Search results for: middle way

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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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  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. On Your Own Two Feet
     … So it’s not a Catch-22, it’s simply that these two faculties of the mind—the ability to watch things and observe and come to reliable conclusions; and your inventiveness in trying out different ways to experiment with the breath and the way you focus on the breath—go hand-in-hand. They develop together. After all, a lot of things are … 
  10. Undividing the Mind
     … As for the guild, which is the Ssangha, I was reading recently about Benvenuto Cellini and how he’d broken from the guild of goldsmiths in the late middle ages because he thought he was way more talented than everybody else. And he wanted to promote himself as the Michelangelo of gold. He did some amazing things, but in the course of his career … 
  11. Your Inner Ally
     … Sometimes he talks about the breath energy coming in right at the middle of the chest and going down through your intestines, and other times it’s the breath energy that comes in at the navel and goes up the front of the body. So the breath can flow in lots of different directions, and your perception, your mental image of the breath flowing … 
  12. Finding Your Own Balance
     … Watch and then test the way you read the experiment, to see if you really can trust it. Over time, your ability to read things will get better and better. Your sense of balance will get better and better. That’s why it’s called the middle way. The whole point of it is to find true balance. And as with any balance, the … 
  13. Seriously Happy
    The Pali word sukha can be translated in a lot of ways*.* Its range covers everything from simple ease and pleasure to happiness, well-being, and bliss. The whole purpose of the teaching is to find true happiness—in other words, to take your desire for happiness seriously. You have to ask yourself, are the ways you’re looking for happiness giving you true … 
  14. Chanting on Your Own
     … In that case it’s goodwill, and goodwill expresses itself in different ways—in this case, a wish for safety. One of the chants, the Ratana Sutta, has a story to go with it in the commentary: There was a plague in Vesālī, and the Buddha had Ven. Ananda go around the city chanting this sutta as a way of driving the plague out … 
  15. Admitting Mistakes
     … Even the Buddha himself made mistakes before his awakening, going down the wrong path many, many times in many different lifetimes before he discovered the Middle Way. It was through those points in his practice when he realized, “What I’ve been doing, sometimes for years, was a mistake,” and he was willing to look for other ways to do things: That’s what … 
  16. Intoxication
     … It develops a sense of samvega, a sense of dismay over the way life is everywhere for everybody who’s still intoxicated. It also gives you sense of confidence in the path, that this is the way out. The people who have followed this path seem trustworthy. The happiness that it offers seems special. It’s really something worth giving your life to. It … 
  17. Feelings Not of the Flesh
     … A good bathman preparing the dough would mix it in such a way that the entire ball of dough was moist, with no dry spots, but the water didn’t leak out. That means that you have to knead the water through the dough the same way that you’d knead water into bread dough. So there’s work to be done. This is … 
  18. Evaluation: The Voice of Heedfulness
     … What feels best? And what does the body need? If it’s tired, can you breathe in a way that’s energizing? If you’re tense, can you breathe in a way that’s more relaxing? If there are pains in the body, can you breathe in a way that’s soothing for the pains? This is something you have to evaluate for yourself … 
  19. Mange in the Mind
     … Like those old maps of the North American continent, the big white space is in the middle. They knew the coast, but they didn’t know the interior. That’s the way it is with most of us. We know the surface of our lives, but we don’t know what’s going on inside. When you’re meditating, this is what you want … 
  20. In Tune
    The word samaṇa, which we translate as contemplative, literally means someone in tune, someone in harmony—someone who tries to live in harmony with the way things really are. It’s by living in harmony that you can understand how things are: what causes what, what kinds of causes are proportional to what kinds of results, and looking for the best results. In other … 
  21. In Times of Danger and Fear
    A king once came to see the Buddha in the middle of the day, and the Buddha asked him, “What have you been up to?” The king was remarkably frank. He said “the typical things of people obsessed with power.” It’s hard to imagine politicians admitting that today. The Buddha asked him, “Suppose a reliable person came from the east and said there … 
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