Search results for: middle way

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  2. Priorities in Life
    One time, King Pasenadi came to see the Buddha in the middle of the day. You may know the story. The Buddha asked him, “Where are you coming from? What have you been doing?” And the king very frankly says, “All the sorts of things that someone who’s been made a king would do, someone who’s obsessed with gaining power and maintaining … 
  3. Ingenuity
     … If something’s not working, can you think up another way of applying the principles that would work? In other words, you don’t throw out the principles, but you explore them, you probe them, think them through. As Ajaan Lee once said, “The ways of the mind are so many there’s no way any book could ever contain them all”—and that … 
  4. Get Outside Yourself
     … If you get down a rabbit hole, this is the way to get out. It’s like that string in the story of the minotaur. The minotaur is in the middle of a maze. A guy goes into the maze and he leaves a string behind him so that he’ll know the way out. This is one of the most important things you … 
  5. Meaning & Becoming
     … But even then, we have to part ways. When we part ways, there’s a lot of sorrow. The tears you’ve shed over the loss of a mother, the Buddha said, are more than the water in the oceans. The tears you’ve shed over the loss of a father are more than the water of the oceans, and so on down with … 
  6. Think of the Consequences
     … You have to be willing to look at ways in which you’ve been dishonest with yourself—ways in which you’ve been lying to yourself, ways in which you’ve been careless, heedless—and not get knocked over by them. You need to have the strength inside to admit the truth of these things so that you can actually deal with them. Because … 
  7. The Path Is and Isn’t the Goal
    As you practice, there’s a way in which you have to think that the path is the goal, and there’s a way in which you have to think the path is not the goal. The path leads to the goal, so they’re two separate things. The way in which the path is the goal is that you have to pay full … 
  8. A Home for the Mind
     … From the skin all the way into the bones, it’s breath. You’re sitting here in the middle of it, allowing it to come in and go out like the waves at the edge of the ocean. There’ll be some variety. You notice with ocean waves that they don’t all come regularly; there’s an irregular rhythm to them. And the … 
  9. Control
     … I want my feelings to be like that,” and expect them to be that way. Simply telling them to do things doesn’t necessarily make them do it. You can tell the body not to grow old, but it doesn’t listen to you. If you gain a sense of peace in the concentration and you say, “I want this to last. I don … 
  10. Energy Channels
     … It may take a while for the energy to start coming back down, but you’ve got to be strategic in this way. Otherwise, it’s like getting out in the middle of freeway and telling all the cars to turn back. What happens? You get run over. But if you figure out a way to route them through a neighborhood, turning here, turning … 
  11. Stay
     … See what different kinds of breathing there are, and which ways of breathing have the best effect on the body, best effect on the mind. This gives you something to explore, something to get interested in, something to get intrigued about. Something as simple as the breath can have such an impact on your health, your body, the mood of the mind. And as … 
  12. Self-hatred
     … the ways you’ve gone about getting what you want in the past, some of which were less than honorable. You have to ask yourself, “Is that the only way you can get what you want?” I’ve told you the story of the middle-level manager at a tech company who was complaining about the fact that he wanted his underlings to do … 
  13. An Exercise in Freedom
     … He talks about the middle way, developing all the eight factors of the noble path from right view on through right concentration. Right view starts right in with the issue of suffering. There is stress, there is suffering, there is pain. He’s not saying life is suffering. He’s just saying simply that there is suffering. We can’t deny that. And from … 
  14. When Aging Closes In
     … You do it because this is the only way to escape the suffering that can come when aging and illness start closing in. When the results aren’t coming as fast as you’d like, you find ways of encouraging yourself. This is where the conviction comes in again. When the results do go well, you try to figure out ways of putting them … 
  15. Heedfulness
     … Often they had to go out of their way and face a lot of difficulties. For that they deserve your gratitude. If everything were predetermined, there’d be no need to be generous, because things would just happen on their own. You wouldn’t have to go out of your way to be generous. As for the people who helped you, they had to … 
  16. Bursting Bubbles
     … I’d be embarrassed to die in the middle of this thought or this concern or this worry, whatever.” It helps you step outside. Then you can develop the alternative potentials. You can breathe in a soothing way. You can remind yourself of topics that calm you down. And those potentials are always there. That’s what you’ve got to remember. We tend … 
  17. The Lightened Mind
     … You’re strict in your observance of the precepts but, at the same time, you observe them in such a way that you don’t grasp at them. In other words, you don’t develop any pride around them. And you practice them in a way that’s conducive to concentration. This requires skill, because a lot of people, when they’re strict about … 
  18. Stretch Your Mind
     … Work your way up through the torso, the neck, the head. Then with the arms, start with the fingers, up the arms to the shoulders. See if your mind is willing to settle down with the sensation of the body as it relaxes here into the present moment. If it is, fine. If it’s not willing to settle down, you have to ask … 
  19. Rhythms of the Mind
     … We’re not here to push our way through anything. We’re here to find the balance of the middle path, which is something very subtle. Again, it’s like the treatment of a disease. You need to learn how to balance your medicines, so that if some flushing needs to be done, you can compensate for it by strengthening the body, but at … 
  20. The Flowing Mind
     … The image the Buddha gives is, again, of a river flowing, and you’re creating an island in the middle of the river, an island above the flood, through your practice of mindfulness, being mindful in a way that leads to concentration. The flood can go by, but the island isn’t washed away. You can see these currents for what they are, but … 
  21. Strong Against Anger & Fear
     … There’s the way you breathe, there’s the way you talk to yourself, the images, the perceptions you hold in mind. You have to realize that you can breathe in different ways, you can talk to yourself in different ways, you can hold different perceptions in mind. I was listening to a “Dhamma talk” a while back where someone was saying that if … 
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