Search results for: "Becoming"

  1. Page 83
  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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.
  9. 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 … 
  10. The Dualistic Path
     … So this ability to discern stress and the ending of stress is something you have to develop over time until it becomes a skill. It requires all the powers of observation, focus, mindfulness, and alertness that any skill requires. It shows its worth in a temporary way as you catch sight of a particular habit in the mind that’s causing stress, and you … 
  11. A Boxing Lesson
     … So you don’t let their misbehavior become an excuse for your misbehavior. Another image is of your goodwill as being large and cool, like the river Ganges. Someone can come along with a torch and try to set it on fire, but it’s not going to catch fire. You want your mind, you want your sense of yourself to be that cool … 
  12. Endurance
     … But when you realize, “Okay their karma is their karma and it becomes your karma only if you pick it up,” then they can write as much as they want but they don’t leave a trace, because there’s nothing in your mind they can write on. If you have that perception in mind, that your mind is like space, it makes it … 
  13. Learn from Your Mistakes
     … As the Buddha says, people who were heedless in the past but then change to become heedful, brighten the world like a moon at night when released from a cloud. So don’t be ashamed of the fact you’ve made mistakes, in the sense of not letting them get you down. But at the same time, don’t deny them. They were mistakes … 
  14. Shame Yes, Guilt No
     … I’ve slipped every now and then, but that doesn’t mean I can’t learn from the slips.” When that’s the attitude you bring, the training does become a joy, as you’re up for the challenges that come, both inside meditation and out.
  15. Be Observant
     … Start with the breath, and eventually the breath becomes a mirror for the mind. As you adjust the breath, there’s a sense of ease. Allow that sense of ease to spread through the body. Develop the potentials for happiness that you have here, because you’re going to need them as part of your path. After all, so much of the path requires … 
  16. Introduction to the Breath
     … The meditation gives you the energy, gives you the strength, so that the right thing to do becomes an easy thing to do. In this way, the people around you benefit as well. Meditation is not a selfish endeavor. It’s one of those few activities that is good both for you and for the people around you. So keep that in mind as … 
  17. Practicing in Solitude
     … One way to counteract them is to add some more things to become earworms: Get some of the Buddha’s teachings as an earworm so the chants are there in the background. Look through the book of chants and try out some chants that we don’t do as a group. You find that some chants are your friends. Some people like doing the … 
  18. Selecting from the Teachings
     … Without that quality of inner sensitivity, the meditation becomes mechanical, forced. That’s when desire takes over. Being more sensitive is one way of keeping check on whether your desire is too much, whether it’s getting in the way of your seeing things as they’re actually happening by focusing on what you want to have happen the next moment, the next breath … 
  19. Rightly Directed
     … How is it that a thought forms in the mind? How does it become an emotion as it involves the breath, and then from the breath it gets into the body? How do you take on an identity within that emotion, and how do you get out? If you can see these steps, then you can step out at any time. That way, you … 
  20. Joyous Endurance
     … You don’t want to become deflected by other people’s bad behavior. So you have to develop some real resilience. Fortunately, practicing concentration can help in that direction. You gain a sense of well-being inside. You begin to realize that your well-being doesn’t have to depend so much on other people’s behaving in a certain way or behaving in … 
  21. Easy to Instruct
     … That way, your responsibility for practice becomes a two-way street. You show that you’re willing to put in the effort and put your mind to solving your problem. There’s a spot where the Buddha says that admirable friendship is the whole of the holy life. This practice is not something you can do alone. As you saw today at the ordination … 
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