Search results for: past karma
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- Perceptions & Potentials… Your mind is actively shaping your experience out of the raw material that comes from your past karma. Sometimes the raw material is good; sometimes it’s not so good. But if you can develop skill in the present moment, you can make good things of whatever is coming in. It’s like a good carpenter who can make something good out of scraps …
- A Mind Like Earth… You may have some karma coming in from the past that’s going to make it necessary for you to wait for a while before the results you really want are going to show up. But you have the choice right now to start working in the right direction and you want to stick with that choice. You’re being patient and equanimous, not …
- Skills for Dying Well… These choices will depend on your past karma but they’ll also depend upon your attitude—and this is where the question of your character comes in, the character you develop as you mediate. There are three qualities that the Buddha talks about as the ones that led to his awakening. They’re the same three qualities that are often mentioned with regard to …
- Prepare to Die… You can start thinking about things that you did in the past, where you harmed other people, and there’s always that uncertainty. I’ve noticed that when people hear the teaching on karma for the first time, that’s the first thing they think about: “Oh my gosh, I’ve got all these horrible I did in the past. You mean I can …
- Focus on Your Skill… past, and ask, “What was I? Did I exist? Did I not exist? If I did exist, what was I? How was I?” those are questions of inappropriate attention. Similarly with questions of the future: “Will I exist? Will I not exist? What will I be?” A lot of people, reading this passage, have asked, “But wasn’t that what the belief in karma …
- The Wisdom of Equanimity… Now, if there are things you can’t change in the present moment, you chalk that up to your past karma. Tell yourself, “Okay, this is an area that I have to work around.” And a lot of the wisdom lies in figuring out which is which: Which are the things you can change? Which are the things you can’t change? Of course …
- Acceptance & Equanimity… One useful strategy is to think of it just going right past you. They may have aimed at you, but you’re not there to be aimed at. You step aside a bit, watch it go past. Realize it’s their karma, their intention. You don’t have to take it in. Then there’s the reflection that Ven. Sāriputta recommended, which is that …
- The Challenge of Faith… fate, or your own past actions, that these totally control what you are going to experience now. And he says if you hold to any of those beliefs, the idea of a path of practice for finding true happiness means nothing. And it’s strange that over the centuries, even within Buddhist circles, the Buddha’s teachings on karma had been taken to be …
- Listening to the Practice… This falls in line with the teachings on karma. Part of the situation you’re meeting up with in the present is something that comes from the past. Part of it is the result of what you’re doing now. Sometimes you can’t do much about what comes in from the past, but you can make a difference in terms of what you …
- Body as Path… pleasures you’ve got from the body in the past: Where are they now? All you have is a memory of them, and the memory is a very pale imitation. It’s not much. Sometimes it’s even worse, if you did unskillful things to get those pleasures. You’re stuck with the karma, but the pleasure is gone, and the memory of the …
- Furnishing Your Home for the Mind… We have to live with the fact that there are limitations on what we can do and on how many people we can actually help—or when we can help them—based on our karma, their karma. You have to develop equanimity for the areas you can’t change, so that you can focus your efforts on areas where you can be of benefit …
- Think Your Way to Stillness… How do all beings live? They live in line with their karma. That’s why we have the thoughts about equanimity there at the end, to remind ourselves that even though we would like to have everybody happy, it’s still not going to happen just through our wish. It’s not something we can do for everybody. But there is something we can …
The Paradox of Becoming
Introduction
… This is how some adhere. “And how do some slip right past? Some, feeling horrified, humiliated, & disgusted with that very becoming, delight in non-becoming: ‘When this self, at the break-up of the body, after death, perishes & is destroyed, and does not exist after death, that is peaceful, that is exquisite, that is sufficiency!’ This is how some slip right past. “And how …- Skill… You’ve got those raw materials coming in from past karma, and you’ve got your present intentions along with the results of your present intentions. That’s what the present moment is. As we’re meditating, we’re learning how to read all that. And to read that, you’ve got to keep this point in mind: These are your raw materials. You …
- Your Duty Lies Right Here… The excrement stood for the results of all the good karma he’d done in the past: all the wealth and other good things that were going to come his way. But he had trained his mind not to be soiled by it. That’s the only kind of person you can really trust. Otherwise, you get covered with shit. It seemed good when …
- Is the Buddha’s Wisdom Selfish?… In other words, you respect the fact that they have their own karma. They’re agents. They have freedom of choice. And it’s because of their own actions, either externally or internally, that they’re going to be happy or to suffer. So if you’re the type of person who doesn’t observe the precepts but tries to get others to observe …
- Gather Around the Breath… Even though you’re trying to develop this sense of being gathered together around one thing, other vagrant notions will come through the mind—which are part of your past karma. The question is: “Are you going to go with them or not?” If you’re really solidly with the breath, you’ll realize you don’t have to go. But before you get …
- Stop Weaving… Any bad karma that comes your way, let it stop right there. There’s a Thai expression: “to continue weaving something.” In other words, you’ve got a basket that’s half finished, and you just continue weaving it, making it into a bigger basket. The problem is a lot of the times it’s a bad basket to begin with, yet you feel …
- The Mind’s Ostinato… Try to center everything you know around the principal of karma. What are you doing, and is it skillful or not? When you can think in these terms, it’s a lot easier to let go of the things you’ve created in the past. Look at how the Buddha has you deal with clingings: We tend to cling to sensuality, cling to habits …
- Disconnecting… We think that interconnectedness is a good thing, but think of all the sorrow that the Buddha saw as he reflected on his many past lives in that first watch of the night: Birth, aging, death. Pleasure, pain, death. Eating this, eating that, death. Over and over and over again. When you think about all the different relationships you’ve had through the vast …
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