Search results for: "Becoming"
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- Impatience… Judicious is when you learn how to refine that judging faculty in the mind so that it becomes skillful. We’ve all heard about the evils of being judgmental in meditation, but instead, we need to remind ourselves that it’s good to have good powers of judgment. Learn how to be judicious in what you’re doing. That can come only with time …
- The Flowing Mind… Then, there’s the effluent of becoming. You want to play a role in the world outside. The question is, does the world outside want you to play a role? And what will they do to your role? Think of all the things you could build, the things you could construct outside: They’re going to get washed away. What you do have, of …
- Countercultural Conditioning… But the Buddha was subtle enough to see that even contentment* *can become a source of defilement. You may be proud of the fact that you’re more content with little than other people. So as he said, you’re sensitive to the dangers in using things, how the mind can create defilements even around this. You learn to let them go. In the …
- Strong Against Anger & Fear… That’s how you become strong. So even though there are dangers outside, the typical ways of dealing with those dangers—through force of arms—are not the ones that are the most effective. The Buddha’s approach is counterintuitive in a lot of ways, but it’s counterintuitive only to our greed, aversion, and delusion. When you see things clearly, you see that …
- For a Routine That Isn’t Routine… The problem is, when it becomes a daily routine—or nightly routine—it starts *getting *routine. We go through the motions, stop paying attention, which means we miss out on a lot of the opportunities that come from meditating. So we have to learn how to make it special every night. Part of that we do—which is part of the routine—with the …
- Right Action & Right Livelihood… After all, we are beings—we’ve chosen to become beings by latching onto the different aggregates—and that requires feeding. We feel that our very identity depends on feeding. This is something that all beings have in common. This is the answer to that question, “What is one?” in the Buddhist catechism: All beings subsist on nutriment. Everywhere, all around, they’re feeding …
- Not Siding with the Hindrances… It’s time to get some rest.” You can think about all the lack of sleep you’ve had for the past who knows how many days, and that becomes part of a narrative that convinces you, “Yes, it is time to take a little rest here.” Or if you’re worried about something, it really is a serious problem that you’ve got …
- When Nothing’s Happening… Your insights get more refined because your attention has become more refined. So start with the breath. Is the breath as totally comfortable as it could be? Is it a comfortable breath filling the whole body, every little square centimeter? Look at the areas where you don’t normally look: spaces between the toes, spaces between the fingers, around your eyes. See if you …
- A Valuable Gift… It becomes a glaze covering up the opportunity to gain your own genuine discernment, which comes from developing your own powers of observation, getting the mind still and then watching it, in the same way that you get a child still in a classroom and give the child work to do. You’ve got to watch the child, because the child is probably going …
- Ask the Right Questions… When there’s this action, then there’s that action…” *If the actions are done in ignorance, there’s going to be stress and suffering; if they’re done with knowledge, they can become part of the path away from suffering. So you want to focus on the actions of the mind—this is why we get the mind really quiet: not to find …
- The Intelligent Heart… This is what comes with taking the issue of happiness seriously and sticking with your determination to not settle for anything less than a happiness that’s totally reliable—and enables you to become totally reliable as well.
- A Good Path to Be On… There’s a possibility for you to become more and more skillful. And it doesn’t have to depend on anybody else. You don’t have to go around pleasing other people. You can be nice to them, you can be kind to them, but you don’t have to please them in the sense of doing whatever they want you to do. There …
- Look Around as You Follow the Trail… You learn about the processes by which the mind deceives itself into falling for states of becoming—because there’s a lot of deceit in the mind. The ignorance the Buddha talks about: Some of it is simple not knowing, and some of it is willful not knowing. So you have to tease things out, strand by strand by strand. But as long as …
- How to Feed Mindfulness… If this becomes a habit, it’s hard to develop mindfulness because you’re running up against these walls of forgetfulness that the mind very insistently wants to keep up. Your mindfulness runs up against them and gets deflected. This is why people in Thailand, before they meditate, sometimes make a vow: “I’m going to observe the five precepts. I’m going to …
- The Right Medicine… That’s when you become a real strong supporter of that particular medicine. That’s what keeps the Dhamma alive so that it’s not just a historical curiosity. It’s not just a game. It actually leads to seeing the end of suffering, when the Dhamma turns from study to practice and then on to attainment. That’s the life of the Dhamma …
- To Be Trustworthy… But if you learn how to let go, you become more trustworthy—because ultimately, that’s the big fear in life, or it should be the big fear in life: that you can’t trust yourself to behave in a skillful way. If everyone lived with that as their major fear, the world would be a much better place. So you need to understand …
- Immersed in the Body… taking this stance, maintaining this stance, being concentrated in the body, but concentrated with an expansive sense of ease so that it doesn’t become oppressive. Work at filling the body with your awareness so that if they were going to take a picture of your sense of self, of the mind’s sense of self, it would be like the image in the …
- Tenacity… Even if you don’t get all the way to the goal in this lifetime, at least you learn an awful lot about the mind and you become a lot more skillful in how you handle issues that arise, both inside and outside. The path is a good path to be on. It’s even better to get to the end. But even if …
- Equanimity on the Path… That’s how it becomes part of the path. It is a tool. All of the emotions, or all of the feeling tones, are tools in the middle way. Another misunderstanding that I’ve heard sometimes is that equanimity itself is the middle way between pleasure and pain. But actually the middle way employs all three types of feeling tones. What’s special is …
- Grief & Regret… When there’s grief there, you’ve identified your relationship as a huge part of you; the other person has become part of you. This is why it’s like a piece of your heart has been pulled out. So you have to remember that this is a big lesson in not-self. And how do you deal with it? The Buddha gives two …
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