Search results for: "Becoming"
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- The Essence of the Dhamma… As he said, if you want to become a noble one yourself, you have to follow their ways of doing things and not be concerned about the customs of the country you come from or your background. You have to be willing to remake yourself in line with the Dhamma, rather than trying to shape the Dhamma to fit your own ideas. The phrase …
- The Four Biases… Once the mind is settled down and solid, it allows your virtue to become more and more solid and reliable, too. And it’s not just an abstract thought. There’s a real visceral sense when your mindfulness fills the body, and you can allow the breath energy in the body to flow together and form a unified whole. There’s a sense that …
- Brahmaviharas & Noble Truths… They may be very quiet for a while, but if you provoke them, they can become quite strong. Sometimes, as the Buddha said, there’s so little wind that even the fringe of a thatched roof doesn’t move. There are other times when wind can blow whole houses down. The same with water, the same with fire. The world is full of potentials …
- Path & Goal… But it’s all a matter of settling in right here and asking yourself: “What feels really good? Which feels better?” You’re learning to become a connoisseur of your concentration, a connoisseur of your breath, a connoisseur of the potentials in the present moment. Then, as with any connoisseur, you can indulge your sense of what feels really good. There’s no objective …
- Heedfulness Is Auspicious… It just becomes one more instance of all the stupid things that all beings have done. When you think about the amount of suffering that’s gone on, it pulls you out of the particulars of the narrative. From that perspective, you can have some compassion for yourself and for all the other beings. And remember, in the Buddha’s case when he had …
- Big Desire, Detailed Focus… So it’s not an issue of trying to get out, it’s more an issue of trying to become more skillful, to stop this process by which we keep creating more and more suffering for ourselves. There’s nothing selfish about that. The more you get your mind trained, the less suffering you’re causing other people, the less pain you’re causing …
- It’s All in What You’re Doing… This all becomes part of your repertoire, part of your fund of useful memories. If you find that you’re having trouble settling down now, you can also ask yourself, “What useless things am I remembering right now?” Sort that out. Not all mindfulness is right mindfulness. There is such a thing as wrong mindfulness. So as you’re getting the mind to settle …
- A Complete Training… You become more and more a connoisseur of what really feels good inside, and how you should relate to the breath energies inside—or how you can learn how to recognize them to begin with. They’re there all the time. Most of us haven’t learned how to recognize them as such. When you realize your whole sense of feeling in the body …
- Time to Heal… So here’s a chance for your awareness to become all-around. You stay focused on the present moment, try to expand your awareness so that it fills the whole body. Think of the breath being all around you. You may notice that your awareness is focused in some areas but tends to block out other areas. Try to open up those blocked-out …
- The Heightened Mind… And also the mind becomes more impervious to the impact of things outside. One of the ways the Buddha says that you gain freedom, or at least respite from your own past bad karma, is by training the mind so that it’s not overcome by pain, not overcome by pleasure. When you’re working with the mind in concentration, you’re getting practice …
- Virtue Fosters Concentration… That, too, becomes a habit that you carry into the mind. If you learn how to be very careful about these things, very meticulous, that habit of being meticulous and thoughtful carries into the meditation. So these four areas of virtue—the precepts, restraint of the senses, purity of livelihood, and reflection on the requisites as you use them—create states of mind that …
- Delight & Beyond Delight… Then, as the path becomes more alluring, you can look back at the other habits you’ve had in the past and you’ll be more willing to see through their allure. The reason why we delight in them is because we don’t see anything better. But now you’ve got something better that you can focus on, that you can aim at …
- From Darkness to Light… The cause, as the Buddha said, is the three kinds of craving that lead to becoming. Those have to be abandoned. But here again, we run into trouble because a lot of things we crave are the things we hold on to. We actually develop our cravings, we elaborate on them. Sensual craving is probably the most elaborate. We like to sit around thinking …
- Investing Your Happiness… It becomes a lot less desperate. Of course there’s always the danger of complacency when you figure you can tap into the breath at any time, but if you can overcome that complacency, you begin to realize that this is an extremely useful state of mind — a very skillful way of approaching happiness, and a very skillful way of providing a foundation for …
- Duties… As they become skills, you find that they do a better and better job of uprooting the causes of whatever suffering you’ve been experiencing, and getting you past the suffering. They’re good tasks, good skills to develop. No one’s forcing you, aside from the fact that there’s suffering breathing down your neck all the time if you don’t. But …
- Purity Comes Through Discernment… They become your tools as you develop your powers of concentration. Otherwise, we can perceive things in ways that cause us a lot of anguish. Feelings rise up, and you grab hold of the pain, grab hold of the anguish, identify with it, so that your breathing and your directed thought and evaluation and your feelings and your perceptions are all contributing to suffering …
- Patience & Consistency… How could this ever become a large fire? It’s hopeless. But if you abandon it, you really will be hopeless. That little tiny spark will have no chance at all. But if you cup your hands around it, protect it from the wind, it’ll grow a bit, it’ll grow a bit, and then as you’re patient with it, it’s …
- Technique & Attitudes… The more still the mind becomes, the better you’re able to judge how your tactics are working. This is the test for everything as you meditate: How is it working? What kind of results are you getting? The more you get absorbed in the breath, then the less you consciously have to think about developing attitudes of goodwill or gratitude or respect, because …
- Analyzing Anger… Dispassion sounds like gray oatmeal, but it is the way to open up as we grow up, become more mature inside. There’s a greater sense of freedom in the mind. So this is how the breath meditation connects to learning to understand your mind, to understand the processes of fabrication, so that you can do something about your lust, your anger, your jealousy …
- Factors for Stream Entry… As the Buddha asked one time, “What are you becoming as day and nights fly past, fly past?” You want to listen to a Dhamma that would lead you to be able to give the Buddha a good answer to that question. Once you’ve learned the Dhamma, the next step is to figure out, “How do I use this to put an end …
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