Search results for: "Becoming"

  1. Page 79
  2. Doing, Maintaining, Using
     … They now become tools rather than things that you would identify with or things that you are constantly chewing on, because you’ve learned how to feed the mind better, feed it more skillfully. So wherever you are in the practice, if you find that you haven’t been able to do the concentration, work on just bringing things together here. Once you’ve … 
  3. A Safe Place
     … You become the kind of teacher who wants to see the notes as they’re passed back and forth. But you have to put yourself in a position where you’re not shaken by any possible message that might be on those notes. This is why we work on concentration, especially why we work on the breath. When there’s anxiety, the defilements have … 
  4. A Clear, Calm Lake
     … So when anxious thoughts come up—and they will, as I said, given the fact that you have a body, there’s a lot to be anxious about, and if you’re concerned about its survival—you can remember that the survival of your goodness is most important, and that allows you to become calmer in the face of dangers. After all, your goodness … 
  5. Sensitive in Seven Ways
     … If you have so much desire that you’re not paying attention to what you’re doing, that becomes a problem, too. You have to learn how to modulate that, and again, how do you know? Well, with practice. What’s the right time? When you get to the question of having a sense of the time and place, what’s the right time … 
  6. Well-being Despite It All
     … Gradually, it becomes strong. It’s the same with these qualities in the mind. In the beginning, it’s easy to get discouraged as you see the mind wandering off for the umpteenth time. But don’t get discouraged. The fact that you see it is a good sign. It shows that you’re getting more alert. You bring yourself back. That ability to … 
  7. Stick to Your Duties
     … You become a better judge of when stress comes, even in the concentration itself. If the mind hasn’t settled down like this, your sense of what constitutes stress and what constitutes pleasure is going to be pretty crude. Only when you develop a more sensitive palate, you might say, for the ease and well-being of the mind so you begin to see … 
  8. Nurturing Your Inner Adult
     … Perceptions are the images that underlie the thoughts—the basic concepts, words, or images that you then turn into sentences, which then become verbal fabrication. So when an emotion comes up, ask yourself, what’s fabricating here? In particular, what kinds of perceptions are making it difficult to see the situation clearly? Often these fabrications and perceptions come from way back in your past … 
  9. The Best Use of Your Time
     … Those neural pathways get well-traveled, and they get more and more ingrained; they become more and more second nature. So you’ve got to be careful about what you’re training yourself in. Are you training yourself in greed, anger, and delusion, or are you training yourself in mindfulness and alertness? You’re constantly making these choices where you realize them or not … 
  10. Selfing & Not-selfing
     … Is it worth it? When the Buddha gives that questionnaire that so often resulted in people’s becoming fully awakened, he went down the list of the aggregates and asked, “Are these aggregates constant or inconstant?” They’re inconstant. “And if something is inconstant, unreliable, is it stressful or easeful?” “It’s stressful.” It’s like a chair where the legs are not the … 
  11. The Language of the Heart (2)
     … That’s when it becomes right knowledge. So you’re taking on the culture of the noble ones, the values around wanting to abandon unskillful actions and wanting to develop skillful ones in their place. And we take on their language—which the ajaans often call the language of the heart—for analyzing what is skillful, what’s not. How do things get developed … 
  12. Giving Weight
     … Your mind becomes a slave, like a dog running after whatever captures its attention. It’s under the power of all the things around you. As a result, the mind never gets any rest, never gets any sense of its own importance, because it’s constantly being a servant to this, that, or the other mood or notion or desire, or just whim of … 
  13. The Bright Tunnel
     … Many times, when we’re working with a meditation object and things don’t seem to be going well, the meditation object seems to become our enemy. If that’s your attitude, you’ll never be able to settle down with it. Realize that the breath is your friend. It’s what’s keeping you alive. If you get to know it, you find … 
  14. Endurance Through Discernment
     … So you want to become sensitive to your fabrications: what you’re doing right now. Learn how to work with the breath. Work with your perceptions around the breath. Work with your perceptions around the elements of the body: earth, water, wind, fire, space. That will give you some insight into exactly what you’re bringing to the present moment. Because you’re bringing … 
  15. Endurance Training
     … But may they someday become skillful in their thoughts, words, and deeds. The Buddha compares this to having a mind as expansive as the earth, as expansive and as unaffected by anything as space. Again, it’s an image of the enlarged mind that’s not constantly feeding on “he did that,” and “then he did that,” and “she did this,” and then “I … 
  16. Fear & Insecurity
     … After all, as he said, if you’re afraid of doing something unskillful, that becomes compunction and that’s actually a virtue. If you realize that your actions will make the difference between whether you suffer or not, and you’re afraid of unskillful actions, that’s heedfulness, and that, too, is a virtue. In fact, as the Buddha said, that’s the basis … 
  17. Evaluation
     … It becomes more and more a natural state of mind, a state where the mind is happy to be here—not just because of the pleasure of the body, but also happy in its skill, knowing how to deal with whatever’s coming up in the body, whatever’s coming up in the mind, and having a sense of well-b****eing in being … 
  18. Dangers Outside & In
     … Then that becomes your karma. Worse off, they may actually try intentionally to get you to behave in ways that are unskillful—either out of ill will for you or simply because they’re deluded. There are a lot of well-meaning people out there who can hold really harmful ideas. So you have to be really careful. If you adopt their ideas, then … 
  19. No Arrows, Nothing
     … Our concern about gain, our concern about status, our concern about praise, criticism; our concerns about pleasure and pain become huge stories. But if you learn how to take them apart, you realize there’s nothing there that needs to weigh the mind down. This is how we begin to learn how not to shoot ourselves because of our attachment to things, our clinging … 
  20. Self-Hatred
     … If you can see things in that way, the entire issue of “you” becomes less involved. The unskillful thought patterns that go along with the sense of “you” don’t have to grip you so tightly—because you don’t have to grip them. So remember: As we’re meditating, it’s not just a technique. The technique is important, but the values that … 
  21. Timeless
     … But when you can satisfy some of your hunger with the concentration, then when other things come up and you feel tempted to go, you can begin to see, “Oh, this is why I go, but it’s really not worth it.” That’s when your discernment becomes penetrating, the kind of discernment that can protect you when random things come up in the … 
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