Search results for: "Becoming"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. Abandoning Effluents (3)
     … the effluent of sensuality, the effluent of becoming, and the effluent of ignorance. The first of the approaches, seeing—i.e., seeing in terms of appropriate attention—is applied to abandoning the effluents of becoming and ignorance, because you’re putting aside questions that deal with your identity, which is the kernel of becoming, focusing instead on seeing things in terms of the four … 
  14. Heirs to Our Actions
     … Try as you may, no matter how good it gets—you could become king, you could become one of those universal emperors who reigns over whole continents—but even for them it ends. And then where do they go? Back into the cycle. And when you have power, there are drawbacks. We think about all the things that we’d like to have: fame … 
  15. True Friends & False
     … There are situations where you could benefit materially from certain friendships, but again, what kind of person are you going to become? That’s the question the Buddha has you ask: “Days and nights are flying past, flying past. What am I becoming as they fly past?” What you’re becoming has a lot to do with how you sort out the true friends … 
  16. Step Back
     … Without it, we’re totally absorbed in our bhava, our little state of becoming, our sense of who we are in the world, confined in the shape and contours of that world. Once you’re in a state of becoming like this, you don’t see everything. You start out with a kernel of a particular desire or craving, then you cling to it … 
  17. Observe Your Concentration
     … From the sense of joy, the mind becomes serene; and when the mind is serene, it becomes concentrated. So, while you’re listening to the talk on the aggregates, you can look at your mind in concentration and see that the concentration is made up of those same five aggregates. That other passage in the suttas then goes on to explain that when you … 
  18. To Be Your Own Teacher
     … So the more you can become your own teacher, the better. The discernment that’s involved in becoming your own teacher is going to be essential for release. Discernment is not just a matter of seeing things in line with the texts; it’s a matter of learning how to watch your own mind, question your impulses, look at your intentional input into any … 
  19. Right Inner Speech
     … That becomes an element of your concentration. The perception that stays with the breath: That’s an element of concentration. Any acts of directed thought and evaluation, which are thought-fabrications, become part of your concentration as well. Everything is right here. These things that before were a cause of suffering when you clung to them, now can become the path. In this way … 
  20. Goodwill for Free
     … The story goes on that he becomes a Bodhisatta and eventually becomes our Buddha. Whether this really happened or not, I don’t know. But it does illustrate some interesting points, one of which is that our sense of goodwill for others, our sense of compassion for others, does come from a sense of right and wrong. The second being saw the one next … 
  21. Adjusting the Flame
     … Suffering is caused by the craving that leads to becoming, and one of the forms of craving that leads to becoming is craving for non-becoming—in other words, craving to destroy whatever types of becoming you’ve already got. So how do you free yourself from becoming without craving non-becoming? How are you going to get past that impasse? The Buddha’s … 
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