Search results for: "Becoming"
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- Meaning & Happiness… He worked all those many, many lifetimes to become Buddha, not only for his own purpose but also so that he could teach. But there was a fascinating incident right after his awakening. He began to have second thoughts about that teaching career. This got a brahma all upset, so the brahma came down to invite him to teach, saying that there are people …
- You Are Not Redundant… In fact, it was as a result of that talk that he was able, apparently, to become an arahant. That’s really what makes people important: the extent to which they can cleanse their minds. So when you’re meditating, you’re asserting your importance as a person. It can be an act of defiance. The world may say that you’re worthless, but …
- Body Contemplation… That’s what it’s going to become. Again, that’s to get rid of any sense of attachment around it. This is how the teaching helps when you’re passing away as well. Ajaan Fuang noted this when he was teaching meditation in Bangkok. He taught at a funeral monastery and sometimes on a Saturday evening, when there were very few people coming …
- Dharma Warriors… In this way, you become a wise warrior, the warrior who survives, who comes out victorious. Even though you may have to lose a few battles along the way and retreat, you’re not embarrassed to retreat, if it’s necessary that you do. But you’re aimed at having a much larger strategy, so even though you may lose a few battles, you …
- How the Breath Helps You to Die Well… begin to meditate, these fabrications are all mixed up together. But after your inner conversation has done its work, you can put it aside. Just be with the sensation of breath. Become one with the breath. At first it’ll be intense. And then things begin to calm down, calm down. Finally you get to the point where the breath stops, and yet your …
- Recollecting the Buddha… That could have become a point of pride. But still he didn’t let that pride get in the way of his original desire, which was to find something deathless. So then he tried the path of the jhānas. And then, adding on to the jhānas, he finally arrived to the noble eightfold path, and by following that path, he gained awakening. You read …
- At Home in Your Own Skin… If you catch yourself moving out without skillful intentions, realize that that’s just what the Buddha calls becoming. It’s a created little world, which if you inhabit it, is going to come crashing down. So you do your best to get out of it. It’s like one of those dreams you find yourself in where things get more and more confining …
- Karma as an Island… They’re there to remind us: “Okay, this is what you do—remember this.” That way, your memory becomes your teacher that you can go back to. You want to internalize those teachings. Years back, after Ajaan Fuang passed away, the first year after his passing was pretty rough in the monastery. A lot of people were jockeying for power one way or another …
- Watch the Mind at the Breath… As to whether the energy is moving or not, after a while that becomes irrelevant. You’ve got your foundation. You’ll see that the mind will stay there for a while and then has a habit of moving off. It’ll move. Sometimes the movements caused simply because the mind is so used to moving. It doesn’t feel right to settle down …
- Three Types of Equanimity… If the criticism is true, it’s helping you because it’s pointing out an area where you may have become complacent. As for praise, you have to watch out for that, because sometimes you have to wonder why are people praising you: What do they want out of you? You have to be a little bit leery of what you think is a …
- Ups & Downs… Then the questions become, “How much pressure should you put on the focus? How should you conceive the breath? And where in the body are you going to focus?” Those are areas where you have a choice. How much do you want to experiment with the breath and how much do you just want to let it do its own thing? That’s another …
- Delight in the Dhamma… But they were able to pull themselves together and come out of that miserable state of mind and become noble disciples. So even if the practice is difficult—as the Buddha said, even if tears are coming down your cheeks over how difficult it can be—stick with it because the rewards are great. You know that analogy he gave. He said that if …
- Don’t Get Discouraged… Then the results themselves begin to become fuel for our further practice. But you look at the Buddha’s teachings, and you can see that they’re reasonable all the way along. He’s not asking you to believe impossible things. He’s just asking you to realize there are certain areas where you don’t know but you have to act on a …
- To Depend on Yourself… The more you bring those two qualities of truthfulness and being observant to the practice, the more you become your own refuge. Even with a really good teacher, you’re constantly being thrown back on yourself. A teacher can help you with only so much. The real work is yours, but it’s good work and it gives good results. So look at your …
- Concentration Work… You can’t just walk up to somebody and immediately become deep and fast friends. There are some people you have an instant rapport with, but the friendship has to be tested over time for you to know whether that rapport will really grow into a friendship. There are some people for whom it’s difficult in the beginning, but you find over time …
- Taking Charge… So regardless of the quality that needs to be developed in the mind, or whichever one you’re focusing on, you’ve got to keep coming back, coming back, coming back, to make sure that it’s strong, that it really has become a new habit, a new skill. This requires mindfulness, keeping in mind what you’ve got to do. Mindfulness is always …
- Intelligent Equanimity… That way, instead of being a blanket indifference to everything — which would be like being a dead person — equanimity becomes an important tool in keeping you alive and active, making sure all the energy and activity you’ve got to devote to the present moment is used in the best possible way. Otherwise you drag yourself down by taking on too many responsibilities, too …
- Taming the Elephant… This is where your concentration really becomes one. Some people say that jhana is not absorption, that it’s simply learning how to think skillful thoughts consistently. Well, the Buddha says that’s how you start getting the mind into jhana, by thinking skillful thoughts consistently about the breath. But in the next step, as I said, you’re keeping track of the breath …
- Four Roles to Play… In the same way, the tension you build up around a pain often becomes the real problem. You have to be willing to allow it to dissolve and see what happens. That’s one way of dealing with the pain. There are lots of ways of dealing with the pain. It’s all part of your set of skills. With all of the skills …
- Cleansing the Mind… Take yourself patiently step by step by step to the point you can say, “I hope this person would understand the causes for true happiness and act on them.” When you can think in that way, you become a more trustworthy person. There’s no sense that you have to get back at somebody or settle a few scores. When you have this attitude …
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