Search results for: "Becoming"
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- True Freedom of Speech… Realizing that groups can become disharmonious very easily, you have to be really careful about what you say. Whereas over here, people seem to value harmony a lot less. They say, “If this person wants to leave the group, that’s perfectly fine with me.” But that’s destructive and selfish. This is where we’re holding to our culture’s attitude toward freedom …
- Playing Your Lute… He sat down and started thinking about how maybe he should just give up, go back home, become a lay person, make merit but otherwise give up on the practice. The Buddha read his mind, disappeared from Vulture’s Peak, and appeared right in front of him. I don’t know about you, but if the Buddha appeared in front of me while I …
- Hold on to Your Frame of Reference… The ease becomes so pleasant, so blissful, that you just let go. You forget your frame of reference; you lose your frame of reference. So you’ve got to hold it in mind, the body sitting here. This is one of the most important things in the meditation: Once there’s a sense of ease, you’ve got to expand your awareness to fill …
- Three Stages in the Practice… Learn to become more and more sensitive to how you can read the needs of the body and compensate for any bad habits you may have picked up in the way you breathe. The breath, when it’s handled properly, is medicine. It can give you energy when you need energy; it can calm you down when you need calming down. It can help …
- An Auspicious Night… Ask questions: “How can I use this teaching to help me along the path?” That way, your knowledge of the Dhamma actually becomes a help rather than a hindrance. The fifth quality is ingenuity. How ingenious are you in taking the basic principles of the Dhamma and applying them to your specific circumstances? You don’t have to look very far away: Look at …
- Calm… If you’re focusing on one that’s energizing and becomes unpleasant, then—after you’ve opened up all the escape channels—try to tune in to a calmer energy in the same spot where the excited energy is. It’s like digging a well. When I was living in Wat Asokaram, they had a constant problem because the monastery was right at the …
- Beyond Inter-eating… Once you’ve got those good qualities going, and the mind is in a good state of concentration, that concentration becomes your second kind of food. The Buddha compares the different levels of jhana to different types of food, all the way through the fourth jhana, which he says is like honey, oil, ghee, sugar. These things nourish the mind. In other words, even …
- How to Use the Three Perceptions… There’s craving for sensuality, for becoming, and for non-becoming. Sensuality means the stories we tell ourselves about how great some sensual pleasure is going to be or how great some sensual pleasure was—the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and tactile sensations. Our fascination with all those stories: What does it get us? In Ajaan Lee’s image, he says that thinking about …
- Death Is All Around… But when you cut them, they just become dirt on the ground, something you want to sweep away. This shows you how arbitrary the idea of “me” or “mine” is. It’s good to reflect again and again and again: These things that you claim as yours, exactly how long are they going to lie in your power? And even before they leave you …
- Don’t Just Do It… So as you’re committed to the practice, as you’re doing it, you have to become more and more sensitive to levels of stress, levels of well-being. Ultimately, yes, you get to the point where you let go of all karma, and you let go of all feelings. You let go of all reflections. But don’t short-circuit the practice by …
- Simple & Basic… When you keep it basic, keep it simple, keep it down to earth like this, everything becomes very clear.
- Death Is Normal… When you think about this, then any ceremonies around death become auspicious. As the Buddha said, heedfulness is an auspicious sign for the mind. So, as the Buddha told the king, once you’ve expressed your grief, remind yourself that you have work that needs to be done. If there’s no work in the world outside, there’s still plenty of work inside …
- Customs of the Noble Ones… He, though, was interested in becoming a noble one, which meant that he had to follow the customs of the noble ones. That’s why he was very strict in his observance of the Vinaya and the ascetic practices—and it caused a lot of controversy. I was recently reading a conversation between Ajaan Chah and some lay people. He talked about how Ajaan …
- Toughen & Tenderize the Mind… That becomes ignorance—a big wall in the mind, which blocks off a lot of things so that we can’t really see what’s going on: what we’re doing or the results of what we’re doing. So you want to train the mind to be sensitive enough to see problems inside itself that it didn’t see before and to make …
- An Environment for Practice… One, you find that the more you look at things that are unhealthy for the mind, the more deeply ingrained they become. But more importantly, you get to see your intentions in action. As the Buddha said, if you see any unskillful mental qualities being developed by your looking or your listening, you can tell yourself, “Don’t look there. Don’t listen there …
- Objectivity… So even though the mind tends to be partial, you can find common ground among all your desires, and use that common ground as a basis for becoming more impartial, more objective, more clear-seeing, so that you can bring yourself to the point where you let go of the last attachment, the last bit of ignorance that stands in the way of total …
- Emulating the Truth… It’s in imitation of truthful people that we become true ourselves. The fact that we see their example and appreciate it gives rise to the desire to have that kind of truth as well, so that ultimately it’s not just imitation. They inspire us, but it’s though the honesty of our inner search that we find the honest truth for ourselves.
- Exploring Possibilities… Is it possible, as he said, to find true happiness, a happiness that doesn’t change? As we explore, all the answers we arrive at then become questions we use to keep the mind pointed in the right direction. As you sit and meditate, you often come up with interesting insights, uncover things about the mind that you never noticed before, possibilities that you …
- Mindfulness the Seamstress… The Canon talks about craving as being the seamstress—the seamstress that ties different thoughts together and turns them into a state of becoming. Here we’re talking about mindfulness as a seamstress, but that shouldn’t be strange, because there is an element of desire in your mindfulness. You have a purpose. This is what the ardency is all about: You’re trying …
- Anapanasati Day… As you allow the in-and-out breathing to calm down, you become more and more sensitive to this other level of breathing, which is always there. You get a clearer sense of these waves of breath energy going through the body. Then you allow those to calm down as well and you come to a subtle or profound breath that’s actually still …
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