Search results for: "Becoming"

  1. Page 89
  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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.
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