… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… is why, as the Buddha said, if you were to make a
comparison with the way beings are born, it’s like throwing a stick up
in the air: Sometimes it lands on this end, sometimes it lands on that
end, sometimes it comes down smack in the middle. In other words,
there’s no progress, there’s no purpose. It’s just wherever …
… Sometimes it
would land on this end, sometimes it would land on that end, sometimes
splat in the middle. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason.
Then he had the second vision of the night in which he posed the
question, “What is it that determines these ups and downs, the this
end or that end or the splat in the middle?” He …
… 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 …
… But holding that perception allows
you to work with the energy in the body in ways you might not have
been able to do if you had other perceptions.
You can think of the breath energy coming in. Ajaan Fuang would often
talk about there being kind of a line running down through the body,
from the middle of the head, down through the …
… Where are you focused in the body? Is your focus the right place to be focused right now? There are lots of places where you could be focused in the body—the tip of the nose, the middle of the forehead, in your palate, in the middle of the head, in your throat, your chest, your abdomen. If you find that focusing up in …
Educating Compassion
If you have any friends or family members who are sick or dying, I know of no one who would tell you to treat them in a hardhearted way. Everyone would agree that you should be as compassionate as you can. The problem is that there’s little agreement on how compassion translates into specific actions. For some people, compassion means extending …
… How
does it feel as you breathe in? How does it feel as you breathe out?
What kind of breathing feels good in that part of the body?
You can move up to the solar plexus, the middle of the chest, the base
of the throat, the middle of the head. And then, focusing on the back
of the neck: Think of the breath …
… You hop on a train of thought and find yourself in Burma, England, in the middle of Russia, up to the North Pole, down to the South Pole, out to Mars and Saturn, with brief stops along the way when you’re feeling hungry, tired, or hot.
It’s back-and-forth all over the place. And when our thoughts are totally out of …
… Avoiding both of these extremes, the middle way realized by the Tathagata—producing vision, producing knowledge—leads to calm, to direct knowledge, to self-awakening, to unbinding.
“And what is the middle way realized by the Tathagata that—producing vision, producing knowledge—leads to calm, to direct knowledge, to self-awakening, to unbinding? Precisely this noble eightfold path: right view, right resolve, right speech …
… What was the path was the middle way,
starting with understanding the truths about suffering, its cause, its
cessation, and the path to its cessation. The reason it’s called a
wheel is because each of those truths has a duty, and then there’s the
stage of having completed the duty, so you have three stages
altogether: One is understanding what the truth …
… In his first talk, the Buddha introduced this path of practice as the Middle Way because it avoids two extremes: (1) indulgence in the pleasures of sensuality, and (2) devotion to the pain of self-torment. Yet this does not mean that the path pursues a course of middling pleasures and pains. Instead, it fosters the pleasures of concentration, along with insight into the …
… the middle of the head, the palate, the base of the throat, the middle the chest, just above the navel—-because they tend to be trigger points. Once a trigger point has been engaged, everything else seems to seize up as well. If you keep the trigger point relaxed, open, at ease, then the other physical reactions don’t happen. That way your body …
Food for the Mind | Food for Thought: Eighteen Talks on the Training of the Heart
… 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 …
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 …
