Search results for: middle way

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  2. A Good-Natured Attitude
     … We have to remember that this is a middle way. If it were a way of extremes, it would be very easy. You’d just push, push, push to the extreme and break through. But to find the point of just right requires that you act and then you reflect on your actions. Step back a bit. That’s what humor is all about … 
  3. The Dhamma Without Price
     … These are blameless ways of looking for happiness. And the Sangha is designed in such a way as to facilitate that. So as monks we should practice in a way to make ourselves worthy of people’s gifts. We do that by focusing on our practice, training the mind in an institution that places the training of the mind as its bottom line. As … 
  4. One Person
     … For a lot of people, it’s right in the middle of the chest or down at the tip of the sternum. Someplace in that central corridor of the body, you may call it, there’s a really sensitive spot. Try to breathe in a way that feels really good there. You can think of the breath energy coming in from the front; you … 
  5. Truths Noble in the Heart
     … Where is the stress? What are you doing that’s putting extra stress on to the mind? And what could you do to stop that and put an end to that stress? You have to examine all the various issues in your life that you’re concerned about, and you have to peel away the other ones that get in the way of this … 
  6. Book search result icon Noble & True We Are Not One
     … Because each of us is trapped in the system of interconnectedness by our own actions, only we, as individuals, can break out by acting in increasingly skillful ways. The Buddha and members of the noble Saṅgha can show us the way, but actual skillfulness is something we have to develop on our own. If they find us trying to sleep in the middle of … 
  7. Ideals
     … He had to go back and question those presuppositions, think in a new way, think outside the box. That’s what the Middle Way was—thinking outside the box. He’d fallen in with a group of people who saw the world as having only two alternatives: sensory indulgence and self-torture. Self-torture was more noble, they thought. But he discovered that, No … 
  8. Right Speech, Inside & Out
     … One thought leads to another, leads to another, and you end up who knows where in the middle of Siberia. Other times, when the mind is settling down, there’s a part of the mind that’s afraid of concentration so it tries to break things up. That’s divisive speech. Harsh speech, of course, is when you tell yourself you’re a miserable … 
  9. Worldly Dhammas
     … What’s even better is if you can maintain that perspective even when you’re in the middle of the game. This is what meditation does. It gets you in touch with a different level of reality. It’s like tuning your radio to a different station. The breath that’s the energy flow in the body: What does it know of gain? What … 
  10. A Good Narrative
     … This feeling gives rise to a sense of urgency, but it can become a sense of hopelessness if it’s not balanced by the sense that there is a way out. Once you sense there is a way out and it’s something that you can actually do, that calms the lake, and once the lake is calm, it grows clear. There’s a … 
  11. Book search result icon Sublime Determinations Thursday — Goodwill
     … Now, this doesn’t mean that you go out of your way to help other people when they abuse your help. Remember, one of the best ways to help others is to get them to act wisely. If you can’t do that, maybe it’s time to go your separate ways, wishing the other person well, but staying out of each other’s … 
  12. A Post for the Heart
     … And as they say with climate change, it’s not just that things are gradually warming up in every way. The weather goes through wild swings—extreme hot, extreme cold, floods, droughts—and that’s the way it is with human life. There are a lot of wild swings back and forth. But we want to be in the middle of the swings without … 
  13. Meditation as Play
     … What kind of breathing would gladden your mind right now? What way would be fun to breathe? Can you think of breathing in and out through the palms of your hands, the soles of your feet, through the base of your spine? What way of perceiving the breath would make it more interesting right now and have a good effect? Think of someone learning … 
  14. The Best Use of Your Time
     … You can breathe in any way. You can breathe long in, long out; short in, short out; long in, short out; short in, long out; heavy or light; fast or slow; deep or shallow—any way that feels good right now. That’s the carrot that pulls you in to the present moment, realizing that simply paying good attention to the way you breathe … 
  15. Protection
     … One way of cutting off those little Velcro hooks is to keep reminding yourself: Where’s the stress right now? The things that you latch on to as being especially true or especially real: You have to remind yourself, are they really so real? Are they really that true? You can think in terms of their inconstancy, their stressfulness, the fact that they’re … 
  16. Responsible Conviction
     … Finally, he comes across a big bull elephant in the middle of a clearing. That’s when he knows for sure he’s got the elephant he wants. In the same way, as we practice virtue, we practice concentration, even the psychic powers that come with concentration: Those count as footprints and scratch marks. They’re promising, but they don’t prove things yet … 
  17. Pitching Your Tent in the Present
     … In other words, breathe in a way that helps to dissolve the tension around the pains. As for any pains that don’t go away that way, well, you just focus your attention in some other part of the body. There’s got to be some place in the body that you can make comfortable with the way you breathe. Then it’s simply … 
  18. What’s Real
     … The suffering we create for ourselves is real, and the way we create it is real. Even though we may be operating under illusions, the suffering we create from our illusions is real. And the way we can solve that problem is also real. There’s a passage in the Canon where one of the Buddha’s disciples, Ven. Gavampati, reports that he heard … 
  19. Book search result icon Noble Warrior Spreading the Dhamma
     … Avoiding both of these extremes, the middle way realized by the Tathāgata—producing vision, producing knowledge—leads to calm, to direct knowledge, to self-awakening, to unbinding. “And what is the middle way realized by the Tathāgata 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 … 
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  20. A Refuge in Mindfulness
     … can be ardent, alert, and mindful all at once—in that way, you provide yourself with a safe haven. It’s the little world you inhabit inside as you fend off the world outside. As the Buddha said, when you have this refuge inside, it’s like having an island in the middle of a flood, or like having a lamp in a dark … 
  21. Timeless
    King Pasenadi once came to see the Buddha in the middle of the day, and the Buddha asked him, “What have you been up to today?” And in a remarkable display of candor, the king said, “Oh, the typical things of someone who’s obsessed with power, consumed with the desire for more power.” The Buddha asked him, “Suppose a reliable person were to … 
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