Search results for: "Becoming"
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- Food for the Mind… And in doing so, you find that you have to become very mindful, very clear about not only your actions but also the intentions behind your actions. In order to see those intentions clearly, the mind has to be very still. This is where concentration practice comes in. And when concentration is strong, discernment develops. When discernment is strong, the mind is released. So …
- Just Rightness… That’s where you hold to the right questions to keep in mind all the time: “What am I doing that’s unskillful? What am I doing that’s skillful? What makes it unskillful? What makes a skillful? What can I do to become more skillful? What actions would be more skillful?” It’s a question of balance, keeping the mind balanced right here …
- Still… Once you’ve got this stage, then the skill of using it for the sake of discernment will become a lot clearer. So. Patience. Steadiness. Consistency. Learn to regard those as real virtues.
- Perception… What’s the desire behind them? Usually, they serve our sense of becoming. The world that we’re perceiving around us and our sense of who we are in that world is based on a desire, but it’s built out of perceptions. And the desire warps the perceptions in its direction. So even though no perception is a totally accurate representation of what …
- Humility & Confidence… When we start out, we’re not capable of doing the high levels of the practice, but by doing the basic levels we train ourselves, we become new people. Our capabilities grow. It’s like starting out at school. If someone gives you a calculus textbook in first grade, you think there’s no way you’re ever going to be able to do …
- Radical Questioning… And the clinging can take any of four forms----clinging to a sensual desire, clinging to a particular view, clinging to a way of doing things that’s become almost ritualistic in your mind, or clinging to certain views about yourself. Those are four areas to look into if you’ve noticed that a particular thought is making you suffer. Does it involve any …
- Freedom… Any area of your life where you can devote your full attention to it is an area that can become skillful. This is a pattern you see throughout the Buddha’s teachings. As he once said, the essence or the core of his teaching is freedom or release. The goal is nibbāna: unbinding, total happiness. So freedom and happiness are the big themes here …
- Mindfulness of Death… The more they become habitual, the more likely you’ll be able to draw on them. So as you’re sitting down under the trees, walking through the orchard, you don’t want to be just sitting, just walking. You want to be developing good qualities in the mind. If you find yourself slipping off, remind yourself: “Who knows when death will come?” The …
- True to the Breath… It becomes your feeling. Then you feel happy, you feel pleasant, or you feel pained. It’s no longer just a process. It’s your feeling, and that starts getting you entangled as well. You’re worried about what it means. Especially if it’s pain: You really worry about what it means. But if you can see it simply as a process, something …
- In Restraint Is Strength… That way, your thinking becomes useful. So look at the practice as an all-day affair. You’re developing your mind all the time. You’re exercising the mind all the time. And as you do, it builds up momentum. When you’re really focused on maintaining the state of your mind, a lot of the issues that tend to come up when people …
- A Master of Your Thoughts… Then as your powers of concentration get better, this line of thought will become more and more useful, and will go deeper and deeper into understanding the wellsprings of these thoughts—where they come from and why you go for them—until they lose their appeal. Once they’ve lost their appeal, then you’re in charge. It’s not that the Buddha’s …
- Reflect… But the potential for putting an end to suffering also comes from watching these things, seeing them in action, and becoming very discerning in how you shape your experience, how you react to your thoughts. So reflect. Remember: This practice is a mirror. It’s not for looking outside. It’s for looking at yourself and trying to be very precise in figuring out …
- Allies… What we’re doing is learning how to use this skill to become trustworthy people, people of integrity, ourselves. So try to start the meditation every time from a position of strength, a position of mental well-being. If you find yourself feeling dejected, despondent, or discouraged, try to find ways to think that will get you un-dejected, encouraged again. You can think …
- What Is Skillful?… If you do it with knowledge, then it becomes part of the path. So here we are with the breath, right next to the place where intentions get launched. And we have some control over how we breathe, and we have some control over how we pay attention to the breath. We try to develop our skills so that we can expand that amount …
- Respect for Concentration… And there’s a lot out there that has been masquerading as something deserving respect and has been shown to not really deserve it, so a lot of us become skeptical. But then that skepticism can spread into areas where it’s really harmful. It’s like being skeptical about virtue; skeptical about the path; the possibility of a true happiness. You even get …
- Shaping Your Life… Otherwise, the effort we put into the present moment becomes more and more and more of a burden if we’re not careful. What we’re trying to do here is lighten our burdens. This is why the meditation is called practice. You read books on practicing swimming, say, or practicing a musical instrument. When they describe the process of what it means to …
- The Intelligence of Restraint… That way, you can listen to anything and it becomes Dhamma. You can relate it either to the truth of stress or suffering, the truth of the origination of suffering, the truth of cessation, or the truth of the path. Try to see: “Where does it fall here?” Then, when you know where it falls, you can know, “What’s the duty with regard …
- A Mirror for the Mind… If our actions are done in ignorance, they lead to suffering; if they’re done in knowledge, they become a path to the end of suffering. And that goal—the end of suffering—is worthy in and of itself. The Buddha does praise people who work for their own good and for the good of others. He said they’re better than people who …
- Mindful All the Way… The time we’ve spent so far becomes useful to the extent to which we can learn good lessons from it—lessons that will inspire us to act in ways that lead to long-term welfare and happiness, now and in times to come.
- What’s Important… It was a monk who was not well-known, a member of the forest tradition who was assumed to have become an arahant. This makes you stop and think. What does it mean, “important”? We’ve been trained to believe that the important people of the world are those who have power, those who are creative, those who play a big role in history …
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