Search results for: "Becoming"

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  2. Strong & Heedful
     … It doesn’t become a prey to delusion or craving ever again, because the assumptions that allow delusion and craving to have power get stripped away. This is real strength of mind. The Buddha says of the five strengths, discernment is the one that secures everything else, even though it often comes last. He makes a comparison with putting up rafters for a roof … 
  3. One Thing at a Time
     … If we know what we’re doing as we come to these things, then it all becomes part of the path. The Buddha focuses attention on two things—what he calls fabrication, sankhara; and intention, cetana—and these things come first. Yet we don’t realize that fact, which is why we suffer. So as we come to meditate, we’re trying to get … 
  4. Training the Committee
     … And when you can have goodwill for all beings, it becomes really hard for you to do anything unskillful because you don’t want to harm anybody. Another way you can protect yourself from the unskillful members of your committee is through contemplation of the body, especially the unattractiveness of the body. It’s not to make you disgusted with the body, it’s … 
  5. Things that Arise & Pass Away
     … All of this is done in the pursuit of happiness in a noble way, trying to become happy in a way that develops wisdom, compassion, and purity. Of course, the wisest pursuit of happiness is one that goes for a happiness that doesn’t change. This is where the Buddha’s premises about fabrication come in, and they give focus to your practice. We … 
  6. Independent of the World
     … Who told him to become Buddha? It was his own aspiration, it was his own independent decision that that was what he wanted to do. He kept on developing his perfections regardless of what was going on around him. No matter how difficult it was, no matter how much other people tried to discourage him, he was able to maintain his determination. So as … 
  7. Grounded in the Breath
     … You want to find those sensitive spots, because otherwise the breath can become very mechanical very quickly. You ask yourself, “Which parts of the body are pulling the breath in? Which parts are more neutral? And the parts that are pulling it in: Why do they have to do all the work? Can’t they get some breath energy themselves?” So ask a few … 
  8. Working from the Inside
     … As you learn how to shape the state of concentration, you begin to become more and more sensitive to how you shape things throughout the rest of the day as well. You realize you’re not here simply passively taking things in and then reacting. You’re proactive. So you want to be sensitive to how you’re shaping things, so that you can … 
  9. The Need for Right View
     … As the Buddha points out, becoming comes from certain choices. So what you want to choose is to focus on the issue of suffering, and what happens in the mind to create the suffering. When you look at your experience in those terms, a whole new set of duties comes up in line with those four noble truths. Suffering, you want to comprehend. That … 
  10. Bless Yourself
     … And when you’re focusing on their bad points, it becomes harder to treat them well. So you have goodwill for yourself, and then you have goodwill for others, reminding yourself that the behavior you engaged in was harmful. You don’t want to harm others. And so you want to strengthen your resolve not to repeat the mistakes that you made, and you … 
  11. Disenchantment
     … Your awareness of the breath and the breath itself seem to become one and the same thing. There’s a sense of unification — ekodi-bhava — which the Buddha has us develop as much as possible. And he has us take that sense of oneness as far as it can go through the levels of concentration. Why? Because he wants us to feed on that … 
  12. Why We Bow Down
     … He found a path that requires us to become better people in order to be able to prove whether he taught the truth. So at the very least, we have a sense that we become better as we follow his path. So approach it with respect. Have a strong sense that this really is special. Years back, I was at Yosemite, standing on a … 
  13. A Passion for the Path
     … In every case, our motivation may not be pure as we begin, but as we become more and more self observant, as concentration gets stronger, and our discernment gets more precise, we begin to see that there are things we’re holding onto that are causing us to suffer and if we don’t let them go, there are going to be problems. What … 
  14. Resisting the Germs of Defilement
     … But then when our resistance gets weak, we become susceptible. Those are cases where your body knows that this is a foreign substance, this germ or this virus coming in, but it just doesn’t have the strength to fight it off. There are other cases where it doesn’t even know, it doesn’t recognize it yet. The germ invades and can do … 
  15. The Power to Transcend Suffering
     … But as you get more and more familiar with the strings, more and more sensitive to different ways of playing them, you find that you can end up playing some very moving music on the guitar as you become more and more sensitive in listening to what you’re doing. And it’s the same with the breath. As you get more and more … 
  16. The Good Side of Kamma
     … Goodwill becomes our motivation to do things in a skillful way. If we were windup toys, goodwill would be superfluous. Or if our actions had no impact on anybody, goodwill again would be superfluous. It wouldn’t have any meaning. But we know that we have choices and we want to make sure that our choices are skillful. That means keeping this in mind … 
  17. Pleasure & Pain
     … The mind becomes a blur. So it’s important that once you find pleasant sensations, you learn how to breathe in such way that you’re not harming them, not putting pressure on them or destroying them. You’re just allowing them to stay that way. You keep tabs on the pleasure but your main focus should be on the cause, which is the … 
  18. The Rewards of Cleanliness
     … The room becomes a lot more livable. The same with your mind: In the beginning, it’s going to take a lot of work to get it all cleaned out. Or if you let it go for a long while before you start meditating again, it’s going to take a while to clean it up again. But once it’s been cleaned out … 
  19. The Dhamma Is in the Method
     … That’s when the Dhamma becomes yours. And you know it’s Dhamma because it gives good results. This is why the teaching on kamma is such a basic part of the teaching, i.e., the principle that your actions will give results based on your intentions in line with the principles of cause and effect. If your actions made no difference, or if … 
  20. Comfortable as an Outsider
     … Learning how to practice both on your own and with other people means becoming comfortable with both roles. It takes time and it takes determination. Because a lot of us don’t like being outsiders. We want to fit in. I found this to be true during my time in Thailand. We had a lot of work projects around the monastery. Ajaan Fuang was … 
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