… 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 …
… So it’s pretty amazing that the body works, because each little cell in there is programmed to behave sometimes in a social way and sometimes in an antisocial way. It’s good to think about the body like this so that we don’t get heedless.
That’s a lot of what the body contemplation is for: to counteract our heedlessness. To begin …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… This is why it’s called the middle way: the Dhamma always appropriate for curing every sort of defilement to the point where defilement no longer remains.
This is how you should understand the power of the middle way. Hold to this path in your practice, because release from suffering and stress is something with a value transcending all three levels of becoming. And …
… It’s in this way that you learn how to use your perceptions—and how to change your perceptions so that they actually are conducive to settling down.
As you work with the breath in this way, you’ll find that there are lots of different levels. It’s like the water table at Wat Asokaram. They dug their wells in a very unlikely …
… Find some way to psych yourself up for this.
And one of the ways to do that, of course, is to think about the fact that the Buddha really was an admirable human being and there are so few admirable people in this world. You should treasure those who are. Think of the passage we chanted just now: “The Buddha is immeasurable.” The qualities …
… 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 …
… Even though the present moment
may not be all that good, you can’t let that get in the way. In fact,
that’s a lot of what it means to dig down into the present moment:
getting past the things that are not good, and finding what potentials
you have there that really are worthwhile.
Think of the breath—who would have thought …
… This way isn’t the path; that way isn’t the path—so we take the middle as our constant preoccupation.
If we can gain release from pleasure and pain, this will appear as the path. Our mind will step into it and know, but it can’t yet go all the way. So it withdraws to continue practicing.
When pleasure arises and we …
… It’s a good way to get out of your head and down into the body. Give yourself a good comfortable place to stay and be aware of the breath coming in, aware of the breath going out. Notice how the breathing feels in different parts of the body, because the breathing is a whole-body process. If it’s not a whole-body …
… But there is a middle way between intending and telling yourself not to intend, and that’s the escape. What allows for the escape is dispassion. It’s the point where you lose interest in this mud house, and you make it unfit for play. In other words, you take the mind to where it’s not going to build mud houses anymore.
You …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… Part of the middle way that he ultimately formulated was the set of principles expressed in MN 101:
You don’t load yourself down unnecessarily with pain.
You don’t reject pleasures that are in accord with the Dhamma.
You’re careful not to be infatuated with those pleasures.
But you’re willing to endure pain when you find that pursuing even seemingly innocent …
… My father accompanied me as far as the middle of a field. There, when we had said our goodbyes, we parted ways.
That day I walked, passing the town of Muang Saam Sib, all the way to Ubon. On my arrival, I was told that Ajaan Mun was staying at the village of Kut Laad, a little over ten kilometers outside the city. Again …
… 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 …
The Work of a Contemplative | Things as They Are : A Collection of Talks on the Training of the Mind
… This is why it’s called the middle way: the Dhamma always appropriate for curing every sort of defilement to the point where defilement no longer remains. This is how you should understand the power of the middle way. Hold to this path in your practice, because release from suffering and stress is something with a value transcending all three levels of becoming. And …
