Search results for: "Becoming"

  1. Page 96
  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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.
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. Appreciating Merit
     … After all, the possibility of becoming part of the Noble Sangha is open to everybody. So take advantage of this opportunity now.
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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