Search results for: "Becoming"

  1. Page 80
  2. Metta Meditation
     … It hurts here, it’s tight there, it’s tense here, and if you focus on those areas, they become the little monster in the hall of mirrors. Try to find the spaces between the pains and the parts of the body that feel okay. They don’t have to be great. They just have to be relatively pleasant. Focus on them and allow … 
  3. Learning & Respect
     … It becomes an aid—as we respect one another, as we respect watching what’s going on in our own minds. Have a willingness to learn. That’s how you show your intelligence.
  4. To Sustain Your Practice
     … You become a person of conviction, generosity, virtue, and discernment, too. That’s how this external quality helps you maintain your energy on the path. Of these qualities, conviction is probably the most important. If you’re not convinced that the Buddha was really awakened, it’s very easy to start thinking, “Well, maybe he was just somebody who had some interesting ideas 2 … 
  5. Ideals
     … When you develop these strengths, then the ideals can become a reality. You’re focusing not so much on “things as they are” as on things as they have come to be so that you can manipulate them and can figure out what things can be. You can make them into a path to the deathless. That’s when the practice gets really good … 
  6. Speaking Truth to Defilement
     … And the more people who tell the lie, then the more “truthiness” it gets until finally it becomes what everybody accepts as the truth. It gets very hard to go against. This is another reason why, as a meditator, you want to separate yourself out from the general run of things and learn how to question these attitudes, these values of our society. Are … 
  7. Right Livelihood
     … That way, as honesty becomes second nature, it’s easier for the mind to settle down because you see everything that’s going on: All the curtains and the barriers of the mind are taken down. So it’s not so much a matter of fitting meditation into our lives but of readjusting our lives so that they fit around the meditation. After all … 
  8. Always Willing to Learn
     … It’s because he was willing to admit his mistakes that he was able to become Buddha. And if he could make mistakes, what about you? Of course you’re going to make mistakes. The important thing is your attitude toward them. If you’re too proud to admit your mistakes, you’re not going to learn. You have to recognize that you have … 
  9. A Good Narrative
     … This feeling gives rise to a sense of urgency, but it can become a sense of hopelessness if it’s not balanced by the sense that there is a way out. Once you sense there is a way out and it’s something that you can actually do, that calms the lake, and once the lake is calm, it grows clear. There’s a … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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