Search results for: middle way
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- The Culture of the Practice… Sometimes it lands on this end, sometimes it lands on that end, sometimes it lands splat in the middle. Why? In the course of the second knowledge, he saw that it was because of the karma of beings. Stated simply: Those who acted on skillful intentions tended to go to good destinations. Those who acted on unskillful intentions tended to go to bad destinations …
- Skillful Selfing… Down the shoulders, down the arms, in the middle of the torso. What we’re trying to develop here is whole-body awareness. The sense of ease fills the body, your awareness fills the body, and in Ajaan Lee’s phrase, you “use the breath as the solvent to get the ease to spread throughout the body.” Then you try to maintain this. This …
- The Brahmaviharas on the Path… So when you think in these ways, holding these perceptions in mind, you can develop a more and more genuine feeling of goodwill, a feeling that’s not threatened by the fact that other people are going to continue to act in sometimes really outrageous and horrible ways. Because when you see them acting in horrible ways, you’ve got to have compassion for …
- Training Your Inner Critic… You can look at the Buddha’s teachings as advice on how to fabricate all these three kinds of fabrication in skillful ways. He even gives you instructions on how to breathe: Breathe in a way that makes you sensitive to rapture, sensitive to pleasure; breathe in a way where you’re aware of the whole body; breathe in a way where you gladden …
- Dhamma Medicine… In the same way when you practice, you’re the one who’s responsible. The Buddha tells you what works—what’s good for the mind, what’s bad for the mind—but it’s up to you to follow the instructions. The path he lays out is very similar to the three kinds of treatment you get when you go to, say, a …
- Eight Principles… impact on the breath—because that’s another way of adjusting the breath: simply changing your perception of it. Visualizing the body as a sponge is one perception that can be helpful in opening up the breath energy. Or as Ajaan Fuang once recommended, you can visualize a column of breath energy in the middle of the body, from the head on down. Then …
- Harmless & Clearheaded… Try long breathing, short breathing, or longer or shorter, or more middling, deeper or more shallow. heavy or light or faster or slower. There are lots of ways of experimenting with the breath, which not only makes it more comfortable but also makes it more interesting to sit here. Here it is, this energy in your body that keeps you alive. It has a …
- An Island in the Flood… You’re crossing a river and you get to an island in the middle of the river. The river has the potential to flood, but you’ve got an island that’s high enough, so that even when it floods, you’re not swept away. But it’s a way station on the way to the other side. What does it mean to practice …
- Asalha Puja… Think about and evaluate the breath so that there’s a sense of ease and well-being in the way you breathe. This is how you get the mind into concentration. Concentration is part of the path. When you practice the path, that’s called paying homage through the practice—patipatti-puja—the kind of homage the Buddha preferred. Tonight’s Asalha Puja. We …
- The Stages of Meditation… And then you move up to the next section, say, the solar plexus, and then the middle of the chest, the base of the throat, the head, down the back, out the legs. Starting again at the back of the neck, go down the shoulders and out the arms until you’ve covered the whole body. You can go through the body this way …
- Chopping Off Thoughts… So think of it relaxing and staying relaxed all way through. You have to be very watchful here. If your attention slips away, things will tense up again immediately if that’s your normal way of doing things. So you’re reeducating the body in how to breathe, and at the same time reeducating your mind, getting the mind to stay in the present …
- The Path of Adventure… We start somewhere in the middle. We come to the practice with some virtue, some concentration, some insight already. But we also come with a lot of other things that are not part of the path. They’re obstacles. Our virtue is not all around. Our concentration and insight are not all around. Sometimes there are little gaps, sometimes the gaps are enormous. So …
- The Dhamma Wheel… Because we’re thirsty in these ways, we feed off the things that we identify with, that we cling to. So the duty here is to abandon these three kinds of craving. Craving for sensuality is not so much craving for sensual pleasures as craving for the mind’s activity of fantasizing about pleasures. We engage in that a lot more than we do …
- Understanding Pain… It’s because the circulation isn’t going well in the back of the neck or in the middle of the back. This is why you start up there, at the top of the back, and think of the breath energy going all the way down the spine and out the leg. Wherever there’s tension that tends to tighten up in those areas …
- Setbacks… If you lack that conviction, then no matter what, you get stuck in someplace and think, “Well this is it! No way out.” And you give up. You’re lost. But if you’re convinced there must be a way out, that gives you the chance to find it. In that way, in spite of your setbacks, you learn. If you’ve been through …
- Right Inner Speech… Exactly how much renunciation is involved? Where is that Middle Way right now? That takes experience to see. You experiment and then see what results you get. Everybody wants to hear the quick and easy formula for figuring out how much is enough. Well, there is no quick and easy formula. You have to experiment; you have to be willing to try different approaches …
- Eyes in the Back of Your Head… This way makes it easier to develop that balance between the center and the full-body awareness. First you have to go through the body. Notice where the blockages are. But before you look at the blockages, first you’ve got to get at least one spot that feels good. Maintain that steady sense of fullness all the way through the in-breath, all …
Non-Reactive Judgment
… They can dress themselves up and disguise themselves in all kinds of ways. Laziness in particular can dress itself up like the Dhamma and say, “Well, the Buddha said for you to follow the middle way. It’s leads to a sense of ease, so the path itself should be easeful, too.” But then you think of all the paths you’ve encountered in …- A Sense of Yourself… When Ajaan Lee got back to Bangkok and started looking into how this might succeed, he found out there was a senior monk in Bangkok who stood in the way, saying that if he—the senior monk—was not involved in the project, it wasn’t going to succeed. Ajaan Lee knew that he didn’t have that many connections in the bureaucracy, so …
- Three Recollections… the fact that someone was able to find the way to the end of suffering and able to teach it to others. You can take heart in that. You can also reflect on the Dhamma. The Dhamma is available to all. And it teaches us a path that, as they say, is good in the beginning, good in the middle, good in the end …
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