Search results for: "Becoming"
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- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- Wilderness Lessons… This is a classic case of bhava , or becoming. It’s based on a perception, which in turn is based on an intention—in this case the desire to get up on the mountain and let down some of the burdens and responsibilities of being here at the monastery. So there’s a lesson you can learn right there: the power of perception over …
- The Bowl of Oil… It’s not specifically a Buddhist holiday, but it’s become Buddhist here in the West, as people take it as an opportunity to practice generosity. That’s something for which we should have some empathetic joy. It’s all too easy to get irritated when you’re trying to find some quiet here, and this tornado of activity comes through for a couple …
- Delight in the Breath… When you get a sense of how to make the breath energy really good in the body and learn how to appreciate it, that becomes your defense against a lot of your other cravings that would pull you out and get you to do unskillful things. So take some time. The breath isn’t something you simply step on so that you can climb …
- Pain… They’re the bridge by which the physical pain comes into the mind and becomes a mental pain. As I’ve often recommended, think of the pain as going away from you: One, it’s individual moments of pain. It’s not a solid block. And two, as each moment arises, it’s disappearing. It arises to disappear, going away from you, not coming …
- Respect for Tranquility & Insight… In that way, your practice becomes solid. It’s on a sure footing. Then there’s a chance for the message to get through.
- After the Fire… But you need to get it balanced, because stillness without mindfulness can just become dull, sleepy, deluded, drifting off. There has to be an element of interest in the stillness to keep it awake, to keep it alive. This is why, as things begin to settle down in the mind, you can’t just allow the mind to drift off anyway it wants, or …
- Disenchantment… Learn to become a connoisseur of your breathing, so that you can pry yourself loose from your other attachments, the things you used to feed on. We choose this feeding, the feeding on concentration, because it’s relatively innocent. A lot of other feeding depends on feeding on other people—emotionally, mentally. As long as the mind is in the feeding mode, then even …
- The Buddha’s Tools… This way, it becomes a lot easier to let go of a lot of conflicts you’ve had, turn around, and look inside. As the Buddha said, when you look inside, you see there’s an arrow in your heart—and it’s to pull out that arrow that we’re here. But here again, you look inside the mind, and you see that …
- Looking for Happiness Inside… So you give rise to what’s called the state of becoming, the sense of you right here in the world of the body right here right now. You try to nurture that, you try to feed that, breathing in a way that feels good. You can ask yourself, “What feels good, what’s good about it?” You can try different ways of breathing …
- The Power of the Will… Those are the people we focus on so that we can become one of them. We remember how they went about it. You read the stories of the ajaans. If they hadn’t had a strong will, they probably would have just ended up tilling the fields, having families, dying, and they would have disappeared. But they had that will to figure out what …
- Your Inner Ally… It’s like becoming a true friend with someone. You’re not the one doing all the talking all the time. You’ve got to listen to see what that person needs, to see what that person wants, to get a sense of not only what the person is saying, but also what the person is doing. Be observant. Is this someone you can …
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