Search results for: "Becoming"
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- Neither Here nor There… The essence of the state of becoming is to have a spot around which the becoming grows. This is what we want to study: how it happens. Usually it happens very fast, and we jump around from one becoming to another an awful lot. We go through many becomings in the course of the day, focusing our desires here and then jumping over there …
- As Days & Nights Fly Past, Fly Past… You become not just a Dhamma consumer, but also a Dhamma producer. Of course, the first person to consume your Dhamma should be you, to put that Dhamma to the test. You should be the one who’s benefiting. Maybe someday other people can benefit from your Dhamma production, but right now this is what you want to become—someone who can produce the …
- Moving Between Thought Worlds… In a healthy mind, it’s easy to switch from one world to another, to recognize the incongruities so that one state of becoming can actually pull you out of a less healthy state of becoming. There’s a certain fluidity. And the fluidity comes from your mindfulness, your ability to remember that you take on different identities and inhabit different worlds, and some …
- Protect Your Energy… Make this as solid and reliable as possible, and you’ll become a more solid and reliable person. Your happiness will become more solid and reliable. Your influence on other people will become more solid and reliable—because you really do work sincerely at mastering this practice, you really do bring the quality of ardency. As to whether it’s easy or not, that …
- Hypocrisy… It becomes an inner dishonesty and inner hypocrisy. So as you sit here and meditate, keep careful watch over anything that might pull you away from the breath. Once you notice, drop it immediately. The quicker you are, the more solid your mindfulness will become, the more solid your awareness will become. Your concentration will grow stronger. Just beware of these little things, the …
- Against the Grain… sensual craving, craving for becoming, craving for non-becoming. And the path attacks these directly. With right resolve, there’s the resolve to go beyond sensuality. Right concentration is a skill showing that there is a way to find happiness that doesn’t require sensuality. When the Buddha talks about the Middle Way, he’s not saying it’s just a feeling halfway between …
- In Alignment… Remember the Buddha’s statement that someone who used to be heedless and then becomes heedful illumines the world in the same way that the moon at night, when it’s released from the clouds, illumines the world below. In other words, don’t let the clouds get in the way of your new brightness. They may come back a little bit, but you …
- Mindfulness over Time… In other words, you don’t interpret them in terms of becoming. Becoming is a sense of yourself in a world of experience. What the Buddha wants you to see is not what has turned into a becoming, but the process of coming into being. Which means: How does this process develop? This is indicated in another passage where the Buddha’s asking Sariputta …
- Breathaholic… When you try to become a breathaholic, whatever the situation you’re in, you want to ask, “Where is the breath right now? How is the breath going?” In the beginning, this requires an act of will to keep reminding yourself: This is where the comfort’s going to be found. But as the breath gets more comfortable, and you get a sense of …
- Honesty & Integrity… When you have that kind of willingness, when you have that kind of self-honesty, the knowledge you gain from the meditation becomes more and more reliable, the happiness you attain becomes more and more reliable. This is why that element of honesty, that element of integrity, is essential to insight. It’s essential to release. Part of the meditation is getting the right …
- Respect for Concentration… This way the fact that we have a lot of people here, instead of becoming a hindrance, actually becomes a help. Many people notice that when you sit in a room full of meditators it’s a lot easier to get concentrated. But then if you leave the room and everyone chatters, it just destroys it. So, show some respect for concentration because it …
- In Debt to Generosity… The suttas list this as one of the motivations for wanting to become an arahant. As an arahant, any gift given to you would give great rewards to the person who gave it. In other words, the motivation is compassion, the motivation is generous. You hear so much Mahayana propaganda about the selfish arahant, but you can’t be selfish and become an arahant …
- Do You Want to Stop Suffering?… That’s a type of becoming. The fact that you’re a human being here in this human world: That’s a level of becoming, too. Becoming is something the mind does all the time. But if you want to see this process clearly, you’ve got to become centered. Right here, the world right now is going to be the world inside your …
- Don’t Be Burdensome… Even though it talks in grandiose terms, it still keeps you stuck in becoming. The basic question, according to them, concerns your position in the Infinite Universe, but regardless of your position, it’s still becoming. Even when you identify with the Universe, it’s still a state of becoming. And as the Buddha said, anything involved with becoming is involved in suffering and …
- Mindfulness, the Gatekeeper… You can teach the basics, but as for your student’s becoming skillful, that’s something he or she has to do independently. The student has to use his or her own powers of observation to become more sensitive and really want to develop the skill. You can’t force a skill down somebody’s throat, but you can become more skillful yourself. It …
- Everybody Benefits… We try to become sensitive to these, because the more you can know about the breath, how it’s acting in the body, the more you become sensitive to different parts of your own awareness that you didn’t know were there before—and in particular, this part of the mind that’s just watching. Sometimes when you read about the different teachers who …
- Respect for Concentration… As you develop this continuity, it becomes your habitual center of awareness, your habitual point of reference. The movement of other things in relation to that center becomes very clear. In other words, the impulse to go out and see something: You’ll see it exactly as that — a current or a physical sensation in certain parts of the body that runs or flows …
- Asalha Puja… craving for sensuality; craving for becoming, which means the desire to take on an identity in a world of experience as a means of finding happiness; and craving for non-becoming. In other words, you have a becoming already and you want to see it ended. That craving, too, can lead to clinging and create more becoming. So those kinds of craving, the Buddha …
- The Wisdom of Ardency… What are you doing? As the Buddha has you ask yourself: “What am I becoming as days and nights fly past, fly past?” What sort of person are you becoming? Are you becoming an ardent person? Or are you becoming a lazy, complacent person? The wisdom lies in the ardency, the realization that there are dangers out there and in here. As I said …
- Interconnectedness… Try to become more sensitive to this aspect of your awareness. As you become more sensitive to the breath, you also become more sensitive to your intentions. That’s important, because if we want to be able to judge the quality of our intentions, we have to be really clear about what they are, to make sure there’s nothing hiding behind them. In …
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