Search results for: "Form"

  1. Page 62
  2. The Stages of Meditation
     … Just take the thought apart before it forms and that makes it a lot easier to stay here for long periods of time. As you stay here longer and longer, one, the mind gets stronger, your awareness of the present moment gets stronger, the sense of wellbeing of the body gets stronger, goes deeper; and, two, you start seeing and understanding patterns of the … 
  3. Harmless & Clearheaded
     … This was the ease the Buddha realized could form an important part of the path. You probably know something of the story of his life. And it centered around this question of how to find a happiness that on the one hand is clear-sighted and on the other hand causes no harm to anybody, yourself or anyone else. There are two passages in … 
  4. Creating a New Self
     … And because the self is formed around a nucleus of desire, what’s relevant in that world or that particular world is going to be what’s relevant to that desire—either things that help it along or things that get in the way. So you find as you go through the course of the day that not only your sense of you but … 
  5. Layers of Selves
     … the goal where you don’t need to fabricate a sense of self in any way, shape, or form in order to maintain it. Because it’s deathless.
  6. Multi-Dimensional Dhamma
     … When we learn how to let go of our passion for sensual obsessions, and then on a deeper level our passion for experiences of forms or formless phenomena in strong concentration, only then are we truly free. In following this program, the way you practice is going to have an impact on other people. You’ve got to take that into consideration, along with … 
  7. One Thing Clear Through
     … It’s a pleasure of a different sort—the pleasure of form, the body as you feel it from within—which doesn’t have the drawbacks of the pleasures of sensuality. You focus on the breath. You become aware of the breath energy throughout the body as you breathe in, as you breathe out. As you develop a sense of ease in the breathing … 
  8. A Sense of Yourself
     … A group of Burmese people had gotten together, formed a committee, and wanted to present him with some land to build a monastery. He talked about this to the Thai Ambassador to Burma. Apparently the Thai Ambassador had some connections back in Bangkok. When Ajaan Lee got back to Bangkok and started looking into how this might succeed, he found out there was a … 
  9. Responsible for Your Goodness
     … When you’ve got that real goodness, then you don’t have to create all the artificial forms of goodness that we build around ourselves, our self-image, our idea of how important we are in this way or that. This then gets reflected in the way we’re generous. The Buddha talks about how the different levels of generosity that come along as … 
  10. Setbacks
     … There’s a sutta where the Buddha points out that of all the factors of the path, noble right concentration forms the heart, and everything else is its requisite: something that helps it along. So it’s always good to have the mind in as good a state of concentration as you can. When the life around that concentration is a virtuous life, that … 
  11. Mindfulness Defined
     … In his teachings, mindfulness shades into concentration, and concentration forms the basis for even better mindfulness. The fourth jhana is where mindfulness becomes pure. The four frames of reference, the focal points of mindfulness, are also the themes of concentration. As Ajaan Lee notes, when mindfulness—the ability to keep something in mind—grows stronger, it becomes the jhana factor called vitakka or directed … 
  12. Tools of Perception
     … The perception of form is gone, and what you’re left with is feeling, perception, thought fabrication, and consciousness. But even these aggregates are not the ultimate terms. In the commentaries they talk about this being the ultimate description of reality: the five aggregates. But the Buddha advises us to go on to perceive whatever arises and passes away simply as stress arising and … 
  13. Seriously Happy
     … When people gain other forms of happiness—power, beauty, wealth—it often goes to their heads. They abuse their power, they abuse their beauty, they abuse their wealth, they abuse the people around them. And often they become the target of other people’s jealousy or greed. This is what happens when you aim for a happiness that doesn’t last, a happiness that … 
  14. Mindfulness of Death
     … But your true gift to yourself, though, comes in the form of the skills you develop as you meditate, learning how not to get distracted, how to stay mindful, alert—and in particular, alert not only to the postures of the body, but also to what you’re doing in the mind, how you’re relating to your feelings and to your sense of … 
  15. Between Either & Or
     … Saccaka was trying to say that everybody knows that form, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness are your self. And the Buddha picked his argument apart, to the point where Saccaka really lost face, in front of all the people that he, Saccaka, had brought along to watch his victory. So the issue is the intention. But then again, you can’t take that as … 
  16. Three Recollections
     … We all have these qualities within us in a potential form. In some cases, they’re pretty obscured, but they’re there. He doesn’t say that we’re basically good by nature, but he does say that have good potentials. We have to watch out, of course, because there are bad potentials as well, so we have to be heedful. But the goodness … 
  17. Balanced Meditation
     … Once you start thinking in these terms, you find that this particular form of analysis can be applied to anything that’s standing in the way of the meditation. As Ajaan Suwat once said, just look at your mind and see the unquiet in the mind a the problem. We often focus on something outside. “My mind is unquiet because of this or because … 
  18. Help Others, Help Your Mind
     … The Buddha talks again and again about goodwill as a form of protection. And goodwill always has to be accompanied by equanimity, just as equanimity has to be accompanied by goodwill. If we have just equanimity without the goodwill, we become indifferent, callous. We become apathetic. There’s that great story of the storm that went through Ajaan Chah’s monastery once. The next … 
  19. Learning from Desire
     … Because with the aggregates, you’ve got what? You’ve got the form of the body. Okay, we’re going to focus on that as we breathe. We breathe in, breathe out, focusing on the breath. Then there’s feeling—the different feelings of pain there may be in the body—but we’re also trying to develop a feeling of pleasure by the … 
  20. The Middle Way
     … specifically, the suffering that comes from craving, the suffering in clinging to the five aggregates of form, feeling, perception, fabrications, and consciousness. All the different kinds of suffering in world that really weigh on the mind come down to clinging to any one of these five aggregates or any combination of them. So when you see the suffering simply as that—an example of … 
  21. The World of the Noble Truths
     … We think, “Why is this pain afflicting me?” “Why is this situation in the world outside afflicting me?” But the Buddha is saying that suffering is the act of clinging to form, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, or consciousness. It’s something we do. It’s not something we’re just on the receiving end of. We’re actively doing the suffering. He then defines the … 
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