Search results for: "Becoming"

  1. Page 86
  2. All of a Piece
     … Then become an I who’s more meticulous in how you concentrate. If you look at the Buddha’s teachings on meditation, he uses the word “I” a lot, “my” a lot. As long as you’re going to have a sense of self, learn to make it skillful. It’s by having that sense of self that you feel inclined to work for … 
  3. Perceptions as Targets
     … That way, they don’t become targets for the mind or targets for activities that are going to cause you regret later on. So when you get used to playing with perceptions of the breath, learn how to play with perceptions of other things as well. Especially of things that have you attracted and fixated, and you know that those fixations are going to … 
  4. Focal Points
     … Then when you can stay focused on that spot, getting sensitive to what kind of breath energy the spot needs, you find that the breath becomes a lot more interesting, a lot more riveting, something that’s really nourishing. So the choice of the spot where you focus is important. Ajaan Fuang once said that when people would come to him with problems in … 
  5. Skillful Desire
     … results going to come? When am I going to see this? When is jhāna going to come?” You don’t need to think those thoughts. Just get to like the breath. Become friends with the breath. Pay it some attention, in the same way you’d pay attention to a friend. When you’re trying to make friends with a person, don’t make … 
  6. Trading Up
     … What does it mean to identify? How do we do it? How do we let it go? Because as the Buddha said, once you identify with something, you become a being, and a being has to feed. As you start feeding, you’re going to get into conflict with others. And even when you’re not in conflict with others, the simple fact that … 
  7. Tuning Your Lute
     … Then you pick up the theme of your meditation and work with it, the same way that a person playing a lute would pick up a theme and work with it.” So, Sona does that and he ends up becoming an arahant. In that particular case, he had to tune his persistence down a little bit lower. But that doesn’t mean that he … 
  8. Realizing Cessation
     … That, too, leads to more becoming—in other words, more experiences of happiness and distress on the household level. And “household” here doesn’t mean only human households. Deva households, brahma households: They’re all on the same level as far as the Buddha’s concerned. He tells us that there’s something else, something much better, so that we don’t have to … 
  9. The Buddha’s Secret Weapon
     … So when you’re adjusting the breath, you’re learning to adjust away from unhealthy or uncomfortable patterns, but when you finally get to a sense of well-being in the breath, that’s when you let it take over on its own, so that the shoulds of the path don’t become onerous. Once, when I was in Barre, they were giving a … 
  10. The Thinking Cure
     … But if you think of yourself as large-hearted enough to forgive, you suddenly become a larger person. That gives the mind more space to move around. And so on down the line. You learn that you can observe the precepts. You learn that you can meditate, simply by changing the way you think about yourself and your capabilities. So remember that this is … 
  11. Shelter Through Restraint
     … once that perception’s been slapped on, that this is a thought, then it turns into a thought world, and then you go into the thought world. And there you are: becoming. You learn to see this because you’ve been exercising restraint, keeping the mind on one object and saying No to everything else that would come through the mind. It’s simply … 
  12. Daily-Life Dhamma
     … If all you can think about is how you lack this and lack that, you become poor. Try to think about what you do have that you can share with other people, even in the midst of your responsibilities. It gives you a sense of wealth, a sense of inner worth, and that’s all to strengthen your practice. Because you can take these … 
  13. Skill
     … Keep this up, and eventually staying with the breath will become a skill. Always keep this point in mind. All the Buddha’s teachings are centered on this issue of skillfulness and unskillfulness. There is a sutta where Ven. Sariputta says that right view starts with this question of what’s skillful and what’s unskillful, and what in the mind causes skillful behavior … 
  14. Brahmaviharas at the Breath
     … The whole idea of settling a score becomes meaningless. It’s better to tell yourself, “The best way to get out of that back and forth is to just get out”—with goodwill. “And then,” Ajaan Suwat would say, “you turn the goodwill on yourself.” As you’re sitting here meditating, just think of it: You’re sitting here learning how to breathe in … 
  15. Guided Meditation
     … Allow yourself to become a connoisseur of breathing. Once you’ve developed a fairly comfortable rhythm of breathing, you can go on to the next step, which is to be aware of the whole body as you breathe in, whole body as you breathe out. A good way to build up to that is to go to the body section by section. You can … 
  16. Caring Enough to Doubt
     … take any doubt that’s based on not caring and turn it into the doubt that’s based on caring, because the second kind of doubt is something that can actually become a motivation for the practice. You hear the ajaans in Thailand saying this. On the one hand, as they say, with stream entry, your doubts are gone. Now, those are two specific … 
  17. Mindfulness of Breathing: Four in One
     … And the more consistently you can stay here, the clearer all those other aspects will become. You begin to see them in good time. There’s no hurry to analyze things. As I said, the only time you need to analyze things is when things don’t come together. When they do, you can put the analysis down, confident that everything you’re going … 
  18. The Goldsmith
     … The hour of meditation becomes fifty-five minutes of wandering and then five minutes of concentration. You want to make it a full hour of training the mind with as little wandering as possible. That’s when you’re emphasizing the effort. Concentration is once the mind has settled down, you do your best to keep it there. This is like blowing off the … 
  19. The Form of the Body
     … The least little thing that goes wrong with it becomes the mind’s major concern. This is why we have that chant on the body, to help pry loose some of those concerns, to realize that not every little thing that goes wrong in the body is a life-or-death matter. Even the life and death the body is not as important as … 
  20. Goodwill Is Respect
     … People don’t respect one another’s happiness, and so it becomes easy to kill other people, easy to force them to starve. You even hear people saying, “We have too many redundant mouths in the world. Maybe it would be good to have some depopulation. People are living too long. Defund the health system.” It’s all out of disrespect. If we bring … 
  21. Is the Buddha’s Wisdom Selfish?
     … And two, you become a better example for other people. Through your example they can see this is a happiness that can be found, and if they feel so moved, they’ll follow the example—which is pretty much the best you can do for other people. You can help them with externals. But we have a way of suffering even when externals are … 
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