Search results for: "Becoming"

  1. Page 64
  2. The Elephant in the Clearing
     … He’s really awakened, you know.” The friend says, “How do you know?” The brahman replies, “I see people coming to argue with him, and before they know it, they’ve become converted to his Dhamma. It’s like seeing a large footprint of an elephant in the woods. You look at the footprint and you know that’s the footprint of a large … 
  3. Dedicating Merit
     … That becomes their good kamma. The hungry ghosts tend to be sensitive to this, which is why they’re in a position where they can receive this. When I first met Ajaan Fuang, it was shortly after my mother had passed away, and the dedication of merit was one of the first things he taught me. “Every night, after your meditation,” he said, “dedicate … 
  4. Know the Dhamma by Its Results
     … They become our baggage. And when you can recognize something in your mind where you’re carrying baggage around—old resentments, a sense of pride—you have to put them down. You begin to realize that you were weighing the mind down to no purpose. Even though you held onto these things tightly and cherished them, they really didn’t help you. That’s … 
  5. Achieving Balance
     … If you find your thoughts wandering off, ask yourself, “Why do I need to think about that now? Isn’t it more important to get to work here?” If you’re worried about situations in the future, remind yourself that your best preparation for the future is to become mindful, alert, clear about where your mind is going. All the more reason to stay … 
  6. Physical Pains & Painful Words
     … You’ll find that in exercising your discernment in this way, exercising your ingenuity in this way, the Dhamma becomes yours. It’s not something imposed by some outside authority or from some strange culture someplace else. It becomes a body of principles by which you manage your own mind, manage your own life in a way that gives rise to a happiness that … 
  7. The Adventure in the Present
     … In this way, your life becomes an adventure in learning. Make up your mind that whatever the situation, you’ll try to do the most skillful thing possible. And then keep learning, so that you can become more skillful, and then more skillful, more sensitive to what it means to be skillful. As that sensitivity develops, as I said, you begin to see subtler … 
  8. Step Outside the World
     … But back when I was with Ajaan Fuang, it was before the forest tradition had become very popular. And the way he lived was something outside the culture. His values were very different from any other Thai person I’d ever met. He represented the customs of the noble ones, which is a very different set of customs from those of ordinary society. Ajaan … 
  9. Choices in the Present
     … If you find that you’re analyzing something, and it’s beginning to become clear—you’re learning how to let go of things—okay, keep at it. It’s a sign that you’re up for that particular task, up for understanding that particular problem. But if the more you think about something, the duller the mind seems, then it’s time to … 
  10. Concentration Work
     … They’re different forms of becoming. Eventually you’re going to have to let them go, but you have to train them first. It takes work. I’ve heard some people say, “Well, it’s so much work. Why don’t we just let go? Why do we have to bother with all this work?” Well, if you let go like that, you’re … 
  11. The Basic Medicine
     … You want to develop a quality where awareness and the breath become one, where you’re right in the middle of the breathing process, instead of being in one part of the body outside the breath, watching another part of the body breathe. You’re in the breathing-in, in the breathing-out. Allow those two things to stay together: your awareness and the … 
  12. Endurance Made Easier
     … These are the strategies for helping your endurance become less of a burden and turn into something stable, lasting, and strong.
  13. The Riddle Tree
     … In cases like that you may find that the perception becomes the issue on which you have to focus in order to gain insight. This is particularly true as you’re shifting from form levels of concentration to the formless. It’s a shift in perception. You’re right here when you go from, say focusing on the breath to the point where the … 
  14. Sensitive to Fabrication
     … The Buddha talks about this as an asava, an “outflow.” We flow out to our senses through our sensual plans, our desire for becoming, and just out of plain ignorance—and because of that ignorance we’re bewildered. Think about when you were a little kid, really small, and you were dealing with pain. Pain is why we think—why we try to figure … 
  15. Even Shame Can Be Skillful
     … And they do become a helpful part of the path. As the Buddha said, when you see you’ve made a mistake, letting yourself get eaten up by remorse is not going to erase the past mistake. But a healthy sense of shame—“That was a mistake, I don’t want to repeat that”—becomes the basis for your resolve not to do that … 
  16. Friends with Pain
     … This way, pain becomes your friend. It teaches you a lot of things about the role of intention in the present moment. It’s a demanding task master. If you the least bit unskillful, it hits you with a stick. What that means is that you just have to get more and more mindful, more and more alert, more and more discerning, so that … 
  17. Three Perceptions
     … When the breath gets more and more refined, with a sense of ease filling the body, you reach a stage where the mind and the breath seem to become unified and one. The mind and its functions become more and more prominent in the meditation, and the breath — as it grows more and more subtle — fades into the background. This is just as it … 
  18. Outside the Box
     … If they’re willing to put up with that and give them pointers on how to do things properly, eventually the kids become really helpful, and they enjoy being helpful. And that’s wise. It’s wise to encourage this attitude, and it’s wise for them. So this is what merit is all about: finding joy in being helpful as a way of … 
  19. Recollecting the Devas
     … Just because people have become spirits doesn’t mean they know what they’re talking about. And just because you can’t figure out where these beings are coming from doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily evil. So you’re polite with them, but you don’t have to fear them or worship them. Ajaan Mun offered a good example in this regard … 
  20. The Patience of a Hunter
     … It’s still enough so that areas of the mind that normally get sloughed past or become a blur because you’re running around too much, suddenly become clear. It’s like the difference between running past a tree and standing still, watching the tree. You see very different trees. If you run past, you see a blur. You may get a few details … 
  21. The Possibility of Letting Go
     … In fact, the less you’re feeding off a relationship, the better the relationship becomes—and the more you’re able to see it with clarity. So wherever you find that there’s something that’s a really bad sticking point in the mind, just let it go—at least for the time being. Think about putting it down. Think about putting it down … 
  22. Load next page...