Search results for: "Becoming"
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- In Touch with Your Fabrications… You’re trying to depersonalize the whole process because emotion is a state of becoming. You’re taking on an identity here in the body with these feelings. If you’ve found that it’s causing you to suffer—even the best states of becoming will have some element of stress, but if they’re blatantly causing you to suffer, why go for it …
- An End to the Stories… As the Buddha said, the craving that makes for becoming is a big issue. You make something from that becoming and then you become a being with needs to feed. You live in a world where other beings are trying to feed as well. There’s going to be conflict. So you have to remember that the becomings in your mind are not just …
- Calm & Insight… To calm the mind, you want to find someone who’s good at calming his or her mind, and you ask, “How can the mind be made steady? How can it be unified?” “Steady,” in the sense of being with one object; “unified,” in the sense of actually becoming one with the object. As when you’re focusing on the breath: In the beginning …
- Friendship… When you’ve got this stable center, then the issue friends outside becomes less desperate. And when you’re not desperate for friends, you find you get better ones, more reliable ones—because you’ve become more reliable as well. So it’s important that you take some time to develop this skill. Do what you can to become interested in the breath and …
- To Comprehend Suffering… All of that is a becoming. Those becomings happen in the mind all the time. Then they can play out in the world outside, as becomings on the macro level, as you take on a new identity with each birth. And here again, your thoughts of becoming in the mind could go precisely as you want them to, but there’s still going to …
- Worthy of Trust… The virtues of the Dhamma become our virtues, we build them into the mind. The virtues of the noble Sangha: We become members of the noble Sangha. That way, we become not only a refuge for ourselves, but also for other people. They can trust us. This is one way which our practice connects with the practice of other people. Often you hear it …
- As Days & Nights Fly Past… It’s: “What am I becoming as days and nights fly past?” This is a question he has you ask yourself every day: “What am I becoming as days and nights fly past?” It’s an interesting question. We all know about the teachings on not-self and going beyond becoming, but here the Buddha’s asking you to reflect on yourself and what …
- Befriending the Breath… Tell yourself you’re going to become friends with the breath. All too often, what happens when you’re meditating and you have trouble staying with your meditation object, is that it starts to become your enemy, your opponent. You try to squeeze it and force it down, to get it under your control, but that just makes things worse. It gets more and …
- Wild Horses… The Buddha actually identified the cause of suffering as three specific kinds of craving that he said led to further becoming. Now, the term ‘further becoming’ can refer to new states of becoming in your mind as you go from one thought world to the next to the next, but it’s also his word for rebirth. Remember that image he had of how …
- Beyond Sound-bitten Dhamma… What am I becoming right now?” What you’re becoming depends on your actions. So what are you doing, and what kind of person are you becoming as a result of what you’re doing? Maybe you’re becoming more compassionate. Maybe you’re becoming more mindful, more circumspect—or less. That’s something you’ve really got to look into. If you don …
- Sitting & Walking… What usually happens is that the thoughts turn into a states of becoming: in other words, a world of experience in which you take on an identity. You’re in the thought. But here you maintain your original becoming as a walking meditator, so you can watch the thought from the outside. That’s how you gain the insight into how these becomings develop …
- Surveying the World… In either case, you’re going to have passion for the maintenance or passion for the destruction, and that passion will create more becoming and then more becoming. But if you just look at the events that would lead up to becoming, if there has to be a becoming, let it be the becoming of concentration, where you’re focused on your inner world …
- One Thing Clear Through… As it settles down, settles down, it finally becomes clear. All the mud settles to the bottom and the water becomes clear. It’s not totally clear yet, but at least it’s clear enough for you to see what’s going on inside. That’s when you develop the gift of discernment, in which you realize the ways in which you’re causing …
- The Dhamma Wheel… the desire for sensuality, the desire for becoming, and the desire to destroy becoming. Because we’re thirsty in these ways, we feed off the things that we identify with, that we cling to. So the duty here is to abandon these three kinds of craving. Craving for sensuality is not so much craving for sensual pleasures as craving for the mind’s activity …
- A Safe Haven Through Alertness… I don’t have to take that on.” As this space becomes more and more your space, your mind becomes more and more your mind, as both body and mind learn how to get together, stay together with a sense of well-being for both. And as you develop this ability to look in both directions, you find it’s very useful all the …
- Truths of the Will… What am I becoming right now?” What kind of person are you becoming? We’re all becoming older, but what kind of older person are you becoming? Are you gaining in wisdom with age? Are you gaining in discernment, gaining in concentration, gaining in virtue? Or is your aging pulling you someplace else? That’s a question you have to ask day after day …
- The Primacy of the Mind (1)… If he had gone with the flow, he would have lived his life as a prince, maybe have become a king—and then been forgotten, like all the other kings, princes, queens, and other quote-unquote “important” people in the world. But he took the quotes off: He really did become important by taking a stance. Think of it: someone who wants to find …
- Training Wheels… You’ve got the aggregates, which are neutral, but then they become part of suffering when they become clinging-aggregates. You’ve got the sense media, which are neutral, too, but they become the topic for suffering when you start developing fetters around what you see and hear and smell and taste; or simply fetters around the fact that you like having these senses …
- Licking Yourself Clean… This is how discernment is developed, how meditation becomes a skill. As it becomes more and more of a skill, you become more sensitive to even the slightest bit of discomfort both in the body and in the mind. That’s how you see the four noble truths. You see stress, you see how it’s caused, you connect it to your own actions …
- Useful Vocabulary… Craving is what creates a location that becomes a basis for your becoming. It’s the little nucleus or the seed for a becoming. If you don’t know where the nucleus is, you don’t really know the becoming. You just think it’s just something that’s already there and you don’t see the extent to which you’re creating it …
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