… For instance, a pain in your knee may actually come from a lack of circulation in the middle of your back or in your face. When that’s the case, you have to let breath energy flow in the middle of the back or in the face if you want to prevent the pain in the knee. The relationships between circulation of breath energy …
… In the same way, there are different kinds of Dhamma—so you can choose to stay with whichever of the 40 types of meditation themes you like.
When you stay mixed up with your defilements, or like to run back and forth with your external concepts and perceptions, you’re no different from a person floating in a boat in the middle of a …
… Remember that famous passage where King Pasenadi comes to see the
Buddha in the middle of the day, and the Buddha asks him: “Where are
you coming from in the middle of the day?” The king is very frank,
unusually frank for a politician. He says, “I’ve been spending my time
obsessed with the things that people obsessed with power are usually
obsessed …
… It’s like lying on your back out in the middle of a big field. If you
look up in the sky and there’s nothing on the ground that you can
compare things to, you look at the clouds you don’t know what they’re
doing. Which clouds are staying still, which clouds are moving, you
can’t really tell, because there …
… As the
Buddha said, this road is good in the beginning, good in the middle,
good in the end. It’s good all along the way. It’s a good path to be
on.
So we can take encouragement from the people who’ve been on the path
ahead of us, and we want to give good examples to the people who come
behind …
… You’ll end up sinking in the middle of the sea.
The Buddha contemplated this fact, which is why he advised us to develop our goodness. On one level, developing goodness is involved with the way we use our material possessions. On another, it’s involved with the way we look after our actions, improving the way we use our physical body so that …
… Or like the spider in the middle of a web: The spider is in one spot, but it’s sensitive to the whole web. Try to maintain this sense of centered but broad awareness all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out. Maintain this quality of awareness as long and as steadily as you can. Try to master it …
… You dawdled through the
practice saying, “Well, I’ll put it off till tomorrow and I won’t push
myself too hard.”
As Ajaan Maha Boowa says, for many of us, the middle way is right in
the middle of the pillow.
So you don’t want that regret.
That’s one way of stirring up a sense of desire: realizing there are
dangers …
… But to what extent is that rhythm caused by things going on in the mind that you’re not fully aware of?
The best way to see that is to consciously change the way you think about the breath, to change the way you breathe, to go against what’s subconscious. That’s how you dig up some subconscious assumptions. There’s a resistance …
When the Buddha first described his path, he called it a middle way
between two extremes: indulgence in sensual pleasures on the one hand,
and self-affliction on the other. This has led a lot of people to
think that the path is kind of a neutral mind state, not all that
pleasant, but not all that painful. That’s not the case. An …
… what’s causing us to act in ways in the
present moment that are causing suffering now and on into the future.
After all, it’s our intentions that shape our life. Where do
intentions happen? They happen right here, right now. All too often,
they’re relegated down to the middle-level bureaucracy in the mind.
It’s as if you were the …
… In the same way, intelligent people who want the inner quality of dispassion have to take the discernment that comes from concentration and use it to evaluate sights, sounds, smells, tastes, etc., so that these things can serve a purpose and not do them any harm. Whoever eats an entire fish—bones, scales, fins, feces, and all—is sure to choke to death on …
… difficulty, in the same way, when the awareness-release through equanimity is thus developed, thus pursued, any deed done to a limited extent no longer remains there, no longer stays there.” — SN 42:8
§47. Think: Happy, at rest,
may all beings be happy at heart.
Whatever beings there may be,
weak or strong, without exception,
long, large,
middling, short,
subtle, blatant,
seen & unseen …
… In the same way, as we deal with our aggregates—form, feelings,
perceptions, thought fabrications, consciousness—there are unskillful
ways of trying to control them and there are skillful ways. You can
actually turn them into the path.
All five aggregates, for instance, are involved in concentration.
Form, of course, would be the breath. Think of the breath going
through the whole body. Feeling …
… The more consistently you can allow them just to be—all the way
through the in-breath, all the way through the out-—the more you find
a sense of rapture developing, a sense of ease, fullness, refreshment.
This is called developing your inner resources for the sake of
alertness, for the sake of mindfulness, concentration, and
discernment.
That’s one of our duties …
… Why don’t we each assume the form of a hundred women who have borne one child … a hundred women who have borne two children … a hundred middle-aged women … a hundred older women?” So Māra’s daughters—Craving, Discontent, & Passion—having each assumed the form of a hundred older women, went to the Blessed One and, on arrival, said to him, “We serve …
… The Buddha noted that neither extreme was effective in putting an end to suffering, so he found a pragmatic Middle Way between them: Right and wrong were determined by what actually did and didn’t work in putting an end to suffering. The public proof of this Middle Way was the Sangha that the Buddha built around it, in which people agreed to follow …
… Then Anāthapiṇḍika the householder left Sāvatthī in the middle of the day to see the Blessed One, but the thought then occurred to him, “Now is not the right time to see the Blessed One, for he is in seclusion. And it is not the right time to see the mind-developing monks, for they are in seclusion. What if I were to visit …
… You hope that they’ll act in a skillful way, again for
their sake as well as for yours. But you realize that your primary
responsibility is your actions, so you have to protect your goodwill.
There’s an image in the Canon of a mother protecting her child.
Sometimes it’s misinterpreted as saying you should protect all beings
in the same way …
… So one way that you can show goodwill to all beings and really help
them to be happy is to sit here and practice, to work on your mind.
Another way of expanding your awareness is to keep expanding it
through the body as you work with the breath energy in the body. You
get a sense of comfort from the way you breathe …
Feelings of Pain | The Karma of Mindfulness : The Buddha’s Teachings on Sati and Kamma
… For instance, a pain in your knee may actually come from a lack of circulation in the middle of your back or in your face. When that’s the case, you have to let breath energy flow in the middle of the back or in the face if you want to prevent the pain in the knee. The relationships between circulation of breath energy …
SN 4:25 Māradhītu Sutta | Māra’s Daughters
… Why don’t we each assume the form of a hundred women who have borne one child … a hundred women who have borne two children … a hundred middle-aged women … a hundred older women?” So Māra’s daughters—Craving, Discontent, & Passion—having each assumed the form of a hundred older women, went to the Blessed One and, on arrival, said to him, “We serve …
