… But remember, the Buddha has us focus on ways of breathing that make
us sensitive to how the mind fabricates its experience through its
perceptions, through its feelings, and even—in the way the
instructions for breath meditation are given—through the way you talk
to yourself. The act of becoming sensitized to these things is what’s
really going to make a difference …
… We have to
recognize that our practice tries to find a middle way between those
mental extremes.
For many people, the issue is, “Should I learn to accept myself or
should I reject myself?” And the psychologists would say, “Learn to
accept yourself.” Well, acceptance and rejection of yourself are two
extremes. We need to recognize them as extremes and start looking at
behavior …
… Right effort doesn’t mean middling effort all the time, you know. What makes the effort right is that it’s skillful, appropriate for right here, right now—and you’re up for the challenge.
In the Buddha’s description of right effort, you’re told to generate desire. And one of the best ways of generating desire is to learn how to enjoy …
… Sometimes it falls splat in the middle, without much rhyme or reason.
Karma is what drives all this, but the workings of karma can be very
complex. And they can come out in very unexpected ways. We’ve been
through this so many times, the Buddha said, that it’s very hard to
meet someone who has never been your mother or your father …
… from the back of the neck down the spine,
out the legs; from the middle of the chest down through the stomach
and the intestines; down the shoulders, down the arms; all throughout
the head.
Think of the breathing as a whole-body process. In the Buddha’s
analysis, there’s breath element throughout the body. You feel it most
prominently as you breathe …
… We can either be
enthusiastically resolved, in the sense that we really like our
self—attached to our wants, attached to our thoughts, attached to
however we identify ourselves—or we can be resolved in a negative way:
We look at ourselves, we don’t like our habits, we don’t like the way
we interact with the world. We see how we create …
Majjhima Nikāya | The Middle Collection
The Majjhima Nikāya — the Middle Collection — is the second collection in the Sutta Piṭaka. It takes its name from the length of the discourses it contains: shorter than those in the Long Collection, longer than those in the Connected and Numerical Collections. There are 152 suttas in all. This anthology offers complete translations of 103 of these suttas, and …
… It’s the same with the middle way as a whole. It’s very easy to
practice in extremes. Sometimes it might be exhausting, but it’s easy
in the sense that you don’t have to do much thinking, just plow into
whatever you do. But finding the point of just right requires
discernment. And it’s going to take time. This is …
… Then there’s the way you talk to yourself about it, about how this
person behaves this way—always behaves this way—and it’s unbearable.
Something’s got to be done. Well, learn how to question that. We do
have the choice of how we talk about our experiences as we go through
the day. And the way we talk about our experiences …
… It’s part of
the middle way, a pleasure that’s actually conducive to developing
clarity and discernment in the mind.
So work on your concentration to make sure that it’s something you can
rely on. Work on your virtue, work on your discernment so that you can
hold on to them with confidence.
When the Buddha says that the self is its …
… You can work with the mind, and that
gives a greater sense of well-being as you learn how to stay focused
and solid in the midst of all the changes that come your way.
After all, we do live in a middle level of being. The Buddha talks
about levels of being that are exclusively painful, those that are
exclusive pleasant, and then …
… If he’d gone forth in the middle of his life, he would have become a non-returner, a stream enterer. In other words, he could have guaranteed that he wouldn’t have to fall to lower realms. But he never got around to practicing, out of sheer laziness and heedlessness. So his opportunity was wasted. He had the potential but he wasted it …
… It could be the
tip of the nose, the middle of the chest, the abdomen, any part of the
body where you have the sensation that now the breath is coming in,
now the breath is going out. Allow that area to stay relaxed all the
way through the in-breath, all the way through the out-, and all the
way through the spaces …
… You gently hold that nice feeling all way through the in-breath, and all the way through the out-breath, adjusting your breathing so that it doesn’t disturb the feeling. Or you can just keep in mind the word “breath,” ”breath,” “breath,” as a way of reminding yourself not to leave the breath, when something else comes up. Or the general feeling you …
… The good news of the Buddha’s teaching is that it doesn’t have to be
that way.
All too often the Buddha is accused of being pessimistic, but the
whole import of the four noble truths is that you don’t have to
suffer. You don’t have to get blown away. At the very least, suffering
is manageable. As someone once said …
… If they don’t work, then try to imagine a different way of
changing things.
You may have noticed this when reading Ajaan Lee’s instructions for
meditation, especially in his Dhamma talks. In Keeping the Breath in
Mind, he gives you some basic principles, but in his Dhamma talks he
plays with all kinds of other ways of playing with the breath, ways …
… The body
has to function in a certain way, the brain has to function in a
certain way, to maintain that knowledge, and yet we know these things
can change.
This is why we need to look for a refuge. We talk about taking refuge
in the path, but even the path is uncertain until it’s reached the
goal. Once the goal is …
… A lot of the
Buddha’s meditation instructions involve teaching us how to think in a
way that’s useful, in a way that’s helpful. We may think, well, we
know how to think perfectly well, thank you, but if your thinking
causes suffering, if it causes harm, then no matter how clever it is,
you still don’t know how to think …
… middle of the night. He saw beings
dying and being reborn in line with their karma, going up and down and
up and down. It’s almost as if samsara is playing a trick on people.
You work really hard to develop good karma and you get the rewards.
But then if you’re attached to the rewards, you start behaving in
unskillful ways …
… In that way,
you develop a greater solidity. And the solidity is in and of itself a
gift to the people around you.
I recently saw an old New Yorker cartoon: a very chaotic office with
one person in the middle of the office who seemed calm. The boss was
talking to another of the workers, saying, “George over there: He’s a
center …
Majjhima Nikāya | suttas on dhammatalks.org
Majjhima Nikāya | The Middle Collection The Majjhima Nikāya — the Middle Collection — is the second collection in the Sutta Piṭaka. It takes its name from the length of the discourses it contains: shorter than those in the Long Collection, longer than those in the Connected and Numerical Collections. There are 152 suttas in all. This anthology offers complete translations of 103 of these suttas, and …
