Search results for: "Becoming"

  1. Page 83
  2. Ask Yourself the Buddha’s Question
     … Where there’s a sense of ease in the breath, you can think of it spreading around throughout the body so that it becomes even more pleasant to stay here. At the same time, you’re exercising a really important function in the mind, this ability to pose questions and then look for yourself to get the answers. This part of concentration is called … 
  3. For the Sake of the Deathless
     … If the Buddha had tried to give all the information he gained in his awakening, the map would become unreadable. He gave us just enough to get us on the right course. But the path also requires that we look at ourselves, because the problem that this path overcomes is something that lies within each of us. You have to take care of what … 
  4. Right but Wrong
     … It’s very easy to get into Dhamma discussions where the point of the discussion becomes who’s right and who’s wrong. A lot of conceit can develop around being right in discussions like that. Even though you don’t abandon conceit until the end of the path, it’s a good idea to avoid those kinds of discussions as much as possible … 
  5. Sensitive to Stress
     … So the question, as we meditate, is how to become more and more sensitive to the stress that’s actually going on in the mind. Over time, as the mind gets more and more quiet, your sense of what counts as stressful will change. This is probably one of the reasons why the Buddha doesn’t define stress, just as he doesn’t define … 
  6. Moods Are Not-Self
     … But it doesn’t become good or bad with the mood. That’s the part you can make like earth. Then look at the way you talk to yourself around goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity; the way you talk to yourself about your body; the way you talk to yourself about things around you outside. Try to get yourself in the right frame … 
  7. Disenchantment & Dispassion
     … This becomes the mind’s basic default mode. So this is the aim of the Buddha’s teachings. In the final evening of his life, he talked about how people were paying homage to him in the wrong way. Actually, devas were paying homage with heavenly music, heavenly scents, etc., yet he said that that’s not genuine homage for the Tathagata. True homage … 
  8. Here Be Tigers
     … If you can develop a sense of clear priorities and stick with it, you find that your thinking becomes a lot more useful. Now, the top-priority question here is: What can you do minimize the amount of unnecessary suffering you’re causing yourself? When the Buddha taught the four noble truths, he put this problem—the suffering caused by craving, suffering caused by … 
  9. In Gratitude- Ajaan Suwat
     … He was deviating from a lot of things that had become customary in Thailand and Laos. When people commented on this to him, he said, “The customs of the people in Thailand or Laos or any country in the world are the customs of people with defilements. If you want to get past your own defilements, you have to follow the customs of those … 
  10. The Gift of Speech
     … Think about all the trouble you went to in order to become a human being who has a human mouth. So what do you do with this human mouth? Animal mouths can express only very limited ideas. Your human mouth can express all kinds of things. Given that you’ve got this wide variety of things you can talk about, do you want to … 
  11. Victory
     … You wouldn’t let them become obstacles, because otherwise you’d simply go back to your old ways. It’s because your old ways were not satisfactory that you came to the practice to begin with. So, this is one of the ways the Buddha has you develop a sense of heedfulness: through goodwill for yourself. Then, of course, there’s goodwill for others … 
  12. A Position of Strength
     … In fact, it’s in the really strong levels of concentration that your mindfulness becomes pure. So be mindful to stay right here and do your best to make things comfortable right here, because mindfulness doesn’t mean just remembering to be here. It remembers other things as well: How do you settle in right here so that it feels really good? When something … 
  13. Freedom through Restraint
     … The world of the mind, as you get to know it, becomes a much bigger, more interesting place than the world outside. Look at the world outside: How much of it can you control? You read the news: Everything is going crazy. Why clutter up your mind with what’s going on out there? You’ve got enough clutter already in here that’s … 
  14. Sanity for the Holidays
     … These qualities become your guarantees that you’re not going to overreact and you’re not going to react in unskillful ways. Patience is the not reacting, whereas equanimity is maintaining an emotional even keel. Both of these require talking to yourself, reminding yourself that when you came into this world, if you didn’t have your family, didn’t have someone to look … 
  15. The Hedgefox
     … As it gets more concentrated, the concentration becomes then the basis of the pleasure. So that’s the kind of feeling you want to encourage, so that you can use it. Then when the temptation comes up to give in to sensual pleasures that you know are unskillful, you know you’ve got something better. The more quickly you can tap into the pleasure … 
  16. Your Actions Are Yours
     … He’s making the point that as you’re working on the meditation—and in fact with the whole practice—you’re trying to become more skillful in how you act. So think back on the manual skills you’ve developed and figure out what lessons you’ve learned from them that you can apply to the practice. One of them is you have … 
  17. An Auspicious Day
     … In that way, the moment becomes auspicious, and many moments altogether make up an auspicious day. Many days make up auspicious weeks, and so on into larger and larger frames of time. But they all start right here. And they’re all made up of these individual moments. So if you want an auspicious life, this is where it’s done. When you take … 
  18. The Gift of the Practice
     … You become more and more reliable. And then ultimately when you’ve seen the deathless, you realize that’s where true happiness lies. Your relationship to all the sensual pleasures and all the other pleasures the world has to offer is a lot different. You don’t need to feed off those things anymore. You have a happiness that doesn’t take anything away … 
  19. The World of the Body
     … Try to become sensitive to what feels best for the body, what feels best for the mind right now. As for other thoughts that may come to the mind, you can let them go. Try to stay in the world of the body right here. The mind is used to living in lots of different worlds. You’ve got the world of family, the … 
  20. Maintained by Fabrication
     … No one intends to become that kind of animal, that kind of being. But they’ve been fabricating in that direction blindly, with an idea in mind about what’s possible, what works. So when the Buddha’s teaching beings, he’s not teaching people who are suddenly deciding they want to follow a path. They’re already following paths, and his task as … 
  21. Dispassion Is Freedom
     … When you’ve decided that even maintaining a sense of the form of the body becomes oppressive, and you’d rather just be there with infinite space, infinite consciousness, it all seems very wide open and free. But the Buddha says, there’s a slavery there even in those forms of passion. It’s a fetter that keeps us tied to coming back again … 
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