Search results for: "Becoming"

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  2. The Karma of Pain
     … As you become more active in trying to comprehend the pain, you become a moving target. The pain is not aimed right at you. It can’t hit you, because you’re moving around. And you can probe around. Ask questions about these various factors that go into turning the physical pain into a mental pain. And that karma of probing is your skillful … 
  3. Friendship Leading to Seclusion
     … It then becomes a foundation for the next step, of course, which is seclusion from the defilements. You’ve gotten a taste of this as you deal with the hindrances that get in the way of concentration. It’s simply that as your concentration gets deeper, you see subtler things. But even then as you work with the defilements that come up—the subtle … 
  4. Gladden, Steady, Release
     … This is where whatever ways you have of developing a sense of samvega become important. If you’re attached to thoughts about your body or somebody else’s body, remember what happens to bodies: They grow ill; they get sick. You can’t really depend on them. If you’re attached to things being a certain way: Again, that’s really undependable. The only … 
  5. To Suffer Is an Active Verb
     … You get the mind to settle down with a sense of well-being so that you become more sensitive to slight instances of stress or suffering. Then you try to notice them go up and down. When they go up, ask yourself, “What did I do?” When they go down, “What did I do, or what did I stop doing?” That’s how you … 
  6. Noble & True
     … After all, what’s noble about craving? What’s noble about suffering? They were claiming that the four noble truths aren’t even really true for anybody aside from those who have already become awakened, which is a very peculiar statement, After all, the Buddha teaches the truths as part of a path. They’re part of how you get there – to awakening. You … 
  7. Guarded
     … This then becomes your place. Other people’s energy can be directed at you but you’ve got this force field inside that repels it, so it slips past. The first time you notice this actually happening, you begin to gain a sense that you do have a sense of strength and a sense of not being threatened that you didn’t have before … 
  8. The Fool & the Wise Person
     … what the Buddha called becoming. We see becoming both on the micro level and on the macro level. The micro level consists of these little thought worlds that we create, moving off into this, moving off into that. We’re just fascinated with our own creations. It’s like that story Jean Piaget told about his daughter. She went through a period, when she … 
  9. The Third Noble Truth
     … You want to abandon sensual craving, craving for becoming, and craving for non-becoming. And the third noble truth is just that: the act of really abandoning these forms of craving, once and for all, with the added duty of realizing the act of abandoning while you’re doing it, and appreciating that it does lead to the ending of stress. The wording of … 
  10. Framing the Body
     … Suddenly this body that you thought you could use to gain all sorts of things becomes a huge burden. Just keeping it functioning is all you can manage. It doesn’t give you room for anything else. So, think about the body and learn to frame your issues properly. Body contemplation, as I said, is not just a matter of taking the body apart … 
  11. Commit, Reflect, Discern
     … But then there will come a time when things have settled down, and all that talking becomes superfluous. It’s a disturbance. So what was necessary to get it to settle down is no longer necessary, and is now actually part of the problem. So you learn how to let it go. For some people this is hard. They’re so used to talking … 
  12. Trustworthy Judgment
     … In this way the mind becomes more and more your own mainstay, so that when you have to make big decisions about your life, you have a mind state that’s capable of making the decisions. And you can trust your ability to judge what’s a good decision, what’s not. This requires all of the skills involved in concentration: mindfulness, alertness, discernment … 
  13. A Warrior’s Strengths
     … When the storms in your mind are blowing and they seem really strong, just say, “I’m going to stay right here with the breath and focus on that and not get involved in anything else.” As soon as you have the complicating thought or the proliferating thought that “I am the thinker,” then the thoughts become your thoughts and you’ve got to … 
  14. Space for Sustained Contemplation
     … One of the ways in which this becomes a good environment for meditation is that we’re supporting one another in our sustained contemplation, our sustained efforts. It’s a very different dynamic from living out in the world outside. But as you get used to this attitude, you find it makes it a lot more livable, and your own mind becomes a lot … 
  15. Bases for Success
     … That’s when the mind becomes one. Then you can do what you can to maintain that. Now, as you maintain it, the more active side, the discerning side becomes less and less active. You don’t need to do so much directed thought and evaluation. There’s simply the effort to stay with one object at the same time that you’re enjoying … 
  16. A Sense of Yourself
     … This is one area where, if you want to learn how to trust yourself, you really have to work to become more and more effective at talking yourself into doing things that you know are right even though you don’t want to do them; and to talk yourself out of doing things that you know are wrong, but you like doing them. And … 
  17. No One in Charge
     … The question then becomes: What kind of happiness do you want out of this pattern? Where will you find satisfaction? Where will you find fulfillment? As the Buddha said, fulfillment comes from letting go. Several of the ajaans have said that the practice is basically one thing clear through. It starts with generosity and it ends with total letting go. But you also have … 
  18. Relaxing into the Body
     … As you become more sensitive, the sense of the body becomes more refined, and that’s when the mind and body can interpenetrate. That’s how you settle down without having to push things together. You simply allow them to interpenetrate, and there they are. When they’re there together, they give each other strength. Ajaan Lee’s image is that you’re like … 
  19. Consciousness, Name, & Form
     … If you add your sense of “you” to it all, then it becomes a state of becoming. For the time being, you don’t want to go there. See these mental events simply as events, so that you can see how ephemeral they are, how quick they are to change. And you begin to wonder how you thought you could build anything solid on … 
  20. Dispassion Isn’t Oatmeal
     … No great danger.” You sober up and become heedful only when you’re willing to realize, “Okay, there really are dangers. There really is a need to focus right now on what needs to be done to not suffer from those dangers.” After all, when youth goes, it doesn’t come back. Health goes, well, sometimes it comes back. But when you die, you … 
  21. Good & Bad Meditation
     … So this is where having a sense of good and bad meditation finally does become useful. In one sense, every meditation is good if you bring the right attitude to it, regarding it as an opportunity to learn. With that approach, bad is bad only in the sense that a particular line of reasoning doesn’t go where you want it, or a particular … 
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