… Once you’ve got a good way of breathing that maintains a good sense of
fullness in at least one spot in the body, in one of the centers—in
the middle of the chest, the base of the throat, the roof of the
mouth, the nose—try to expand that sense of well-being because you’re
going to be trying to inhabit …
… tip of the nose, the base of the throat, the middle
of the chest, just above the navel—anyplace where you can clearly
notice now the breath is coming in, now it’s going out. You breathe
with a sense of refreshment.
We’re trying to master this skill because it opens the way to other
skills as well. As the Buddha says, you …
… They say, “Do a moderate amount of practice”—which is the middle way of the defilements. They say, “Well, do it a little bit but don’t take it too seriously.”
So the practice is always going to be countercultural. This is why, as Ajaan Mun said, you have to replace the culture you were raised in with the culture of the noble ones …
… Messages get sent up through the bureaucracy
and some of them get blocked, say, at middle-level management. Others
make their way all the way through to the president of the
corporation. But when they get blocked half-way up, you have to
wonder: “Is there a good reason for blocking them, or is there a bad
reason for blocking them?”
If you’re …
… It’s like the watering hole in the middle of a desert or savannah. If you want to see what’s living in the savannah, go to the watering hole, for all the animals have to go there in the course of the day. So watch there at the pain, at the suffering, to see what else comes around. See what arises together with …
… That way, it gives rise to a sense of pleasure and
rapture. That’s the food.
Because as we’re practicing, there are lots of things we have to give
up. Like right now, you’re taking the eight precepts. Ways in which
the mind used to go looking for food outside are suddenly cut off. But
you’ve got better food inside, to …
… You try to create that well-being by focusing on the breath, by
adjusting the way you breathe, by adjusting your perceptions of the
breath, and adjusting the ways you talk to yourself about the breath.
You can try different rhythms of breathing. You can try different
images in the mind of how the breath comes into the body, how it goes
out, and …
… So, just as the Buddha’s path to the end of suffering follows a middle way in general, his teachings on the practice of right concentration teach a middle way, too. Of course, the middle here is not simply a matter of finding a halfway point between two extremes. It requires that you be sensitive to where you are in the practice and to …
… How can I inflict on others what is displeasing & disagreeable to me?’ Reflecting in this way, he himself refrains from taking life, he gets others to refrain from taking life, and he speaks in praise of refraining from taking life. In this way, his bodily behavior is pure in three ways.1
“Further, he reflects thus: ‘If someone, by way of theft, were to …
… Think about the way he taught body contemplation. It’s good for you while you’re alive, and it’s good to keep in mind when you die. It’s a good practice to have done when the mind is trying to figure out where to go. While you’re alive, it’s good for dealing with lust or with any sense of pride …
… The Teacher’s Dhamma, like a lamp,
divided into Path, Fruition, & the Deathless,
both transcendent (itself) & showing the way to that goal:
I revere that Dhamma with devotion.
Saṅgho sukhettābhyatikhetta-saññito,
Yo diṭṭha-santo sugatānubodhako,
Lolappahīno ariyo sumedhaso:
Vandāmi saṅghaṁ aham-ādarena taṁ.
The Saṅgha, called a field better than the best,
who have seen peace, awakening after the one gone the good way …
… There had to be another way. And so he kept
looking for another way—and then he finally came across the middle
way.
Notice here that courage doesn’t necessarily mean stubbornness. It
means facing down difficulties, not letting yourself get waylaid, not
letting yourself get discouraged by those difficulties. When the
Buddha met up with pain, it took a lot of courage to …
… You see that you have a habitual way of thinking about the world, a
habitual way of thinking about yourself, a habitual way of looking for
pleasure in sensuality, and that reduces everything to kamma. And
there are better habits—the habits of the noble eightfold path, which
are things you do. You develop the habits of right action, right
speech, right livelihood, the …
… You hear so many times, “Focus your attention on one spot.” Yet here’s another way of doing it—two spots. You also might look at how you conceive of the focusing, because our notion of focusing is affected so much by the way our eyes work. One of the ways we gain a sense of the three-dimensionality of space around us is …
… Years back there was a movie called The Devils, about a priest and a nun in the Middle Ages. In the first scene, the nun’s walking around with her head off to one side at a 90-degree angle because she’s so warped from not having given herself over to natural desires. You could tell where the movie was going, so I …
… Yet you
can look at the rest of the world and try to straighten out the rest
of the world as much as you like, but, one, the world refuses to be
straightened out in a lot of ways; and two, you can develop a lot of
unskillful qualities that way. So you’ve got to turn around and look
at yourself.
Some people …
… One of the other ways we suffer is, once we’ve got an
identity of that sort, we don’t like it. We want to destroy it or see
it destroyed. So we go back and forth, dropping one identity, taking
on another, not liking that, trying another, trying another. The
Buddha says, one of the ways to get out of this dilemma is …
… There was a period when he
actually thought the best way to find true well-being was to deny
yourself all kinds of pleasures He finally realized, however, that
that’s not the way. And he found the middle way because he was able to
realize there was more to life than just pain and sensual pleasure.
There were other kinds of pleasure, other …
… But then you remind yourself that the Buddha found a way
out that’s not just a sour-grapes way out. He says that there is an
ultimate happiness that we can find through our own efforts. And,
fortunately, there’s nobody to prevent us from trying to find it.
Nobody in the cosmos has a bigger plan, saying, “This is where you’ve …
… This is why a lot of people who say they have no sense of self as they practice, try to practice in a way that’s stress-free, confrontation-free. They don’t press themselves too hard. They say, “This is the middle path.” But remember the Buddha’s analogy for the path is victory: The practice is a battle, or the practice is …
Generating Desire | Bases of Success : Six Dhamma Talks on the Iddhipādas
… They say, “Do a moderate amount of practice”—which is the middle way of the defilements. They say, “Well, do it a little bit but don’t take it too seriously.” So the practice is always going to be countercultural. This is why, as Ajaan Mun said, you have to replace the culture you were raised in with the culture of the noble ones …
SN 55:7 Veḷudvāreyya Sutta | The People of Bamboo Gate
… How can I inflict on others what is displeasing & disagreeable to me?’ Reflecting in this way, he himself refrains from taking life, he gets others to refrain from taking life, and he speaks in praise of refraining from taking life. In this way, his bodily behavior is pure in three ways.1 “Further, he reflects thus: ‘If someone, by way of theft, were to …
