Search results for: "Form"

  1. Page 54
  2. Making a Refuge
     … So learning how to be content is a very good form of refuge, both within and without. Then there are the qualities of mindfulness and discernment. Mindfulness, of course, builds on right effort and informs right effort because you remember what’s skillful and what’s not. In terms of your practice, you remember what’s worked and what hasn’t worked. That’s … 
  3. The Middleness of the Path
     … If you can see yourself causing any form of stress or suffering, you can drop it. That will move you to another level of sensitivity, and so you stay at that level for a while, and then just watch again. So the middleness of the middle way actually means the appropriateness of what you’re doing vis-à-vis the circumstances you’ve got … 
  4. The Buddha’s Narrative
     … Then there’s homage through the practice, which the Buddha says is the higher of the two forms of homage. That’s what we’re doing right now, training our minds. Because that’s why the Buddha taught all those 45 years: to get other people to train their minds in the same way he had trained his, to make their lives special in … 
  5. Angry
     … Goodwill, as the Buddha said, is a form of mindfulness. It’s a recollection. The desire for happiness is taken for granted, but the realization that if we really do want to find true happiness, we have to have goodwill for all, without exception: That’s something we have to train ourselves in. We have to determine for ourselves that this is what we … 
  6. Looking in Three Directions
     … What’s going to come along to try to destroy your concentration? If you’re aware of the breath energy in the body, you’ll start getting quicker and quicker at seeing how a thought forms. That right there is a huge and important insight, because if you can’t catch these things quickly, you’re going to be aware of them only when … 
  7. A Sense of Time & Place
     … Being judgmental means looking at somebody and immediately forming an opinion. But the Buddha has a lot to say on how to pass judgment one other people skillfully, primarily as examples for your own behavior. Who’s a good example? Who’s a bad example? And what are good standards for judging? You don’t judge people by their status, even though you have … 
  8. Beyond Gratitude
     … They’re all here in one form or another. So you start out by depending on whatever virtue you have, whatever concentration, whatever discernment you do have already. Then learn how to make it grow so that it’s all-around. Ajaan Chah says that Ajaan Mun used to talk about making the practice into the shape of a circle so that it’s … 
  9. Healing Breath
     … This forms the basis for concentration, the sixth factor. The mind can really settle down and be solidly established in the singleness of its object—singleness here being singleness both in the sense of having one object and in the sense that this one object, like the breath, fills your awareness. Your perception of the breath is such that you can see every sensation … 
  10. Strengthening Conviction
     … They’re qualities that we all have, to at least some extent, in a potential form. The implication there, of course, is that if he can do it, you can do it, too. Because he found this way and was expert in gaining that freedom, you treat his words the way you would treat an expert’s words. Not necessarily something that you’re … 
  11. The Karma of Self & Not-Self
     … You’ve got the form of the body as you sense it through the breath; you’ve got feelings of pleasure; you’ve got the perceptions that you hold in mind about how the breath runs through the body and where you are in the body as you focus on the breath; fabrications would be the intentions that hold you here; and then there … 
  12. The Need for a Purpose
     … We have a purpose, which means, of course, that we have some expectations, that by fashioning a sense of form, feelings, perceptions, thought fabrications, and consciousness out of the raw material given to us by our past karma, we’re looking for something. We have a purpose in mind. This is the nature of our mind. It’s purposeful. When it has no purpose … 
  13. Bringing Daily Life into the Practice
     … This is why I said you want to make sure the practice forms the context: because, as you maintain this context, you’re in touch with your refuge. You keep yourself safe, because it helps you see things in terms of their true value—what’s really important, what’s only of secondary importance. When you don’t allow the narratives of the world … 
  14. A Friend to the World, A Friend to Yourself
     … In fact, all the forms of strength that the Buddha talks about are there for giving your goodness the power it needs so that you don’t have to be taking goodness from the world and you can keep creating it. No matter what the world does, you want to make sure that your goodness stays in good shape. Think of the Buddha’s … 
  15. Papañca
     … If you do your best to keep those thoughts at bay, you learn about the process of how thoughts form. In the beginning, it’s very easy to be here with the breath and then find yourself someplace else, far away, and not know how you got there. You have to come back to the breath and make up your mind to watch for … 
  16. Good Work
     … Greed, anger, and delusion, craving in its various forms: These are all here, operating in the present moment. They can pull you to the past, they can pull you to the future, but they come out of the present. It’s not that when you get to the present all your problems disappear. It’s that you’re actually getting to the place where … 
  17. “May I Be Happy”
     … This in itself is a form of generosity, and it leads to more generosity in the future. The more good will you feel for yourself and for the people around you, the easier it is to be generous, to be helpful both to yourself and to them. So you simply start with that thought: “May I be happy,” like we chanted just now. I … 
  18. What Are You Doing in the Present?
     … dispassion for them?” In the beginning, you apply those questions to everything but the concentration, because you don’t want to be dispassionate about concentration while it’s still only half formed or half mastered. This has to be your passion. This is the direction, this is the purpose, that you give to your meditation. The insights will come along as you’re trying … 
  19. The River of Karma
     … You develop these forms of pleasure so that they can put the mind in a place where it can observe things clearly. So there are the two things: You develop the *brahma-viharas, *and you learn how not to be overwhelmed by pleasure and pain. Instead, you use them as tools. In this way, you mitigate the bad effects of past actions. In fact … 
  20. A Meritorious Heart
     … Now, the two practices of generosity and virtue are nurtured by the third form of merit, or the third expression of the meritorious heart, which is the development of an attitude of universal goodwill, the desire for everybody to be happy, realizing that if you’re the only person in the world who’s happy and nobody else is happy, it’s be a … 
  21. A Snare of Death Laid Out
     … Renunciate pain is the realization that “There is a much higher form of happiness that I haven’t reached yet.” It’s a painful thought, but it’s a thought that motivates you to practice. Renunciate pleasure is when you’re able to let go of sensuality and find pleasure at the very least by getting the mind into concentration. The realization that there … 
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