Search results for: middle way
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- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- In TuneThe 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 …
- In Times of Danger and FearA 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 …
- Analyzing Suffering… You try to find the middle way, where you feed the body enough to get along. Keep it comfortable enough so that it can function. Find pleasure in the wilderness. Even Ven. Maha Kassapa has a long passage talking about the beauties of the wilderness, because it’s a conducive place to practice. He doesn’t go out there just to enjoy the wilderness …
- The Sport of Wise People… Instead of focusing in the middle of the body, start out on the periphery and then move in. See what that does. In this way, you become a wise person whose sport is jhana. You’re not the old person you were whose sport was indulging in different kinds of fantasies and finding your entertainment that way. Even though you’re engaged in restraint …
- Self-esteem… But most of us don’t use it that way. We find other ways of using it and we can get eaten up by the way we compare ourselves with other people. And so, as with any defilement, the best way to look at this is to see: What do you gain by making those comparisons? There may be a little sense of satisfaction …
- Here Be Tigers… What are you doing? Why are you doing it? And is there an alternative, a way of thinking and a way of going through the world that does not add unnecessary suffering? Those are the big questions the Buddha has you ask, because otherwise, if you can’t solve this problem inside, then everything else in the world is going to be a problem …
- Sensitive to Stress… It’s shaped by the way you breathe, shaped by the way you talk to yourself, shaped by your perceptions and feelings. There’s a karma, there’s an intention that keeps the present moment going, and there’s a subtle stress that goes along with that. Eventually, you want to get to see that too, but you have to see it as something …
In Simple Terms
In Simple Terms: 108 Dhamma Similes
… Then it would go back and hold on, quiet in the middle of the web where no one could see it, every time. Seeing the spider act in this way, I came to an understanding. The six sense spheres are the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind. The mind stays in the middle. The eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body are spread out …- An Auspicious Day… the ways in which feelings in the body influence the mind, and the ways the acts of the mind have an impact on the body. Try to filter them through the breath. The breath here can be long or short. It’s good to start with long breathing for a while to energize the body. You’re going to be calming it down, and …
- Right Here, Right Now… You have a little fragment here, a little fragment there and it’s like archaeologists coming across a site where only fragments remain and they’re just trying to piece them together, filling in the big blank spaces in the middle. But what is that filler if not just ignorance dressed up as knowledge? This is the way most of our knowledge is. We …
Shoulds & Desires
… Simply by the way you think, you can create a good energy. You can create something that’s a gift to others. Of course, you benefit. If you have goodwill for all beings, you’re very unlikely to do unskillful things. You’re very unlikely to harm them. In that way, you protect yourself. So this is a basic pattern of the path: Instead …- Not-self in Context… Then the Buddha says, there is this middle way that is noble and does lead to awakening. So the Buddha set the five brethren onto the noble path before saying anything about not-self at all. First, he got them to develop their actions. As we know from other suttas, the eightfold path is a path of action that leads to the end of …
- Attached to Concentration… He was always coming up with new ways of conceiving the breath. And Ajaan Fuang would talk about other ways of conceiving the breath, too. One was to imagine a line of energy running down the middle of your body, and the breath comes in and out of that line of energy. You try to keep that line of energy stoked. In other words …
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