Search results for: "Becoming"

  1. Page 58
  2. The Teacher Inside
     … This way, the pattern of the meditation becomes ingrained so that you don’t get careless and complacent. All too often you say, “Well, I know the basics already. I’d like to move on to the higher things.” But the higher things depend on the basics. You can’t have the 53rd story of a building unless you have the first story, the … 
  3. Doubts
     … But are they good hypotheses? You can test them by what’s called a pragmatic proof: “If I were to assume rebirth, and assume the importance of karma, and assume the importance of my mental actions in particular, what kind of person would I become? What kind of actions would I engage in?” And you realize that these hypotheses inspire in skillful actions. So … 
  4. Basic Wisdom
     … He recommends that you be generous, that you observe the precepts, and you develop good qualities in the mind through mindfulness and meditation, partly because these actions give rise to good results, and partly because he wants you to become sensitive to what you’re doing— because this is the big issue in life. We’re constantly doing, doing, doing things, and some place … 
  5. Over & Over Again
     … So figure out ways to enjoy the process, so that it doesn’t become tedious, so that it stays fresh. Then do it again and again and again. Someday as you’re walking down the path, you’ll stumble over something valuable. It’s there. It’s simply a matter of being meticulous and ardent and sensitive to what’s going on. Some people … 
  6. Thinking Your Way to Stillness
     … You think about the qualities that lead people to become devas and reflect that you have those qualities in yourself: a sense of shame over the idea of doing something evil, a sense of compunction that you wouldn’t want to engage in evil. Virtue, generosity, conviction, wisdom: These are all qualities that lead people to become devas, and you’ve got them, to … 
  7. The Middle Way
     … After a while, it becomes more and more natural that this is the place where you want to stay and keep looking. An important way of establishing this frame of reference is trying to make the breath as comfortable as possible. Once it’s comfortable, you can start thinking of that sense of ease spreading throughout the body: down the front, down the back … 
  8. The Graduated Discourse
     … But before there’s death, it’s interesting to note that everybody who seems to have an enviable position in life becomes the target of a lot of jealousy. As you get older and weaker, it’s not that people let up and treat you more gently and with more respect. They actually just get worse, because they see that you’re weak and … 
  9. Equanimity Isn’t Nibbana
     … Second is the craving to become something—in other words, to take on an identity in a specific world of experience. The identity often plays into the world, the world plays into the identity. Whatever identity you build around a desire will then determine the parts of the world you pay attention to, in terms of whether they help or hinder you from attaining … 
  10. Precarious Knowledge
     … However you know things, he says, the means by which you know them are becoming otherwise while you watch. Everything is changing very fast. So if your knowledge and ideas are dependent on changeable things, your knowledge and ideas are going to be changeable, too. So when you learn something that really is useful, that does have a good impact on the mind, put … 
  11. The Middleness of the Path
     … This is why our path is a gradual one, a step-by-step path, as we become more and more sensitive to what we’re doing, more sensitive to the results, so that gradually we become more and more sensitive to what’s actually right here. And it’s in working with this issue — the middleness of the path, what’s appropriate right now … 
  12. Looking in Three Directions
     … If you keep these three things in mind—what your plan is for the meditation, what you’re actually doing, how well you’re doing it and how well the results are going—this is how the meditation becomes a skill. You learn to recognize problems as they come up and you use your ingenuity to figure them out. You see if you can … 
  13. Healing Breath
     … And you try to become sensitive to variations in the breath, noticing when the breath longer, when it’s shorter, when it’s deeper, or when it’s more shallow, when it’s heavier or lighter. Notice the effect that these different ways of breathing have on the body. Find one spot where it’s easy to stay focused on the sensation of breathing … 
  14. Strengthening Conviction
     … So when you start to have doubts about the practice or become uncertain about the practice, you have to ask yourself: Whose values are speaking? And what’s the quality of the mind that’s speaking here? You want to step back from these things. It’s not that you don’t listen to your doubts at all, but you do want to figure … 
  15. The Karma of Self & Not-Self
     … So our question sometimes becomes, “Who’s the real me in here?” But the Buddha saw that that was not the right question. The right question is: How can you create some order among your different senses of self and not-self so that you can find true happiness? That was the whole purpose of his teaching. We have this power, through our ability … 
  16. A Good Independent Self
     … Every becoming has a sense of self, or more accurately, three senses of self playing three roles. The first is the self as the agent who’s going to do the work that needs to be done to find the happiness on which that particular state of becoming is centered, or the desire on which it’s centered. Then there’s the self as … 
  17. Metta
     … If you let yourself have ill will for certain beings, it’s very easy to mistreat them, and then that becomes your karma, and your happiness gets spoiled. So it’s primarily for you that you should be developing goodwill as a protection for yourself. The Buddha also said it’s a resolve, a part of right resolve. It’s also a determination. You … 
  18. Attachment vs. Affection
     … That ability should be developed to become unlimited as well. In other words, you see that there are times when your partiality toward a particular person is going to cause trouble not only for you but also for that person and other people as well. If somebody is really sick, and all you can do is get upset about the sickness, you’re going … 
  19. All Fabrications Are Stressful
     … So, reflecting on the fact that your life is marked by these things, you want to become more skillful, more heedful. But then, when you reflect that it’s everywhere—everybody is subject to these things, even the devas and Brahmās—that’s when you get on the path, realizing that you’ve got to get out. So we look directly at the processes … 
  20. Remembering Ajaan Suwat
     … That’s when the precept really does become a training rule. It trains you in new ways. It forces you to make choices, make sacrifices for the purpose of seeing: What does this do to the mind? Does it lead to the end of suffering, as the Buddha promised? The Buddha made virtue—in the factors of right action, right speech, and right livelihood … 
  21. Think Outside the Ruts
     … There’s that whole issue of, “I do everything just for me, me, me, me, me”—and it becomes a very horrible “me,” and, as long as you think there’s only one “me” in there, it’s really difficult to figure out exactly what is it that the “me” wants. But when you start dividing it up, you see that there are lots … 
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