… a sense of the dangers, but taking whatever fear you might have about the dangers and directing it in the right way. It’s combined with confidence, that there is a right way to find happiness here.
This is where heedfulness differs from anxiety. With anxiety, you don’t really know what to do. You have no confidence that you have any right way …
… You can work with the
breath and get a sense of well-being that comes from the way you
breathe. That provides a really good support for the mental
fabrication.
In the middle, there’s verbal fabrication, where you’re thinking about
the breath, evaluating the breath. You’re also thinking about others
and evaluating what it is to have genuine goodwill. You realize …
… The pilings on this bank and the pilings on that bank
are not the problem, but the pilings right in the middle of the river
take a lot of work. Concentration’s right there in the middle, but the
work that’s put into coming back again, coming back again, trying to
be as sensitive as possible to what you’ve got here, is …
… The causal pattern actually goes the other way: First, through your own individual intentions, you develop a karmic profile. Then you’re born with people who have similar profiles in their individual backgrounds.
So, if a particular group—a family, a nation—suffers hardships, it’s not because the long departed members of that group created bad karma. It’s because the individuals currently …
… And although the fact is not obvious on the surface, the third main point about the path presented in the Buddha’s first discourse—that it’s a middle way—also implies that the path employs fabricated means that are abandoned on arriving at the goal. This implied fact becomes apparent, though, when we look at what “middle way” means.
The middle way. The …
… There are different ways you can do that, as there are with savoring a sensual pleasure, such as fine food or beautiful music. Part of the skill of savoring is putting yourself in a receptive mood, part of it is how you talk to yourself, and part of it is opening yourself up physically, especially if it’s listening to music—opening yourself up …
Today is the middle of the Rains. We’re halfway through the three
months, and it’s a good time to reflect what determinations you made,
what vows you made at the beginning of the Rains. How are they going?
If you’re having trouble keeping up, well, you’ve got the rest of the
Rains to accelerate your efforts, to make sure you …
… One of the reasons why this is called the middle path, or the middle
way, is that you have to find the point of balance, and it’s in find
that balance that you really develop your discernment. There’s the
discernment that comes from reading books,
the discernment that comes from thinking things through, but the
discernment that comes from finding the point …
… He wants to see you.”
“In that case, my good gatekeeper, arrange seats in the middle gate hall.”
Responding, “As you say, venerable sir,” to Upāli the householder, the gatekeeper, after arranging seats in the middle gate hall, went to Upāli the householder and, on arrival, said to him, “Venerable sir, seats have been arranged in the middle gate hall. Do what you consider …
… Sometimes we have a
sense of obligation for certain ways of thinking. We feel, “If I
didn’t think in these ways, I wouldn’t be me.” As we mentioned just
now, we develop certain patterns of reacting to certain events,
reading certain situations in a certain way, and we keep reverting to
those ways. But you have to remember, there must have been …
… Maybe you can change the way
you breathe. Maybe you can change the way you talk to yourself. What
perceptions are you holding in mind? Could you change them?
Those are some of the parameters. But you’re going to have to learn
for yourself. When you’re alert to see something’s actually working,
then you remember it for the next time around …
… You
realize that this is a way of showing goodwill. It’s a way of showing
compassion, empathetic joy, equanimity—equanimity in the sense that
you realize there are some things you would like to gain, but the only
way you could gain them would be by taking the precepts, so you
realize you have to give them up.
With empathetic joy, you see …
… The discussion that begins with this paragraph provides an explanation for what is meant by the “middle way” in the Buddha’s first sermon. See also the discussion of pleasure and pain in MN 101.
9. Reading añāṇadassanaṁ with the Thai edition. The other editions have ñāṇadassanaṁ, “that is knowledge & vision,” which doesn’t fit into the general message of the text here.
This …
… There are better ways to think, better ways to manage the thought processes in the mind.
And a funny thing happens. As you master these processes, they bring you to a point where everything reaches equilibrium. That’s where you can really let go. You can even let go of your tools at that point because they’ve taken you where you want to …
… In fact, that was the image that gave the Buddha a sense of samvega—it could be translated as terror, dismay at being trapped in all this suffering and wanting to see a way out.
That’s one image.
The other image is the one that comes from a story concerning King Pasenadi. King Pasenadi comes to see the Buddha in the middle of …
… That chant we had just now about the four mountains comes from a
passage in the Canon where King Pasenadi, one of the major kings of
that time, came to see the Buddha in the middle of the day. The Buddha
asked him, “What are you coming from in the middle of the day like
this? What have you been doing?” And the king …
… Where do the ways of the world arise? In ourselves. The ways of the world have eight factors, and the path that cures them has eight as well. The eightfold path is the cure for the eight ways of the world. Thus the Buddha taught the middle way as the cure for the two extremes.
Once we have cured ourselves of the two extremes …
… Two middle-aged couples—they looked
to be in their fifties—sitting in a very nice living room, and the
husband of one couple was saying to the others, “Of course it’s had
its ups and downs, but by and large, Margaret and I have found a
consumer experience to be a rewarding one.”
The humor there, of course, is the fact that …
… The path that works is
the middle way.
By this, he didn’t mean a middling way, halfway between pleasure and
pain. It was a path that involved comprehending suffering, and for
using the pleasure of right concentration as an alternative to either
sensual pleasure or physical pain. Right view, which was part of the
path, was focused on the question of how to …
… If your preferences complain, figure out ways of dealing with them to put them aside. Discernment doesn’t mean just seeing the right course of action; it also involves mastering the right way to put your preferences aside. Remind yourself that your preferences have gotten in the way, have gummed up the works, for a long, long time. How much longer are you going …
Karma Is Individual
… The causal pattern actually goes the other way: First, through your own individual intentions, you develop a karmic profile. Then you’re born with people who have similar profiles in their individual backgrounds. So, if a particular group—a family, a nation—suffers hardships, it’s not because the long departed members of that group created bad karma. It’s because the individuals currently …
A Framework for the Frame | On the Path : an Anthology on the Noble Eightfold Path Drawn from the Pāli Canon
… And although the fact is not obvious on the surface, the third main point about the path presented in the Buddha’s first discourse—that it’s a middle way—also implies that the path employs fabricated means that are abandoned on arriving at the goal. This implied fact becomes apparent, though, when we look at what “middle way” means. The middle way. The …
MN 56 Upālivāda Sutta | The Teaching to Upāli
… He wants to see you.” “In that case, my good gatekeeper, arrange seats in the middle gate hall.” Responding, “As you say, venerable sir,” to Upāli the householder, the gatekeeper, after arranging seats in the middle gate hall, went to Upāli the householder and, on arrival, said to him, “Venerable sir, seats have been arranged in the middle gate hall. Do what you consider …
