Search results for: "Becoming"

  1. Page 87
  2. Open Door Meditation
     … Your concentration may not be as solid, but the opportunity for discernment arise becomes more and more available. This is because, as you’re moving around, you’ve got to keep one eye on your center and one eye on what’s happening around you; one part of your mind thinking about staying with your center and another part having to think about whatever … 
  3. This Fathom-Long Body
     … And as soon as it becomes something you are, you’ve got all kinds of problems. One, trying to pin it down. And two, if you’ve got this self that’s unenlightened, how are you going to enlighten it? How can an unenlightened self enlighten itself? This is where the Pure Land people take off. But the Buddha doesn’t have you look … 
  4. The Power of Attention
     … Well, things are always becoming different. They start out as potentials. Remember, we’ve got that field of kammic seeds. Some of the things you did in the past would potentially lead to pain right now. Some of the things you did in the past would potentially lead to pleasure. Some things would have the potential to get you tied up in old issues … 
  5. Defilements as Not-self
     … Every becoming that we take on wants happiness in one way or another. In some cases, it sees happiness in making you miserable. But you have to point out that this is not going to be very long-lasting, it’s not going to be very healthy, so it’s not going to be good for anybody at all—whatever the reasoning that helps … 
  6. A Tale of Two Kings
     … It means learning to become more and more skillful in your actions. There is a potential as you develop the path to find an opening that will lead you out. At that point the problem is solved, not because you’ve lowered your standards. You’ve actually raised your standards and you’ve found something that’s totally satisfactory as a result. It is … 
  7. Proactive Mindfulness
     … The walking becomes easier. The same with the breath: You begin to realize that the different cartoon notions you have of what you have to do in order to get the breath in, what you have to do in order to get it to come out, are really not all that accurate. You begin to sense the breath as a whole-body process, so … 
  8. Merit: Goodness of the Heart
     … What used to be normal thinking suddenly becomes something you’ve got to fight. It makes you more sensitive to ways in which your mind creates problems for itself. This is a lesson you learn from virtue as well. When you take the precepts, you suddenly realize that certain things that you thought were okay are not really okay. This makes you more sensitive … 
  9. Metta Isn’t Love
     … The problem is that if you try to wipe evil out of the world, you can become pretty evil yourself. You have to realize that there’s a lot in the world that’s beyond our power. In this way, metta can live with equanimity. Love cannot. It’s hard to be equanimous about people you love, especially when they’re being mistreated by … 
  10. From Heedfulness to Purity
     … It’s through heedfulness that we become good. It’s through heedfulness that the mind is purified. Not that we start out pure, but we can get there. So that’s what you hold onto. Use that determination, that heedfulness to sort everything else out.
  11. 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 … 
  12. A Fool for Sensuality
     … The tedium of the practice is much less tedious than actually having to go through the suffering that comes when you fall for these things.” So be willing to do it again and again until it becomes quite automatic. You look at somebody attractive and you can see immediately that they have their unattractive side as well. Even when there’s nobody else around … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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