Search results for: "Becoming"
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- Breath vs. Distraction… If you’re sitting here with nothing to do and nothing to think about and no questions about what’s going on right now, then you start asking questions like, “Well, what about last week? And what about next week? And what about what I’m going to do when I leave here?” And all of a sudden those questions become a lot more …
- Practice in Dying Skillfully… You’re aware of the breath—in the beginning stages of the concentration, trying to become one with the breath. But then after you become one with the breath, there’s a natural separation. It’s like two different kinds of liquid, such as oil and vinegar, in the same bottle. As the bottle sits still for a while, they begin to separate out …
- Skills to Make a Difference… craving for sensuality, for becoming, for non-becoming. These forms craving are to be abandoned. Then there’s fact that that craving can be ended, and that when you end the craving, that’s the end of suffering. That’s something you want to realize, to actually see it happening. And you do that by developing the path, which basically comes down to virtue …
- You Can Make a Difference… Two, for becoming, in other words, focusing on a desire and then developing a sense of you as the person who wants that, and you as the person who may be able to attain that, and then the world in which that desired object can be found—and then you enter into that world. We do this with our thoughts all the time, and …
- Dependable Friends… This way, you become friends with the breath. As the Buddha said, there’s no real practicing the path without true friends. Now, that can be understood on two levels. On the outside level, that means you find someone who really knows something about the practice. On the inside level, it means learning to be able to recognize who are your internal friends, and …
- Self-Reliance… This is a faculty you want to develop, because without this, meditation simply becomes something that someone else tells you to do and you follow the instructions like a good little boy or a good little girl, hoping that somehow it’ll all work out on its own, and that the people who are teaching know what they’re talking about. But that’s …
- Into the Light of Consciousness… And the better you get to know them right here, the less they become subconscious. You’re bringing them into the light of consciousness where you can see them and pass judgment on them well. That’s another important part about fabrications: They offer us choices, and we need to have good principles in choosing what to do, what to say, what to think …
- To Keep You Going… After they had become arahants, the Buddha gave a sermon called the Ovada Patimokkha. We don’t have a record of the full sermon. All we have is a record of the verses that the Buddha used to summarize the main points, but the verses are enough to let us know that he started his sermon with the theme of patient endurance. The message …
- Karma & Gratitude… In other words, your happiness spreads around, and in so doing, it becomes goodness. And meditation is one of those activities where the happiness, the goodness, spreads around. You see this most clearly if you’ve been meditating and the mind was filled with anger before you sat down to meditate but by the time you’re done, the anger has subsided. That means …
- The Path of Adventure… So if you develop a mature attitude toward being on the path, everything else becomes a lot easier, because you’re not measuring things against your own impatient standards, you’re not wanting to do all 10,000 steps at once so that you can have it over and done with and move on to something else. As the Buddha said, the path is …
- The Airplane Mechanic… If it’s a soldier’s uniform, you suddenly become a soldier. If it’s an apron, you have to become a cook—whatever. But here, you just put it aside and say, “Okay, there’s a piece of clothing on the floor, but I don’t have to go there. I don’t have to get into it.” If you’re going to …
- In the Eyes of the Wise… Because, after all, those are the people whose club you want to join—you want to become a wise person, too. It’s like Ajaan Mun, when he was accused of not following Thai customs: eating only one meal a day, living in the forest, wearing robes that were made up of scraps. People would say, “You’re not behaving in line with Thai …
- Part V : Finding a Teacher… He or she helps clear up your misunderstandings on those topics, but the friendship becomes admirable when you find yourself growing in those qualities yourself. After all, the purpose of an admirable friend is to help you recognize who your admirable friends are inside. One of our main problems is that we suffer from delusion. Thoughts come into the mind and it’s hard …
- Harmless & Clearheaded… So the pride he felt around his youth, his health, and his life was not really becoming, and it was setting him up for a major fall. So that was one problem with all the sensual pleasures he was enjoying. They had him intoxicated. He was drunk, couldn’t see things clearly. He had to get away from those pleasures if he wanted to …
- Coming into the Present… Birth follows immediately on becoming and so on down through dependent co-arising. That’s a synchronic level of causality. It’s because the Buddha discovered synchronic causality that he realized that we’re not a victim of past fate, our old karma, orsome primary cause or ground of bein, or first mover. There are decisions that are being made freely in the present …
- Understanding Pain… After all, the body is solid, so the solidity of the body gets glommed together with the pain, so that it becomes solid pain. Learn how to question that. Is the body the same thing as the pain? The body is something physical; the pain is something mental. They may lie in the same spot, but it’s as if they’re on different …
- Multi-Dimensional Dhamma… If the body gets diseased, it becomes a burden to other people, especially now that medicine and treatments are so expensive. One of our responsibilities as practitioners is to make sure that we stay healthy, although we have to fight the tendency to get passionate about perfecting the body and being really fit. That’s one way you have to look for a balance …
- Mature Strategies… Our standards for what counts as true happiness have become more refined. Particularly as we develop our powers of concentration and get used to a more and more refined sense of ease, a more expansive sense of ease, we grow more discriminating in our taste, in our appreciation for what true happiness can be. And there comes a point where we’re willing to …
- The Questions of Suffering… All the four noble truths become clear. And you see why they’re called “right view.” They form the view that’s right for solving that original problem. So when questions come up in your mind, remember that the really important ones are those that relate to this question: What is the suffering? What causes it? What can be done to put an end …
- Establishing Priorities… It becomes a lot more interesting. You begin to realize that this breath work we do in the body is a useful way of getting the mind interested in the breath, so that you don’t have to force it to stay here. You’re here through the power of your curiosity. At the same time, you have to keep an eye on the …
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