Search results for: "Becoming"

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  2. Heightening the Mind
     … Even when great feelings of oneness or unity or unlimitedness come into the mind, you find on a very subtle level that the mind can become enslaved to them as well. And the question is how, instead of becoming enslaved or enthralled, you can learn even from that kind of experience. Ultimately the mind has to become totally free, even from the state of … 
  3. A Refuge in Quiescence
     … But once the ridgepole is in place, everything is connected and all the other rafters become solid as well. Your conviction becomes solid, your persistence, your mindfulness, your concentration all become solid. You’ve got this place where you can ride out the storm. Think of those verses in the Theragāthā: A monk is in his hut and he says, “The hut is well … 
  4. A Passion for the Path
     … In other words, you have to attack suffering at the cause, which is the craving that leads to becoming: craving for sensuality, for becoming, non-becoming. Once the Buddha established that principle, then he taught how to develop that dispassion through the factors of the noble eightfold path: That’s the fourth noble truth. That then, of course, leads to the next question, which … 
  5. The Psychology of Virtue
     … Here again, this way of approaching your mind is going to be really useful when you start dealing with issues of becoming—your sense of your identity in a particular world of experience. The way to overcome becoming is not to try to destroy the worlds of experience you already have, because that, as the Buddha saw, just leads to more becoming. Instead, you … 
  6. Freedom Undefined
     … Then the preferences of that self take over, and the path becomes hard. But if you switch things around so that the question of becoming more skillful in your actions becomes your absolute while your sense of who you are becomes relative to that question, then the path becomes a lot easier. It’s a lot more enjoyable. It makes sense. This is why … 
  7. The World of Conviction
     … Craving for becoming: taking on more identities. Craving for non-becoming: craving to destroy any identities you have that you don’t like. The fact that you’re willing to step back and abandon them: That’s what’s noble about that truth. So this is the becoming that the Buddha has you assume through conviction as you take on the practice: that you … 
  8. As Days & Nights Fly Past
    There’s a question that the Buddha has us reflect on every day: “What am I becoming as days and nights fly past?” The Thai translation of the passage is: “Days and nights fly past. What am I doing right now?”—which may not be quite literal, but it gets the same point, because what you’re becoming is based on what you’re … 
  9. Observe Yourself in Action
     … The Buddha said this is how you get past the process of becoming. He said all the cravings that lead to suffering are those that lead to becoming, and that includes not only craving for sensuality and craving for becoming, but also craving for non-becoming, too. In that case, you have a state of becoming and you want to see it destroyed. But … 
  10. Confident, Steadfast, Resolute
     … But the other kind of truth, truth of the will, doesn’t become true unless you want it to be true. Say, that you would like to be a musician: If you just sit here, it’s not going to happen. But if you want it enough to actually do what needs to be done, then it becomes true. You do become a musician … 
  11. Dhamma Warrior
     … We like to have the monastery really nice here, but there are times when putting too much work into the monastery becomes a mistake. We like things to be clean. But sometimes we go beyond just clean, to just really spiffy and really, really nice. That’s when it becomes an obstacle. Ajaan Lee talks about how our thoughts of goodness sometimes become Maras … 
  12. Songkran
     … hoping that they become skillful, so that they become happy, happy in a way that’s based on the goodness that provides for long-term welfare and long-term well-being. So, this could be something you might bring into the world now. The world needs a lot of goodwill. There’s so much ill-will flowing around at the moment. Your contribution can … 
  13. Common Ground
     … That’s called becoming. As the Buddha says, all the cravings that lead to becoming are going to make you suffer, whether they’re sensual cravings, craving for becoming, or craving even for non-becoming, when you want to destroy a particular becoming. That, too, leads to becoming. So the basic structure is all the same. When we take on the four noble truths … 
  14. Papañca
     … That’s a whole other state of becoming. The mind’s really good at creating these things. The problem is that, the Buddha said, if you try to destroy these states of becoming, you’re still thinking in terms of becoming, and so it creates more becoming. The way out is to try to look at the processes that give rise to the state … 
  15. Wandering Aimlessly
     … That’s what becoming is. You create these worlds in the mind, or you tune in to a particular world when the mind reaches death. Craving carries over into another stated of becoming. Craving is called the guide in a lot of passages in the Canon, but again, the guide is often blind. The more blind it is, the more suffering it creates. So … 
  16. Admirable Friendship
     … And you become happy to give, realizing that something good does come from generosity: You develop good qualities in the mind. The mind becomes more spacious. The world around you becomes a much more humane place, because when you’re generous, you break down barriers. If you put a price tag on things all the time, you’re putting up barriers. Generosity tears them … 
  17. Second Wind
     … When there’s distraction, we drift off in other places to create a little state of becoming. And you might ask yourself about what the Buddha says goes into becoming: Clinging conditions becoming. So you might tell yourself, “I want to see what I’m clinging to right now.” You can cling to sensuality, you can cling to habits and practices, you can cling … 
  18. Practice Without Gaps
     … In that way, as your virtue becomes more continuous, it becomes a good foundation for your concentration. You get used to not making exceptions for your likes and dislikes. This is one of the problems of the world right now. There are people who say they honor the precepts and the principle that you shouldn’t be harmful—except for these cases or those … 
  19. Suffering Starts Before Life
     … These are precisely the things that constitute becoming—a desire, the world in which that desire can be fulfilled, and your identity within that world—which is why they say that craving conditions clinging, clinging conditions becoming, and it’s from becoming that birth happens. In other words, you actually go into that world and that identity. You go into that act of feeding … 
  20. Strategic Thinking
     … The cause of suffering is craving, specifically craving for sensuality, craving for becoming, craving for not-becoming. To abandon the cause of suffering and to understand suffering, you take some of those elements out of those two noble truths and you plug them into the fourth noble truth: the path to the end of suffering. In other words, you learn how to use the … 
  21. True Protection for the World
     … We need those attitudes, both to help immediately in the course of the meditation, and to carry into our daily life to protect ourselves from our own unskillful impulses, our unskillful intentions—so that we can become our own refuge. In other words, when you internalize the example of the Buddha, and the Dharma becomes part of your daily behavior in your thoughts, your … 
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