… And if you can’t do this with your
words and deeds, there’s *no way *you’re going to be able to do it
with the subtle movements of the mind. It’s in seeing cause and
effect—and particularly the difference between a skillful way of
speaking and an unskillful way of speaking, a skillful way of acting
and an unskillful way …
… 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 …
… Then you look out after me, and I’ll look out after you,
and that way, we’ll come down safely.” His assistant says, “No, that’s
not going to work. I have to look out after myself, you have to look
out after yourself. In other words, I have to maintain my balance, you
have to maintain your balance, and that way we …
… Or you can think of the breath
energy being centered in a line that goes down the middle of the front
of the body, radiating from there. It doesn’t have to be pulled at
all. As you breathe in, it radiates.
When you can do this, you find that it changes the way you relate to
the body. It’s a lot easier …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… the level of form as in the middle; to see the past as below, the future as above, and the present as in the middle. Then he taught them to look inside themselves—from the feet below, to the tips of the hair above, and all around in between.
Once they had contemplated in this way, they came to know clearly for themselves. This …
… 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 …
… But you’re not going to gain discernment that way. You gain discernment from making choices and then learning how to read them. It’s not the case that you’ll go immediately to total understanding of what’s the past karma you’re experiencing right now and what’s the present karma. You learn bit by bit.
Start by trying to get the …
… 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 …
… So in this
case, you want to see, when something’s arising that pulls the mind
in, what’s the allure? What do you think you’re gaining from thinking
in those ways? And then try to balance that with looking at the
drawbacks.
Sometimes it seems to be working in a very perverse way, when things
that you really don’t like about …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… One of the most effective ways of changing that balance of power is to be consciously aware of how you’re breathing and to consciously smooth out, sort through, untangle any patterns of tension that would come up with the emotion. That way you can reclaim the breath, you can reclaim the power of the breath, so that it’s on the side of …
… In the same way, I—by means of the divine eye, purified & surpassing the human—see beings passing away & re-appearing, and I discern how they are inferior & superior, beautiful & ugly, fortunate & unfortunate in accordance with their actions: ‘O, how these beings—who were endowed with good conduct of body, speech, & mind, who did not revile noble ones, who held right views and undertook …
… But for most of us, we’re not even walking on the
water in an unstable way. We’re getting washed away, along with all
the other debris in those rivers. The only really safe place is right
here on the island.
When you can stand here, the mind gains strength. And when the mind
has the strength from concentration, it doesn’t have …
… 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 …
… The way you breathe is very much affected by the states of your mind. When you’re worried, you breathe in a certain way. When you’re happy, you breathe in another way. When there’s anger, there’s still another way of breathing. If you keep at certain ways of breathing, it’s going to have an effect on other aspects of the …
We Are Not One | Noble & True
… 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 …
MN 130 Devadūta Sutta | The Deva Messengers
… In the same way, I—by means of the divine eye, purified & surpassing the human—see beings passing away & re-appearing, and I discern how they are inferior & superior, beautiful & ugly, fortunate & unfortunate in accordance with their actions: ‘O, how these beings—who were endowed with good conduct of body, speech, & mind, who did not revile noble ones, who held right views and undertook …
