Search results for: middle way
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- Take Care of Your Big Sister… And try different ways of breathing to see what kind of breathing feels best for the body right now. You can try long breathing, short breathing, fast, slow, heavy, light, deep, or shallow. Get to know the breath. It’s been with you all this time, but for the most part you haven’t paid much attention to it. So. Pay some attention. Ajaan …
- Adjusting the Flame… It may happen that the way you’re breathing is getting a little bit too calm, in which case it’s good to think of breathing in long out short. That’ll give yourself more energy. You can try deep breathing; you can try moving the spot of your focus around. Three breaths, say, in the middle of the chest, three breaths down by …
- No One Size Fits All… What’s required in the middle way is that you figure out what’s just right for you right now, what’s appropriate for you right now—just as in the middle way, sometimes intense effort is right and sometimes very gentle effort is right, depending on what’s needed. In seeing that, in ferreting out that point of “just right,” you develop your …Show 5 additional results in this book
- To Disturb Your Complacency… There’s something very wrong about the way we engage with our world. But we don’t have to engage in that way. What is it? He lays it out. There are the three kinds of fabrication: bodily fabrication, the way you breathe; verbal fabrication, the way you talk to yourself; mental fabrication—perceptions and feelings. You’re engaging in these things all the …
- Death is the Context… The mind has these potentials of greed, aversion, and delusion, all kinds of unskillful ways of feeding on this and feeding on that. If we don’t take care of that now while we have the opportunity to practice, when will we take care of it? And if we die with those habits still ingrained in the mind, we’re just going to go …
- Respect Your Center… top of the head, middle of the forehead, right at your palate, in your neck, in the middle of the chest, right above the navel. Those are the main ones, but you might find that you have a spot of your own. In addition to identifying it, you want to learn how to work with the energy there. The reason Ajaan Lee focuses on …
- Specifics… Ajaan Fuang once talked about thinking of there being a line going down the middle of the body, and the breath comes in and out of that line. Thinking of the breath in that way: What does it do? What problem is it good for? This is one of the reasons why the instructions Ajaan Lee gives are general principles, but the insight comes …
- Sending Out Rays… all the way in, all the way out. Try to be very quiet with the breath. The less commentary you have on the world outside, the better. Because the more the mind can be quiet, the more it can see. Otherwise, it’s sending out rays of greed and anger, and that’s what we see: the greed and anger bounced back at us …
- Adjust the Flame… Other times when your energy level is too high, you have to breathe in a calming way. And you may not want to work quite yet at spreading the breath through the body. Just stay at one point. Tell yourself: Any thought that leaves this point, you’re going to kill. You’re going to wipe it out. In that way, your energy gets …
Moods Are Not-self
… He came back, found the middle way. Okay, you can find the middle way too. He’s shown that it’s possible. And the confidence that there is a way out: That’s what kept him going, even when things looked pretty bleak. It can keep you going, too. That can be the mood you hang on to: the confident mood. And you can …
Facing Aging, Illness, & Death : The Central Teaching of the Buddha
Glossary
… One of the five major collections of suttas in the Pāli Canon, containing suttas of middle (majjhima) length. Mettā: Goodwill; benevolence. One of the four brahmavihāras. Nibbāna: Literally, the “unbinding” of the mind from passion, aversion, and delusion, and from the entire round of death and rebirth. As this term also denotes the extinguishing of a fire, it carries connotations of stilling, cooling, and …Show 8 additional results in this book- Practicing in Solitude… Ajaan Singh, one of his students, liked to go to bed early in the evening, wake up in the middle of the night and meditate through the middle of the night, then have a short nap before dawn. That’s the kind of thing you can do when you’re meditating on your own. Each of us has a different metabolism. So when you …
- Still Right Here… As he said, this training is a middle way between two extremes: the extreme of self-torture and the extreme of sensual indulgence. For most of us, those are the only alternatives. If we see there’s pain, we run to sensual pleasures. If we can’t find sensual pleasures, we spend our time thinking about sensual pleasures. That’s our escape. But it …
- Moods Are Not-Self… He came back and found the middle way. Okay, you can find the middle way too. He’s shown that it’s possible. And the confidence that there is a way out: That’s what kept him going, even when things looked pretty bleak. It can keep you going, too. That can be the mood you hang on to: the confident mood. And you …Show 6 additional results in this book
- Circumspection… After all, this is the middle way we’re practicing. Sometimes it’s simply a matter of balancing between extremes, but it’s also learning how to combine different qualities that seem to conflict. After all, the mind is a complex thing. The needs of the mind in training are complex. And this is not a onefold path. Even with the practice of exercising …
- Proactive Mindfulness… One way to work toward it is to move your focus around deliberately, stay with, say, the center of the chest for a while and then move down to the abdomen or start at the abdomen and move up the centerline in front of the body: stomach, middle of the chest, the base of the throat, middle of the head, and then down on …
- Look in the Mirror… If there was no mistake, no harm, then take joy in the practice—joy in the fact that you’ve acted in a harmless way, you’re learning, you’re progressing in the path—and continue trying to progress. Now, obviously this applies to outside actions, but it also applies to your meditation. As you settle down with the breath, this is what directed …
- Choiceful Awareness… Choose to breathe in a way or choose to focus in a way that gives rise to a sense of well-being. Choose to maintain that well-being. Keep your thoughts thinking in the terms of right mindfulness: body, feelings, mind, and mental qualities. As for the stories that would pull you away, learn to use the Buddha’s teachings on time. When he …
- Guided Meditation… The way you keep the breath in mind, that’s mindfulness. Then you’re alert to how the breath is going, knowing when it comes in, knowing when it goes out, sticking with it all away as it comes in, sticking with it all the way as it goes out, making sure you stay with it as consistently as possible. That’s the quality …
- A Producer Mentality… Two upper middle-aged couples are sitting in a very upper middle-class living room, and the husband of one of them is saying, “Of course it’s had its ups and downs, but by and large, Margaret and I have found the consumer experience to be a rewarding one.” That’s a lot of the problem with our society right now. We’re …
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