Search results for: "Becoming"

  1. Page 95
  2. Goodwill Plus
     … Your only responsibility is that you’re not going to act in a way that’s going to interfere with their becoming skillful or with their true well-being. That’s a good promise to make to yourself, and it’s a good promise to be able to hold to. But, as the Buddha pointed out many times, goodwill in and of itself will … 
  3. Freedom, Conditioned & Not
     … When you’re in the various levels of concentration, getting the mind deeper and deeper into absorption, the level of skill becomes more refined. You begin to notice that certain perceptions weigh on the mind; even the perceptions that keep you in concentration can be a weight. You learn to let those go. And you get deeper and deeper into concentration. As with any … 
  4. Appropriate Attention Always
     … As the Buddha said, this is where mindfulness becomes pure. These are things to develop in as many circumstances as you can muster. The Buddha’s giving us a framework to apply to every present moment so that we realize that in each moment, even though it has its unique features, it’s not the unique features that matter. It’s how things fit … 
  5. Dhamma Intelligence
     … How do you become more perceptive? You have to start out by being more alert, more mindful, more ardent in what you’re doing. And here the question of figuring things out is not one of figuring things out from first principles. You figure things out from what you’re trying to do. If it’s not getting the desired results, what are you … 
  6. A World Apart
     … These are precisely the skills you’re developing as you stay with the breath and work with the breath so that it becomes a good place to stay. So how does the breath feel right now? Does it feel like something you can stay with comfortably, or are you ill at ease and slipping off? Keep reminding yourself of how important it is to … 
  7. Appreciating Merit
     … After all, the possibility of becoming part of the Noble Sangha is open to everybody. So take advantage of this opportunity now.
  8. Tranquility & Insight with the Breath
     … When the Buddha describes the steps of breath meditation, he says that you become sensitive to bodily fabrication—that’s the breath; and mental fabrication—that’s perceptions and feelings. And the instructions themselves are a kind of verbal fabrication, where you talk to yourself and tell yourself how you’re going to breathe, what you’re going to focus on. The fact that … 
  9. Training Your Inner Teacher
     … That way, the Dhamma becomes something you actually do practice in accordance with the Dhamma. Because there’s nothing in the practice that says, “You do this only for a certain amount of time, and then you rest, and then you do it for another little bit of time, and then you rest.” The purpose is to do this as continuously as possible, because … 
  10. A Good Mood to Meditate
     … Otherwise, it becomes a vicious circle. The mind feels lousy in the body and so it churns out more lousy hormones, and it feels even worse. So it’s important to know how to cut the cycle. One way of doing that is realizing that it’s just this stuff in the body. It’s going to take a while for it to get … 
  11. At the Door of the Cage
     … He teaches us to get attached to more and more refined states of wellbeing in the mind, and to become disenchanted with everything else. It’s like climbing a ladder. To climb up the rungs of the ladder, you already have to be holding onto a higher rung before you can let go of a lower one. Finally when you get to the top … 
  12. Death Is Normal
     … Otherwise, your thoughts and emotions take over; you become their slave. But training the mind changes the balance of power inside. Now you’re in charge. You decide which thoughts you want to go with and which ones you don’t. When you find you made the wrong choice to begin with, you can jump right out. The breath is a safe place to … 
  13. The Importance of Being Truthful
     … Because only when you’re true in admitting that these other things going on in the mind will these other opportunities become apparent.
  14. Conserving Your Strength
     … To begin with, they’re less bombarded by your defilements; and two, it becomes a good example for them. Other people can see that it’s possible to live life without giving in to these things and still be happy. This is what comes down to. We’d like to have happiness in all areas of our lives, but it’s impossible. For one … 
  15. The Range of Our Responsibility
     … And the more you take advantage of it, the greater your freedom becomes—and the closer you get to uncovering the real freedom that lies deeper inside. So be very careful about how you choose to think and act and speak, because this is where you discover your freedoms. This is one of the reasons why the Buddha encourages us to think primarily about … 
  16. A True Person
     … It’s the kind of person you want to associate with, the kind of person whose habits you want to pick up, the kind of person you want to become. As he said, this sort of person has seven qualities. The first is one you can learn from books: dhammaññuta, having a sense of what the Dhamma is. Back in the time of the … 
  17. Identifying Weeds
     … Ultimately, they’ll get squeezed out by all the good plants, so that the mind becomes a really good place to stay.
  18. Free for the Time Being
     … Eventually, the state of mind that we’re developing right now for the time being will become more and more the normal state of your mind. It starts in bits and pieces like this. Ajaan Chah has the image of pouring a kettle of water. At first it’s tipped over a little bit, and so there’s a drop. And then there’s … 
  19. An Inside Job
     … This becomes your internal motivation, your internal compass, your internal gyroscope—all the instruments you need in order to keep it yourself on course, so that when things come up in the mind that are less than noble, you know how to say No and make the No stick. That, of course, means learning how to say Yes to some other things: Yes to … 
  20. Goodwill as Right View
     … This is basically wishing that they would become independent: May they look after themselves with ease. Or the passage where the Buddha has monks spread goodwill to snakes: not so the snakes will come around and hug the monks, but so that the snakes will go away and leave the monks alone, but with goodwill, realizing that we all have to go our separate … 
  21. The Lightness of the Concentrated Mind
     … And the mind can become very light. The reason we don’t experience lightness in our meditation is because we’re not willing to let go. We feel that we’re going to need some straw. So we keep that big load of straw on our backs. The purpose of the concentration is to put us in a position where we can let it … 
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