Search results for: "Greed"

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  2. Guarding Against Trouble
     … If you find that you’re thinking about things or looking at things or listening to things in a way that gives rise to greed, aversion, or delusion, you try to stop. Either you change the way you look or listen, or you just don’t look at or listen to those things at all. You don’t have to go around with blinders … 
  3. Eeeels
     … Often our problem is that greed, anger, and delusion take over the mind before we’ve even realized that there’s anything going on. In other words, we’ve already capitulated to them before we realize, “Hey, somebody else is in power.” Actually, the mind has its warning signals before greed, anger, or delusion takes over. They arise in very weak ways. There are … 
  4. Fabricating with Awareness
     … In other words, you learn how to use these processes of bodily, verbal, and mental fabrications with knowledge to counteract the greed, aversion, and delusion of the mind—its different ways of craving and clinging. These are your tools, and it’s good to know your tools so that you can have them at hand if something unskillful comes up in the mind. Sometimes … 
  5. Fears
     … And yet the texts don’t treat fear all that much, largely because there are many different kinds of fear — fear associated with greed, fear associated with anger, fear associated with delusion — and the texts focus more on the emotions behind the fears than on the fears themselves. The implication here is that if you want to understand your fears, you have to understand … 
  6. Courage
     … He had greed, aversion, and delusion just like us. He had impatience. His practice had its ups and downs. But he didn’t let the downs get him down, even after six years of austerities, when he had pushed the limits of what a human being can do in terms of denying himself any kind of pleasure at all. At that point, he looked … 
  7. Friends & Enemies
     … If you have goodwill for your genuine happiness, you begin to realize that greed, aversion, and delusion are not your friends. As the Buddha said, we go around with craving as our companion, but it’s misled us so many times. It’s about time that we began to realize we’ve been hanging around with a false friend. If you really have goodwill … 
  8. Accepting the Buddha’s Standards
     … People say, “If we didn’t have greed, society wouldn’t develop. The economy would collapse. If we didn’t have anger, we couldn’t bring about justice. We couldn’t stand up for our rights.” And even though there’s no conscious defense of delusion, people are constantly defending the idea that we need a little bit of alcohol or, say, a little … 
  9. Right Resolve & Right Concentration
     … When you’ve got the mind in right concentration, you’re working with the breath, which is usually the part of you that gets hijacked by your greed, aversion, and delusion. These emotions can start getting you to breathe in unskillful ways—you can even have panic attacks—that just squeeze the mind, squeeze your nerves as they say in Thai, to the point … 
  10. When Ill Will Is in Fashion
     … You’re devoid of inordinate greed, you bear no ill will, and your views are straightened out. In other words, you believe in the principle of kamma, the principle of rebirth. These are precepts for the mind as you engage with other people. And remember, with the precepts, the important thing is your intentions. If you break a precept unintentionally, it doesn’t count … 
  11. The Acrobat
     … If you cut out the greed, anger, and delusion in your mind, you’re inflicting other people with less greed, anger, and delusion. That’s good for them right there. You maintain your balance and you don’t knock other people off of theirs. Sometimes you provide a basis for them to find their balance. This is the Buddha’s description of mindfulness practice … 
  12. The Bureaucracy of the Defilements
     … the bureaucracy of your defilements—things like greed, aversion, and delusion, which cloud the mind and get in the way of genuine discernment. Our mind is very complex. It’s like a large organization, making all kinds of decisions all the time, and we have a tendency to delegate a lot of our decisions to our old habits. There are a lot of little … 
  13. Developing Absorption
     … The second activity is to put aside any greed and distress with reference to the world. In other words, anything that would come in and pull you into the world outside, you’ve got to let go. Protect any thoughts that help direct your attention to the breath. Those are things to develop. So you have to pass judgment as to which things you … 
  14. Enlightenment is Not a Hot Dog
     … When greed arises, how does it arise? If you want to understand dependent co-arising, you’ve got to look at your greed. You’ve got to look at your anger. And sometimes it doesn’t help to have the fancy labels affixed. Just look at what you’re doing, and to what extent are you causing stress by the way you think? Are … 
  15. In Training
     … Even though acting on greed, aversion, and delusion is not pleasant in and of itself, still it can lead to other sensual pleasures in the short-run, other kinds of pleasures that last for at least a little while. The same with skillful actions: Sometimes they’re difficult. The fact that you’re acting on a skillful intention is pleasant in and of itself … 
  16. Conserving Your Strength
     … making sure that your actions are not done under the influence of the defilement, under the influence of greed or aversion or delusion. That’s where the real battlefield is. So make that your top priority. Some people may say it’s selfish, but hey, if you can reduce the amount of greed and aversion and delusion in your actions, that’s a real … 
  17. The Kindness of Body Contemplation
     … Why are your perceptions so arbitrary? What’s hiding behind the fact that you choose one perception over another—that this is attractive, that’s not attractive? Your perceptions are driven by your greed, aversion, and delusion. And if you can’t see that, you’ll never be free from your greed, aversion, and delusion because they’ll be parading these perceptions in front … 
  18. Looking After Yourself
     … It means simply that if you notice that the way you look at something is giving rise to greed, aversion and delusion, you’ve got to look in another way. The same with your listening and all the other senses. Think about your motivation for why you’re looking at something. Is it to excite greed? Is it to excite anger? It’s not … 
  19. On Human Nature
     … If you can uproot your greed, other people around you won’t have to suffer from your greed. If you can uproot your aversion and delusion, nobody has to suffer from your aversion and delusion. That right there is a huge gift. It’s in this way that your desire for happiness can be turned into something that’s wise, pure, and compassionate. As … 
  20. Equanimity
     … In other words, certain kinds of greed, aversion, or delusion come up, and when you recognize them for what they are, it’s as if they get embarrassed and they just go away. There are other instances, though, where they’re not embarrassed at all. When you look at them, they stare right back. They’re firmly entrenched. They’re armed with lots of … 
  21. The Wisdom of Ardency
    The standard formula for mindfulness is that you keep track of the body in and of itself—ardent, alert, and mindful—putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. You do the same with feelings in and of themselves, mind-states in and of themselves, and mental qualities in and of themselves. There’s a large sutta devoted to explaining part of … 
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