Search results for: "Impermanence"
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- The Triple Training… Rahula asked him how to do breath meditation, but before the Buddha gave him his breath meditation instructions, he gave him some contemplations, including the contemplation of impermanence to get past the conceit, “I am”; the contemplation of the body to get past sensual desire; the contemplation of the body in terms of elements. Doing those contemplations, you can begin to get a sense …
- The Truth of Transcendence… that are going well are not going to go well forever and is that really satisfactory? There’s always going to be a hitch; there’s always going to be something impermanent. There’s always stress even in the pleasure. The second noble truth teaches that the cause for that stress comes from the craving that tends to go along with the pleasure. So …
- Respect for Emptiness… You’ve seen that it’s impermanent, so you don’t have to do it anymore. And that short-circuits the path. But if you contemplate the three characteristics in the context of a well-mastered state of concentration, it actually accomplishes something. It becomes liberating. You begin to realize that these disturbances in the mind that tend to wipe out the emptiness, create …
- A Path of Skills… You don’t say, “Well, I’ve learned the lesson that concentration is inconstant, impermanent. Leave it alone.” You have to build a state of concentration in the mind to understand it. Like the old principle that if you want to understand eggs, you don’t just sit and look at the eggs or think about eggs or come up with theories about eggs …
- Less is More… And the memory of what you do see is very impermanent. When you try to gather up that kind of wealth—the wealth of memories and experiences—you find that it doesn’t stay with you. It’s like buying a huge shipload of lettuce, thinking it’ll supply you with all the lettuce you’ll need for the rest of your life. And …
- Stop Squirming… Everything is impermanent. Well, that’s the end of that. Let’s go on to the next one.” That’s not the point of what we’re trying to do. You watch things come and go so that you can figure out when pain comes, when the pain increases, what did you just do? When the pain decreases, what did you just do? You …
- Intelligent about Change… What you’re doing here, as you’re developing these strengths, is that you're taking things that are impermanent, but you’re turning them into the path. In Ven. Ananda’s image, when he was once talking to the Buddha, he praised the Buddha for teaching how to go across a river by going from one dependence to another. In other words, you …
- Breath Meditation: The Fourth Tetrad… In gladdening the mind, what kind of obstruction is getting in the way of your feeling glad about the fact you’re here? Is doubt getting in the way? Is restlessness-and-anxiety getting in the way? Is sleepiness getting in the way? Okay, what do you do to counteract those mind states? First, you have to see them as impermanent, inconstant. As with …
- The Steps of Breath Meditation… Insight into inconstancy or impermanence has less to do with how you consume experiences than it does with how you produce them. You see all the effort that goes into producing a particular type of experience, and the question becomes, “Is it worth it? Isn’t this burdensome, having to keep making, making, making these experiences all the time?” Then the problem becomes, “What …
- Willing & Observing… We can’t just sit here and watch the mind as it wanders from this to that to the other thing, and say, “Okay, I’m learning, I’m gaining insight into impermanence and in practicing mindfulness.” That’s not what mindfulness is all about. Mindfulness means keeping certain things in mind. And some of the things you want to keep in mind are …
- Balancing the Bases for Concentration… Sometimes we hear that the Buddha’s insight means seeing that everything is impermanent or that there is no self in the world, so you force yourself to see things in that way. It’s as if someone told you that if you see everything as blue, you’re going to be happy. So you can play these tricks on your mind and force …
- Audacious & Undaunted… Sometimes he’d been in hell, sometimes he’d been up in the highest heavens, but wherever he went, it was impermanent. It wouldn’t last. You’d die and you’d be reborn again. Then the question was, “Why so many different levels? Was there a pattern?” So on the second watch of the night, he turned the power of his concentration to …
- Dimensions of Right Effort… That’s impermanent.” Sometimes the trouble comes from putting the wrong labels on things. So ask yourself, “Well what precisely is the perception I’m worked up about?” If you see, say, an object that you think is going to make you happy or a person who’s going to make you happy, just ask yourself, “Where did I get that label? Is that …
- Self-starting… It’s not the case that concentration arises and you try to be ahead of the game by saying, “Well, I’ll just watch it come, then watch it go, and then I’ll be seeing inconstancy or impermanence”—or whatever. That’s not right effort. I was reading a book a while back, saying that the Buddha taught two different ways of practice …
- The Need for Right View… That proves inconstancy, proves that things are impermanent. Chalk up another insight.” That’s not what we’re here for. We’re here to develop concentration, to develop mindfulness, and all the other good qualities of the path. This is why you need right view to figure out what you need to do. If you find that trying to comprehend stress or suffering is …
- Equanimity Isn’t Nibbana… You can will yourself to some extent not to be overcome by these things, to be equanimous to these things, but that willing is impermanent and doesn’t totally solve the problem. Only when you’ve reached the deathless do you have another source of pleasure that totally overwhelms the experience of pleasure and pain. It keeps you from being overwhelmed by ordinary pleasure …
- Selfing & Not-selfing… Notice, he doesn’t say impermanent—he says inconstant. These things are changing all the time, and for that reason, they’re stressful. Then he asks, “If something is inconstant and stressful,” he doesn’t say to come to a conclusion there is no self. The conclusion is, “Are they worth claiming as your self?” As long as you haven’t developed the path …
- Anger… There are lots of teachings about emptiness and inconstancy or impermanence that are wide of the mark. They may be interesting to reflect on, to speculate about, but if they don’t make any difference in what you’re actually doing from moment to moment, they’re pretty useless. This is why the Buddha avoided many of the issues that everyone else in his …
- Preparing to Die Well… sometimes I think of putting my foot one place and it goes someplace else.” So the first summary has to do with aging. It also has to do with anicca: inconstancy. Impermanence. The world is swept away. Things keep changing, changing, changing all the time. And as for a body, it develops for a while and then starts to age and just falls apart …
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