see somebody suffering, you focus on the potentials they have to become …
- Analysis of Qualities… It’s a practical question, answered with a practical form of discernment or wisdom. I was recently reading a footnote on the factors for awakening in a sutta anthology. The author was saying that the factor of analysis of qualities is the wisdom factor in the set—“although,” he said, “it’s defined as looking into what’s skillful and what’s not skillful …
- Mindfulness & Perception… That comes under the aggregate of form. There are going to be feelings of pleasure and pain, so you learn how to cultivate the breath in such a way that gives rise to pleasure. Use a perception to remind yourself to stay here. Then there’s fabrication, especially in the first stage of right concentration: You’ve got to keep directing your thoughts to …
- Values of the Noble Ones… So, look at your clingings as a form of addiction, and look at the problem of addiction as a failure of the imagination. One way to improve your imagination is to step back from situations and ask yourself, “What am I assuming here about this situation that’s actually keeping me trapped?” “What am I assuming about myself that’s keeping me trapped?” Those …
- The Focus on Suffering… In particular, there’s one form of suffering that’s very important to look at. It’s the suffering we’re causing ourselves. We tend to be more interested in the suffering coming from other people: the things they say, the things they do, their attitude towards us. That’s what gets us all worked up. And because we’re paying attention outside, we …
- Patience… As the Buddha says, we engage in different activities that he classes under the aggregates, and each of those aggregates — whether it’s form, feeling, perception, thought constructs, or consciousness — is something we fabricate for the sake of something else. In other words, we have means and we have goals. The goals are either directly or indirectly aimed at happiness. This is how we …
- Fangs in the Static… the form of the body, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, consciousness—all very ephemeral things. How could you build anything lasting out of things that are ephemeral like this? Now, not all those perceptions are negative. The Buddha also has you think of the positive perceptions of how the cessation of these things would be a good thing, dispassion for these things would be a good …
- Perception… Another teaching from the ajaans is that when you focus on the five aggregates—form, feeling, perception, fabrication, and consciousness—you can start out with any one of the five and it will give you insight into all the rest. For instance, you can focus on the body, analyze your attachment to the body, and it will start spreading around to feelings and perceptions …
- The Path Is and Isn’t the Goal… After all, what’s the path composed of? There’s the form of the body sitting here. There are feelings of pleasure that you’re inducing, feelings of ease, feelings of equanimity. There’s the perception you hold of the breath, the mental activity of adjusting and investigating, probing, learning about the breath, learning about the mind. And there’s consciousness. In other words …
- Load next page...
