Search results for: "Becoming"
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- Cause & Effect Right Now… You develop the four noble truths to the point where, as Ajaan Mun says, they all become one. In other words, there’s just one duty: Everything gets let go. But that can happen only when you’ve been working on developing the path all the way. And where do you do that? You do it right here, right now, so that you can …
- It’s Good to Talk to Yourself… Here, we’re staying with the breath, and the breath feels good.” When it feels like it’s saturating the body, the signals it become just, “breath, breath, breath.” When the mind can settle down like that, that’s one of the signs that your questioning has worked. Your ability to step back from the questions and watch the process leads to a different …
- Patience & Curiosity… But if you can combine patience and curiosity well, you get so that you become a better player. The music sounds better because you want it to be better: That’s the curiosity part. You’re willing to take all the time and effort that’s required to make it better: That’s the patience part. As you come to know the guitar in …
- A Mind Without Inertia… As you become more and more passionately engaged in the Dhamma, you can see more and more clearly exactly where you’ve been weighing yourself down. You can drop all the weight. It’s like those old balloons that people used to travel in. They’d have big bags full of weights and when the balloon was ready to go up, they’d drop …
- Minding Your Own Business… We become oblivious to our impact on the world where we really are responsible. We were talking this afternoon about ethics, of how our actions have an impact on other people and how that might in turn have an impact on still other people and ripple out that way. When you try to track down the ripples you go crazy. The Buddha once said …
- Frustrated Desires… What started out as simply an impetus from your past karma suddenly becomes something your present karma is entangled in. Then you drop your concentration. You’ve forgotten it totally; you don’t know where it was. Then you suddenly remember. It’s as if you’ve gone into another world for the time being. What you’re doing is that you’re identifying …
- Great Expectations… Even if you cling to a fluid identity, the fluidity becomes the object that you cling to. So you have to learn how to see all that narratives and any other embroidery that you place on your lust as a form of suffering. The same goes with anger. We may not like the object—the person who’s gotten us angry—but we certainly …
- Focus on What You’re Doing… Yet, still he hadn’t become an arahant. Something was still lacking in his meditation. Sariputta pointed to that concern: “I haven’t got that far yet. I’ve got to push what’s left to push.” He said to Anuruddha, “That’s your restlessness right there.” Sometimes you have some preconceived notions about how things should work, and you just push, push, push …
- Taking Responsibility… That’s the point, as he says, where you become independent in the Dhamma. Prior to that point, you have to depend on other people to give you advice, to point out where you’re wrong. With stream-entry, you reach the stage where you can begin to monitor yourself reliably. That doesn’t mean you can’t use advice from other people. The …
- Something Good to Cling to… If you’re clinging to unreliable things, the mind itself becomes unreliable. So give yourself a good place to stay right here. This makes it a lot easier to live in the world without suffering from the world. And because we’re not leaning on the world, we’re taking that much of a burden off them, too.
- Saṃvega & Pasāda… You become a better person to be around. This relates to that second emotion, pasāda. Ajaan Suwat would encourage an attitude of pasāda each time as you begin to meditate, that what you’re doing here is important work. Trying to get the mind in concentration is good for you and for the people around you. As the Buddha said, if you don’t …
- Grasping the Snake… Then, as we engage in these activities, our right views become more precise. The Buddha talks about three kinds of discernment. There’s the discernment that comes from listening and the discernment that comes from thinking things through, but then there’s also the discernment that comes from developing good qualities through the practice. You can listen to the Dhamma, and you get right …
- Right Resolve, Right Concentration… Not that you become a doormat for other beings, but for the time being, at least, you let those thoughts go. The mind needs to rest. So first counteract the thoughts and then allow it to rest. It’s in this way that discernment can lead to concentration. You see the need for skillful intentions and so, on the one hand, you develop thoughts …
- The Knife of Discernment… But when the distinction becomes clear in the doing, then you’ve cut the mind away from those attachments and cravings. When the Buddha said that his job was done, this is what he meant. There were still pains in the body, there were still issues in life, but the mind no longer had to suffer because of them. That’s where Awakening makes …
- Choose Your Battles… But then, the snapping back becomes your karma. You’ve won that battle maybe but you’ve lost a bigger one. So those are the kinds of things you should endure: painful feelings and hurtful words. Things you shouldn’t endure are thoughts of ill will, thoughts of sensuality, and thoughts of harmfulness that arise in the mind. You don’t let them stay …
- Cheating the System… One of the steps, as the Buddha said, is to become sensitive to mental fabrication, which includes your feelings of pleasure, pain, neither-pleasure-nor-pain, and the perceptions around them. But before you do that he says try to breathe in a way that gives rise to rapture, breathe in a way that gives rise to pleasure. That way, you give the mind …
- The Roles of Equanimity… So your equanimity has to work with other qualities in order to be valuable and not actually become an obstacle on the path. You might say this is the equanimity of a hunter. A hunter knows where the animals tend to be, but he can’t make an appointment with them, saying, “Okay, at two o’clock I want a rabbit to come by …
- The Center of Your Life… If you can work through all the issues about why they’re misguided, then the heart becomes more and more One. It more and more coalesces and comes together around this desire to be truly happy, to find long-term happiness, to develop these qualities of wisdom and purity and compassion that can make your happiness true. So this is how you make Dhamma …
- The Best Work Around… It becomes something you really do want to do. The obstacles start to seeming smaller, smaller, and smaller. Years back. when I was staying with Ajaan Fuang, there was a time when we were getting ready to consecrate a lot of amulets that we were going to put in the Buddha image. Someone suggested doing a nine-day and nine-night consecration ceremony, which …
- Self-Bypassing… You want to take that same attitude toward your practice, so that your self becomes more mature—mature enough so that when the time comes to let go, it can let go, and there’s nothing left lurking around, hiding behind denial. You haven’t bypassed anything. You’ve followed the path consistently all the way to your first taste of awakening. You don …
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