… Or like the spider in the middle of a web: The spider is in one spot, but it’s sensitive to the whole web. Try to maintain this sense of centered but broad awareness all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out. Maintain this quality of awareness as long and as steadily as you can. Try to master it …
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 …
… 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 …
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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… Phenomenon; event; the way things are in and of themselves; the basic principles that underlie their behavior. Also, principles of behavior that human beings ought to follow so as to fit in with the right natural order of things; qualities of mind they should develop so as to realize the inherent quality of the mind in and of itself. By extension, ‘Dhamma’ is used …
… 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 …
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 …
… In the same way, a pure mind—even if we can make it pure for only a little while—can give results way in excess of its size. People who are really intent on purifying the mind may even lift themselves over and beyond the world.
So we’re taught that people whose minds aren’t pure—regardless of whether they’ve given donations …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… So the middle course here is to stick with the breath. Remember that the pleasure is created by the flow of the breath, the stillness of the mind, working together. Both of these conditions depend on the focus of your mind on the breath, alert and mindful. You don’t want to drop your alertness; you don’t want to drop your mindfulness, because …
… 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 …
… 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 …
Introduction | The Karma of Mindfulness : The Buddha’s Teachings on Sati and Kamma
… Or like the spider in the middle of a web: The spider is in one spot, but it’s sensitive to the whole web. Try to maintain this sense of centered but broad awareness all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out. Maintain this quality of awareness as long and as steadily as you can. Try to master it …
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 …
