… 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 …
… in the middle of the chest going down through the stomach, the intestines. Then the breath energy going down the shoulders and the arms.
That’s just to get you started. If you look at some of Ajaan Lee’s Dhamma talks from later years, after he had done his guide to breath meditation, you find that he also had other ways of dealing …
… The purpose of this is
to pull you out of the different sides of conflicts in a way that’s
not escapist, in a way that actually is good for the people involved
in the conflict. If you can help get them out, too, then you’re happy
to do it.
Then finally, resolve on harmlessness, which the Buddha basically says
is equivalent to …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… the first one doesn’t see, the middle one doesn’t see, the last one doesn’t see. In the same way, the statement of the brahmans turns out to be a row of blind men, as it were: the first one doesn’t see, the middle one doesn’t see, the last one doesn’t see. So what do you think, Bhāradvāja: this …
… And there’s a way
in which you could say that there are things you have to be attached
to, things you have to desire.
Desire does play a role in the path. It’s a part of right effort. You
have to want to let go of unskillful qualities and you have to
want to develop skillful ones. It’s written in the …
… They can dress themselves up and disguise themselves in all kinds of Buddhist 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 leads to the highest ease, so the path itself should be easeful, too.” But then you think of all the paths you’ve encountered in the …
… Just figure out a way to get through the whole body systematically: navel, solar plexus, middle of the chest, base of the throat, the head, down the shoulders, out the arms, down the back, out the legs. Survey how all the different parts of the body feel with the in-breath, with the out-breath, all the way through the in-breath, all the …
… Then a second time, when the night was far advanced, at the end of the middle watch, Ven. Ānanda got up from his seat, arranged his robe over one shoulder, stood facing the Blessed One, paying homage with his hands placed palm-to-palm over his heart, and said to him, “Lord, the night is far advanced. The second watch has ended. The community …
… You show
some responsibility when you do, when you’ve acted in a way that
doesn’t harm anyone. That’s really significant. That’s something we
should learn how to appreciate more and more. There is room for
individual expression. You look at the different perfections, and
generosity in particular: There are lots of different ways you can be
generous. The Buddha placed …
On Target
August 28, 1956
To sit in meditation in a way that’s right on target, the mind has to be on the path. This means that it stays in the present, without tripping over preoccupations that it likes or dislikes. It’s established solely in the middle way. If it misses this target, it’s not on the path. It’s not …
… And it seems that in every case, they were having trouble simply adjusting to the fact that they were in Thailand, accepting things the way they were. So a lot of his teaching had to do with equanimity and patience. He probably saw that Westerners lacked these qualities and that they needed them to be reinforced before they could really get started on anything …
… He
finally comes to a big bull elephant in the middle of a clearing. When
he actually sees the elephant, that’s when he knows he’s got the
elephant.”
The same way, the Buddha said, there are footprints and scratch marks
all along the path. There’s a sense of well-being that comes when you
get the mind in a strong state …
… You can interpret that statement in lots of ways. What it comes down
to is that we have a lot of similarities in terms of the big issues.
But in terms of how the particulars of those big issues get worked
out, we have our individual issues, which is why the Buddha had to
have so many different ways of teaching the path.
There …
… It’s the same way with the meditation. We start out trying to focus on the breath and we put a lot of pressure on it, for fear that if we don’t, the mind’s going to slip away. Of course, a lot of the pressure on the breath has an effect on the circulation of fluids and energies in the body. You …
… It’s the same way with the meditation. We start out trying to focus on the breath and we put a lot of pressure on it, for fear that if we don’t, the mind’s going to slip away. Of course, a lot of the pressure on the breath has an effect on the circulation of fluids and energies in the body. You …
… Don’t try to boil
things down to one idea and then just run with that all the
way—because you may run off the side of the road. Remember, this is a
middle way; it’s balanced. And finding balance is one of the most
difficult things to do. It requires the most discernment. If this were
simply a practice of running off …
… 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 …
… As the Buddha says, it’s good in the
beginning, good in the middle, good in the end.
As with any path, there are going to be difficulties along the way. He
never promised that it would be easy. But it’s always good. That’s why
it’s worth sticking with it. As he said, even if tears are running
down your cheeks …
II. Truth | Ten Perfections: A Study Guide
… the first one doesn’t see, the middle one doesn’t see, the last one doesn’t see. In the same way, the statement of the brahmans turns out to be a row of blind men, as it were: the first one doesn’t see, the middle one doesn’t see, the last one doesn’t see. So what do you think, Bhāradvāja: this …
Ud 5:5 Uposatha Sutta | Uposatha
… Then a second time, when the night was far advanced, at the end of the middle watch, Ven. Ānanda got up from his seat, arranged his robe over one shoulder, stood facing the Blessed One, paying homage with his hands placed palm-to-palm over his heart, and said to him, “Lord, the night is far advanced. The second watch has ended. The community …
