Search results for: "Becoming"
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- The River of Karma… This is where meditation becomes very important. You don’t have much control over what you did in the past. In fact, right now you have no control. But you can control your state of mind here in the present moment. And that will make all the difference in how you experience the fruits of past actions. Here, there are two things in particular …
- A Good Dish of Concentration… These other things that you feed on, are they really worth it? Is it really good food? What do you have to do in order to find that food? And what happens to you as a result? What kind of person do you become? It’s like eating a lot of junk food: You find that after a while you become fat; your heart …
- Insight from Jhana… This allows us to become more and more sensitive to what the mind is doing in the present moment. In fact, the process of getting the mind to settle down is like peeling away the layers of an onion. First you deal with the really blatant distractions—the blatant things that are irritating the mind: thoughts about your work, thoughts about home, thoughts about …
- The Source of Goodness… As you develop the qualities we’re working on—mindfulness, alertness, concentration, discernment, tranquility and insight—you find you become a steadier person. Your mind has a good grounding and a good home. You’re not so open to influences from outside, especially negative influences. In that way, you develop a greater solidity. And the solidity is in and of itself a gift to …
- The Image of the Raft… This is how the mind can become one. Once you’ve chosen the breath as your object, you try to stick with it. You hold on. We hear so much about the path being a path of letting go, but there are a lot of things you have to hold on to. You have to hold on to the basic principles that the Buddha …
- A Happiness Without Boundaries… It becomes a much more expansive mind. It doesn’t have that narrow, fearful quality that it has if you’re just concerned about what you’re going to gain, being afraid that other people will take away what you’ve got. You realize that you have more than enough to share. It’s one of the amazing features of the human race: Often …
- The Story-telling Mind… Let all the ways that the mind relates to itself in terms of past, future, narratives, stories, worldviews, cosmologies — all your views — become skillful. Let them no longer be a cause for suffering. Think of the practice as an all-around way of training the mind. You’re not here just to get very skillful at noting or at being with the breath. You …
- Concentration Nurtured with Virtue… But if you see them as an opportunity to develop discernment and then apply your discernment to them, they become useful tools in the path. It’s not the case that once you’ve reached the level of stream entry you don’t need the precepts anymore, in letting go of that fetter of groping at habits and practices. Actually, at that point, your …
- The Duty to Understand… It becomes your object of meditation, simply for the purpose of concentration. They say that concentration isn’t fully mastered until the state of non-return, which is also the point where the fetter of sensual desire is cut. So this contemplation is very useful. If you really want the mind to settle down, and you notice the things that obstruct you from settling …
- Separate… That, he said, is how you become pure. When you become pure in your actions, you’re very careful—so there are no regrets. When there are no regrets, your mind is more independent. There’s nothing that the world outside can grab hold of to make you suffer. So, in independence there’s freedom, and then, in that freedom, you’re free from …
- The Six Properties… That’s where the teaching really becomes useful, because it allows you to see how the way you focus on the body has an impact on how you perceive the body, how you actually sense the body. We think of sensations as being primary, the raw material, the basic building blocks of experience, but there are conscious decisions being made that precede the sensations …
- Love for the Dhamma… We tend to have a romantic idea of the forest — peaceful, green, beautiful forest — because our idea of forest life has become awfully sanitized. Actually, there are a lot of difficulties there. There are dangerous animals — not just the tigers that seem romantic and exciting, but also the day-to-day things: the bugs and snakes and other animals that carry diseases. When you …
- Protect Your Inner Center… It becomes more and more your center of gravity. Then when events happen, you notice the event but you see it as just going right past you. It’s not that you become cold-hearted or don’t care about things. It’s simply that you learn not to take things personally, not to grab hold of things and pull them in, pull them …
- Truth as Medicine… This is where you learn to become your own doctor. But that basic attitude as a doctor: You look at the various truths, the things you know that you really believe in, and say, “Okay, this is a kind of medicine but is this a good medicine for me right now?” It’s like doctors in the old days. They’d go into the …
- Own Your Actions… But as long as you’re very actively questioning, you become a moving target, and the pain can’t shoot you. After a while you begin to realize that the pain’s not trying to shoot you. It’s because you’ve been running up after it and gobbling it down. But if you stop gobbling it and instead approach it from other angles …
- Unraveling the Present… If you go back behind stage, you begin to get some idea of this, and after a while it becomes not so funny after all. It’s the same with all the elaborate things we create in our mind. They entertain us, they impress us, whatever, but if you just look at the process of mental creation, you begin to realize how stressful it …
- Goodness Comes from Heedfulness… You’re going to open them up, release the blockage, and the body becomes a much more comfortable place to be. Then you take that same principle and apply it to other people, other beings. Learn how to perceive them as your companions in birth, aging, illness, and death. They’re suffering, too, so why would you want to add to their suffering? What …
- Merit: Actively Happy… Eventually the prince becomes a servant to the king, and then a trusted servant. Finally, there comes a day when he’s in a position where he could kill the king. But he doesn’t. What holds him back is the memory of his father who, before he died, said to him, “Don’t look too far, don’t look too close. Because animosity …
- Three Virtues for the Mind… We take the potentials coming from the past and we select from among them and nurture certain potentials until they become actualized, while we allow others to stay unactualized at least for the time being. Which means that when we’re suffering right now, we don’t have to continue to suffer. We can change the way we’re relating to a particular sensation …
- Attachment to Precepts… In other words, they don’t become part of your pride and identity in the sense that, “I’m proud because I can hold to this precept, but other people around here can’t.” That kind of comparison is where the precept becomes a problem. But the precept itself is not the problem; it’s your attitude toward the precept, or the attitude toward …
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