Search results for: "Becoming"
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- Not-self in Context… It’s by making the right choices that better and better choices become available. So follow this issue of trying to be skillful in your actions as passionately as you can. Start with the path. And as for issues of self and not-self, learn to use them as you’re mastering the skills of the path. Putting things in the right context can …
- Steps in Concentration… If you do, it becomes oppressive. Think of all the energy channels in the body being open: The body can be like a big sponge. Everything is wide open all around. When everything gets saturated, things begin to calm down even more. Here, the image is of a still lake with lotuses growing in a lake. They haven’t grown up above the surface …
- Happiness Comes from Inner Strength… Yet if you can find the strength to refrain from harming others—and it does take a certain amount of restraint and forbearance, endurance—you discover that in exercising those strengths, they become more and more reliable. The same principle applies with goodwill. There may be a lot of people out there who wish you ill, but it’s not going to help the …
- The Governing Principle… You become more and more sensitive to what’s been invading your space all along and now you don’t have to suffer from it. You’ve got something to help you battle against those negative energies, both within and without. So once things settle down and they feel good, try to maintain that. Now, there are times when you hit something really good …
- Four Virtues… Your meditation then becomes a very consistent part of the way you live, and the way you live energizes the meditation. Think of all these areas as good opportunities for developing the mind, to find that state of purity that doesn’t have to feed on anything at all, that doesn’t place a burden on anyone. In this way, virtue not only creates …
- Trust in Heedfulness… But as you really focus on this task—and this is where the ardency and the persistence come into the practice, as strengthening factors, based on heedfulness—the clearer the focus becomes. And you really see that it is possible to satisfy your most important desire, which is the desire for a harmless happiness that doesn’t change. Almost every other account you read …
- Equanimity & Power… But for the time being, you can allow the mind to rest to gather its strength, because the state of equanimity that you develop through exercising your power then becomes the basis for deeper layers of concentration, and for layers of concentration where you can begin to ask questions and to see things clearly. Think of the Buddha on the night of his awakening …
- Unlearning Unskillful Behavior… As you work on some of the more blatant ones, the subtler ones become easier. The spiritual bypassing approach is: “Let’s deal with the subtle ones, and the blatant ones will just take care of themselves.” But it rarely happens that way. If you’re insensitive about things that you’re blatantly doing in life, how are you going to muster the sensitivity …
- The Right Place to Look… So you want to become really sensitive to what you’re doing right now, starting with the subtleties of the breath or the subtleties of whatever other object of meditation you find easy, congenial, pleasant for the mind to stay with. Because it all comes down ultimately to seeing not only the object of your meditation, but also seeing how the mind relates to …
- Correcting, Fostering, Cutting Away… When things become clear, then look at what needs to be done. Do what needs to be done. You have the choice in what to think. So choose whatever is going to bring things into balance and is appropriate for what you need right now—the thoughts that help correct, the thoughts that help to foster, the thoughts that help to cut things away …
- The Use of the Present… And here you are, learning to be a doctor yourself, taking the things that you used to use to poison yourself and figuring out how, if you mix them in a different way, they can actually become medicines. So the present is here to be used. And the teachings are here to teach us how to use it wisely.
- Effort against the Hindrances… You’re going to mistreat them, and then that becomes your karma. There’s no way at all that you benefit from ill will, wanting to see someone else suffer. You’re just burning yourself up with anger at the moment, and setting yourself up to do unskillful things in the future. There’s no reason you should want to be involved in that …
- Your Main Foundation… When the breath is that still, then the events of the mind become more and more prominent, and you can watch them from that stillness. The stillness can be your foundation. At that point you can work with the other elements. Ajaan Fuang used to tell his students—once they reached the stage in the meditation where the breath got really calm and still …
- The Alternative of Concentration… The mind is really focused, it’s really still, so that things become extremely clear. You’re sensitive to the slightest things that are happening, and everything seems to flow because there are no interruptions. The flow comes from this feedback loop that’s not interrupted. So you take those lessons and you apply them to the meditation. One of the reasons we focus …
- Nourishment from the Breath… If it becomes mechanical, it gets uncomfortable. And when it’s uncomfortable, the body feels ill at ease, the mind feels irritable, and it saps your strength. After all, the breath is the energy of life. So you want to give it your full attention when you can. The Pali term for this is citta: intent, being really sensitive. It’s one of the …
- The Strength of Conviction… Sensitize yourself to these things, and this sensitivity becomes a strength in the practice. Then as you stick with it long enough with a sense of conviction, mindfulness, and alertness, concentration does develop. But concentration can develop in many ways. We read about it in the texts, and it seems like a very simple ladder. You go through this stage and then to the …
- Old Movies & New… That way, your concentration becomes not just a matter of forcing the mind, but also of drawing the mind in, giving it something to explore, something to learn about, so that even if it doesn’t settle down as solidly as you’d like it to, at least you learn something in the course of the hour. That will make you interested in coming …
- Using Right Resolve Rightly… They turn around and say, “What can I find inside that would create a greater sense of well-being?” This is where your thoughts of renunciation become more noble. In other words, you’re focused on the directed thought and evaluation of concentration: “How do I get to understand my breath? How do I get to understand whatever it is that I’m going …
- Sober Up… Through exercise, they actually do become strong. It’s like exercising the body. You’re embarrassed to go down to the gym because everybody else is a lot more fit than you are. But that embarrassment is not going to help you get strong. If they look down on you for being puny and weak, well, that’s their problem. You’re going to …
- The Samsaric Mud Fight… In any mud fight, the question of who splashed more mud on the other person after a while becomes really irrelevant. It’s not the kind of score you want to keep, a score you want to settle. It’s a fight you want to get out of. There’s a passage where the chief of the asuras says, “If other people see you …
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