… If
there’s a pleasant feeling, say, in the middle of the chest, try to
breathe in a way that keeps that pleasant feeling going all the way
through the in-breath, all the way through the out, without any breaks
in-between. Don’t let the in-and-out of the breath disturb the ease
and spaciousness and pleasure that come with that …
… a magical way of protecting
himself so that no matter how much you spear the middle of his chest,
you can’t get to his heart, so you can’t kill him. What they do is to
go out and find the tree where the heart is, and all they have to do
is squeeze it, and he dies.
It’s the same with …
… They make it part of their self-image and do unskillful things with it, rather than seeing it as something of the world that has temporarily come their way.
The wise question to ask when gain comes your way is, “How are you going to squeeze the best use out of it?” This doesn’t mean squeezing as much pleasure as you can. It …
… The Sakyan capital city,
Kapilavatthu, was located in the northwest of the Ariyan
world—the middle Ganges valley.1 The following passage states
that the bodhisatta’s father was a king
(rājan), but it has to be
borne in mind that this title was used not only by rulers who
would count as “king” in the modern sense, but also by the
oligarchs in …
… Again, we tend to delight the other way around. We delight in
our cravings; we delight in our defilements. We don’t take much
delight in working at making the mind more responsible, making it more
trustworthy.
So you have to learn how to think in terms that counteract that old
tendency. It’s good that you’re able to sit here and find …
… in the beginning, admirable in the middle, admirable in the end.” It starts by your dedicating yourself to the purity of your intentions, and it leads to something that goes beyond intentions—something really worth experiencing for yourself.
So. Faith in the Buddha, conviction in the Buddha’s awakening, is a really good investment: It pays off in more ways than you can imagine.
… You start breathing in weird ways, and that puts you in a bad mood, and then the bad mood makes the breathing get even stranger, and you go spiraling down.
Working with the techniques of breath meditation is one way of cutting those vicious circles, giving you a handle on your state of mind. But it’s also important that you use right view …
… You’ll have to learn how
to stop clinging to them, but first you have to cling to them in a way
that gets you across.
In this way, you’re taking the ordinary, everyday functions in the
mind, where it has feelings and perceptions—the labels you put on
things—thought constructs or thought fabrications, where you put
thoughts together, and your consciousness …
… Well, the martial arts expert finally comes around, he
sees a donkey, he walks way around the donkey, stays away from it.
You need concentration as that ability to walk your way around things.
When the storms in your mind are blowing and they seem really strong,
just say, “I’m going to stay right here with the breath and focus on
that and …
… trying to figure out a way to escape from all fabrications that appear, in the same way that a caged quail keeps looking for a way to escape from its cage.
h. Equanimity with regard to fabrications (saṅkhārupekkhā-ñāṇa): viewing all fabrications with a sense of indifference, just as a husband and wife might feel indifferent to each other’s activities after they have …
… This is the second ground on which he can be praised.” — SN 42:12
The last example shows that ascetic practices, in and of themselves, are not necessarily contrary to the middle way. It is possible to follow them all the way to the noble attainments. And, as this sutta shows, only when you have followed the path to its culmination and attained the …
… He starved himself until he was skin and bones, but then he
had the good sense to realize that that wasn’t the way out, either.
You can’t starve the mind of its suffering simply by avoiding
sensuality. It just begins to suffer in different ways. It starts
feeding in different ways. The person who engages in the self-denial
of that sort …
… That’s at the end of the path, when you’ve taken care of
all the members of the mind, and the mind gets more and more unified
in its agreement that this is the way you want to find happiness,
based on this path of virtue, concentration, and discernment, with
concentration the big middle ground that gets the mind right here in
the …
… And this, going through the middle of it, is a blue, yellow, red, white, or brown thread.’ In the same way—with his mind thus concentrated, purified, and bright, unblemished, free from defects, pliant, malleable, steady, and attained to imperturbability—the monk directs and inclines it to knowledge and vision. He discerns: ‘This body of mine is endowed with form, composed of the four …
… all the time,
but it very rarely works out that way. That’s why we have to learn how
to create our own environment.
Ajaan Fuang once noted that even though the place where he taught in
Bangkok was not especially conducive—it was fairly noisy, it was right
down in the middle of the city—the fact that he was there made it …
… He makes known—having realized it through direct knowledge—this world with its devas, Māras, & Brahmās, this generation with its contemplatives & brahmans, its royalty & commonfolk; he explains the Dhamma admirable in the beginning, admirable in the middle, admirable in the end; he expounds the holy life both in its particulars & in its essence, entirely perfect, surpassingly pure. It’s good to see such a …
… You find
yourself facing a wall, you’ve got to figure out, “Well, maybe there’s
some way around the wall. Maybe I’ve created the wall. How can I
un-create it? How can I stop doing the things that create the wall?”
Because remember, look at things as actions. That’s one of the most
useful ways of looking at the problems …
… Why is that? Because his small body doesn’t find a footing in the depth.
“In the same way, whoever would say, ‘I, without having gained concentration, will spend time in isolated wilderness & forest lodgings,’ of him it can be expected that he will sink to the bottom or float away.
“Imagine, Upāli, a stupid baby boy, lying on his back, playing with his …
… Whatever is a matter of convention follows these conventional ways.
But whatever is a matter of release—of purity—cannot be made to follow those ways, because it is not the same sort of thing. To take release or a released mind and confuse or compound it with the five khandhas, which are an affair of conventional reality, is wrong. It can’t be …
… Ajaan Fuang would often say, “Don’t let the external wat get
in the way of your internal wat.” In other words, the concerns of
making things nice outside, nice food, nice place to stay, nice
whatever: If they start getting in the way of your meditation, you’ve
got to cut back. So you have to look all around you. As Ajaan Lee …
Birth | Noble Warrior : A Life of the Buddha
… The Sakyan capital city, Kapilavatthu, was located in the northwest of the Ariyan world—the middle Ganges valley.1 The following passage states that the bodhisatta’s father was a king (rājan), but it has to be borne in mind that this title was used not only by rulers who would count as “king” in the modern sense, but also by the oligarchs in …
MN 77 Mahāsakuludāyi Sutta | The Greater Discourse to Sakuludāyin
… This is the second ground on which he can be praised.” — SN 42:12 The last example shows that ascetic practices, in and of themselves, are not necessarily contrary to the middle way. It is possible to follow them all the way to the noble attainments. And, as this sutta shows, only when you have followed the path to its culmination and attained the …
