Search results for: "Becoming"

  1. Page 94
  2. Tapping into the Breath
     … And you’ll find that the breath really does become soothing. This is especially useful when you have a disease of one kind or another. You can use the soothing breath to work through a lot of the tension that may build up around the pain or the organ that’s malfunctioning. In the cases where there’s unpleasant energy in some spot of … 
  3. 1. The Entertaining Breath
     … In this way, the hour of meditation becomes an exercise not in tying yourself down, but in opening yourself up, learning about cause and effect in the mind, because this is not just idle entertainment. Say, you send the breath down to the legs, down to the arms. If you learn about cause and effect, you’re headed in the right direction, because that … 
  4. Hold on to Right View
     … Sometimes this factor is missing or that factor is missing, but we try to put them together until they all eight become one. You might translate the term aṭṭhaṅgika, eight-factored or eightfold as “having eight parts”: When the parts finally get put together right, then the path takes you beyond your doubts about the principle of karma. It’s like putting together the … 
  5. Bring the Right Attitude
     … Focus on the breath, allow the breath be comfortable, and keep remembering word, “allow.” You can’t make the breath comfortable, but you can create conditions that let it become comfortable. Try to find the right amount of focus. You can focus on any part of the body where you have a sensation of the in-breath and a sensation of the out-breath … 
  6. A Safe Home
     … That way, the idea of acting on skillful intentions becomes more attractive, because an immediate sense of well-being comes with it. All too often, the choice in our mind is immediate gratification through acting on unskillful thoughts, or delayed gratification working on skillful ones. And if that’s the only choice, the skillful ones most often lose out. If the mind is hungry … 
  7. The End of the World
     … They were able to become the great ajaans we bow down to today. So have faith in what you’re doing and in the skills you’re developing here, because they can see you through, even when everything else starts collapsing and the mountains come moving in. And remember: The mind is not crushed by mountains. Your goodness is crushed only by your own … 
  8. Why Now
     … As the mind settles in, it can see itself a lot more clearly and become a lot more discerning about where it’s causing itself unnecessary suffering. And whatever the activity is that’s causing that suffering, it’s in a better position to let it go. So this is some of the work we do right now. We put the mind in good … 
  9. Single-minded
     … That way, the meditation, instead of being a battle against an enemy, becomes more a sense of having your safe spot, your secure spot, protecting it from all the forces inside and outside that would pull you or lure you away. So remember that image from Ajaan Lee, the white cloth that you can hold in your fist, all crumpled up—but don’t … 
  10. Afraid of Inner Pleasure
     … And sometimes you’ll be surprised at how strong the sense of well-being can become. If you’re too surprised, you get shocked and scared. So remember that there are outlets for the energy that can come with a sense of ease. In some cases, a tightness in the neck holds it in. Energy goes up into the head and doesn’t seem … 
  11. The View from the Mountaintop
     … We see this sort of thing all around us—and because we’re surrounded by it, it becomes normal. It’s good to hear the Dhamma to get a sense of true normalcy. As someone once said, one of the amazing things about human beings is that we know we’re going to die yet we act like we don’t know. And it … 
  12. Don’t Just Fatten Your Mind
     … In fact, the more you indulge in most pleasures, the weaker you become. When you get hooked on certain pleasures, you get really irritated when you can’t have them. Those are the pleasures that are really bad for you. Think about that experiment where they found the little pleasure center in the brains of mice. They put an electrode right into it, and … 
  13. Analysis of Qualities
     … We practice meditation to become more sensitive to exactly what the mind is doing, where it’s skillful, where it’s not, so that we can stop creating that suffering. Discernment, or wisdom, is pragmatic. We’re not here to discover great truths about the world outside. We’re here to understand why we’re causing suffering and how we can stop. It’s … 
  14. Mindfulness in the Driver’s Seat
     … That’s what becoming is: getting into a hindrance, getting into an emotion. You’ve got to realize that they’ll take you places you don’t want to go. So you basically say, “Okay, stop the car. I want to get out or change the direction we’re going in.” This is mindfulness in the driver’s seat, making sure you’re going … 
  15. Universal Truths
     … Which ways of focusing on the breath make the mind uncomfortable? Which make the breath uncomfortable? Which ways of focusing, which ways of thinking about the breath, which ways of labeling and understanding the breath help make it more comfortable, easier to stay here so that it does become your home? — so that no matter where you go, you have this home inside, this … 
  16. Values of the Noble Ones
     … The Buddha gives you tools for analyzing suffering into what he calls a state of “becoming.” That’s a world of experience and your identity in that world of experience, and these two things are centered on a desire. You can ask yourself, “What is it that I desire that keeps pulling me into this world?” Sometimes it’s the fact that you desire … 
  17. Admirable Friendship
     … The more you apply appropriate attention to your own experience, the more you become an admirable friend.
  18. Think of the Consequences
     … You protect your concentration and it’ll mature and ripen, becoming something you actually can rely on much better than using your preconceived notions to squeeze it in some direction or to paint it something else that it’s not. So, show some respect for your concentration. That’s a way of showing goodwill for yourself as well.
  19. Goodwill in Action
     … If you think of goodwill as lovingkindness and you’re there like the mother protecting her only child, as some people believe that passage in the Karaniya Metta Sutta says, it becomes pretty oppressive—and very inflated. How are you going to go running around protecting everybody the way a mother would protect her child? It’s hard enough to protect one child, much … 
  20. Take the One Seat
     … You need mindfulness to stitch together your moments of awareness, moments of attention, so that they become continuous. Mindfulness is the ability to remember you’ve got to stay with the breath. Alertness is what watches the breath. As you settle down with the breath, you notice there are a lot of other things right next to the breath: all the activities of the … 
  21. A Home for the Mind
     … focusing on their actions, trying to see where they were skillful, where they were not, learning from their mistakes, and holding on to that desire to become more and more skillful in every aspect of their behavior. You can maintain that as a steady goal only if the mind is well trained, if you’re mindful, alert, concentrated, discerning. These are the qualities that … 
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