Search results for: "Becoming"

  1. Page 79
  2. Factors for Awakening
     … It’s at the fourth where equanimity becomes pure. That’s the seventh factor for awakening. So this is how you get from beginning mindfulness practice up to the fourth jhana. The steps involve insight or discernment into what’s skillful and what’s not skillful, along with persistence, the factor of right effort. You try to energize things before you calm them down … 
  3. Don’t Believe Everything You Feel
     … And when you’re feeling weakened by the temperature and tired from your work, your defenses are down, and feelings become very prominent. We talk a lot in the meditation about not believing your thoughts. The same principle applies to your feelings, and they’re even harder not to believe, because feelings have gotten into the body. They are thoughts that have provoked reactions … 
  4. Mind in & of Itself
     … the concentration that allows you to do this work with more precision, in more places where you hadn’t been able to do it before, so that you can bring the path into your life, so that your life becomes the path. That’s when it gets results.
  5. Go Out of Your Way
     … Otherwise, living in a community becomes a burden. We’re getting in each other’s way. All we can think about is how we want to go off and just be alone and get away from everything. Of course, when you go to be alone, you’re not getting away from everything. You’re sitting there with your defilements. And sitting there, usually, with … 
  6. A Gift of Strength
     … This way, you become more solid inside. And of course, you’re not the only person who benefits. The people around you who have been subject to your greed, anger, and delusion, subject your need to depend on them for your happiness, sense that you’re much less of a burden now. So think of this time—the time you meditate, the time you … 
  7. Blessings
     … Otherwise, you become like the dock workers they used to have in the docks before shipping containers came into Asia, people who would carry huge loads on their backs up and down the planks of the ships. They were spending so much time carrying the loads that they became permanently bent over. Even when they went home, they would walk bent over. That’s … 
  8. The Perception of Space
     … Of course, that becomes a burden—the stone itself is a burden, and the engraving is a burden. So it’s good to learn how to put those things down, to let them go, to have that mind like space. It’s larger than anything that anybody can do. Keep that quality in mind, and you’ll find that whatever happens in the course … 
  9. Escape from Inter-eating
     … One of the obvious dangers of living in an interconnected world is becoming food for somebody else—like the virus right now. It’s decided that it wants to feed on human beings. But the Buddha saw there are other dangers. There’s the danger of being in a position where you have to feed. Part of it, of course, is the karma of … 
  10. Centered on Concentration
     … So this ability to get the mind centered and still in the body in the present moment, to be familiar with the body, to get in touch with the energy flow in the body and learn how to direct it in such way that it becomes more and more livable here in the body: You’ve really got to respect this ability. You’ve … 
  11. Quiet in Every Way
     … Stay with that particular level as long as it keeps you focused, and learn to let it go when it becomes an obstacle to seeing things that are even more subtle. You can take this approach as a basic principle all the way through the practice because it embodies a lot of different teachings, like the four Noble truths: look for where there’s … 
  12. Social Anxiety
     … We become sensitive to other people’s moods, sensitive to what they might do, what they might say. As a result, our center of gravity is placed outside because we’re afraid of them, and we try to put up a wall outside ourselves to protect ourselves from them. What this means is that our psychic center of gravity gets moved outside the body … 
  13. The Interactive Present
     … It becomes the repressed part. But if you can ferret out the part of the mind that’s really enjoying the lust and say: “Hey, wait a minute, what kind of enjoyment is this? How about that stress over there? How about that discomfort over there? The sense of dissatisfaction that comes along with the lust, the cloudiness that comes into the mind because … 
  14. Cooking with Kamma
     … And then you’ve got the question, are you going to stay with the breath or are you going to go to the new topic? That becomes your present kamma: whatever you decide to do. So we’re making kamma all the time. We’ve been making it many, many times. So we have to learn how to manage our kamma field, because it … 
  15. Conceit
     … And this way you become your own best friend.
  16. A Culture of Restraint
     … I’ve been able to say No to it, and I haven’t died.” This way you can maintain your mental health, and the meditation really does become an ongoing process of developing — developing the skillful qualities you want: mindfulness, alertness, a sense of calm, a sense of wholeness and wellbeing in body and mind. As the Buddha said, “The mind well trained brings … 
  17. On Idle Chatter
     … That’s a bad habit to develop if you’re trying to become a meditator, both in terms of trying to get the mind into concentration and just learning how to watch your own mind. If you’re used to just talking all day, then when the time comes to sit and meditate, the mind says, “Hey, I’ve been churning out thoughts all … 
  18. Goodwill
     … So our first order of business in being kind to others and showing true goodwill is to develop our own skillfulness, because one way of encouraging other people to become skillful is to have ourselves as an example. When people see that we’re happier than we were before, they’ll be interested: “How did you do this? What kind of food are you … 
  19. Totally Secure
     … Not only do you want to admit the truth about what’s going on inside and about the things you’ve been doing outside, but you also want to create an environment where the truth becomes clear, where you’re true. When you make up your mind to do something, you stick with that determination. You want to be true to the practice, because … 
  20. The Power of the Mind
     … He started with aging, illness, and death, and worked back down through becoming and craving, sensory contact, the things that come prior to sensory contact, and finally got down to fabrications. When he brought knowledge to the process of fabrications, they ceased, because this was a knowledge that put an end to passion for fabricating. When there’s no passion for fabricating, why would … 
  21. The Community of the Wise
     … They’ve become part of the landscape, so much so that you hardly notice them. It’s like staying here on the mountaintop in Wat Metta. You see the same view every day, every day, every day. After a while, you begin to forget that it’s a really nice view. It just seems normal, unremarkable. It fades into the background. The same applies … 
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