… When
you’re still in the middle of the river, don’t be too quick to let go
of the raft or you’ll drown. Wait until you’ve gotten to the shore.
Then you let go.
But all the way across the river, from this shore to the far shore,
it’s a matter of developing attention and intention. You let go of …
… But the question is, do
you do it skillfully? There’s a skillful way to breathe in, a skillful
way to breathe out. There’s a skillful way to relate to the breath as
you breathe in, breathe out. If it’s nourishing for the body, if it
feels good inside, down to the more sensitive parts of your body, the
mind will respond …
… In the same way, when the breath energies in the body are very still,
you can sense the movements of the mind very clearly, and that’s what
we’re here for. The breath is like a thread that you follow through a
maze to get to the mind in the middle. When the breath gets still, the
mind becomes more and more clear …
… By the time we come to the Dhamma, we’re already in the middle of all
this. What makes the Dhamma special is that it shows us a way out,
because a lot of those muddling mistakes we make create a lot of
suffering for ourselves or the people around us. An important part
about choosing a life of the Dhamma is that you …
… Look at the way you think, look at the way you breathe, look at the way you hold your body. See if there’s anything you can change. Any ways of thinking that are keeping you down, learn to question them. Any ways of breathing that are stifling your energy, just drop them. Ask yourself: Which parts of the body are getting starved of …
… Look at the way you think, look at the way you breathe, look at the way you hold your body. See if there’s anything you can change. Any ways of thinking that are keeping you down, learn to question them. Any ways of breathing that are stifling your energy, just drop them. Ask yourself: Which parts of the body are getting starved of …
… When you’re still in the middle of the river, don’t be too quick to let go of the raft or you’ll drown. Wait until you’ve gotten to the far shore. Then you let go.
But all the way across the river, from this shore to the far shore, it’s a matter of developing attention and intention. You let go …
There are a lot of ways in which the Buddha compares the activities of
the mind to fire. Greed, aversion, are delusion are fires that burn
away in the mind, and as we chanted just now, they set fire to our
eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind, and to the things we know
through the senses. It’s almost as if our minds …
… This is one of the main ways that we develop discernment in the practice. If the practice were simply a matter of going to a far extreme, whatever that extreme may be, it wouldn’t require much thought or discernment. It would require just a lot of pushing. As the Buddha said, his path is a middle path, and it’s “middle” in lots …
… The way out was not to buy into it, to have a more sensible attitude toward the whole thing. Whatever ups or downs there may be, you don’t have to take them all that seriously. You just stick with your practice. You have to find the middle way between the extremes that the dramatic side of our personality likes to read into things …
… You make them at the end of the year, you make them at the beginning of the year, you make them in the middle of the year. So try to become timeless in the way you hold on to the path, so that regardless of which day of the year the question is asked—“What am I becoming right now?”—the answer is, “I …
… And to help sensitive
you to them, there are various ways of conceiving them.
Sometimes Ajaan Lee talks about breath channels in the body. There’s
one that goes down through the spine. Another breath channel goes
through the front of the body, right down the middle. There are breath
channels in your head, breath channels down your legs and your arms.
Some of …
… Say you’re focused in the middle of the chest. Keep that sense of the middle of the chest wide open all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out, and then think of that sense of openness spreading throughout the body, wherever it’s going to go. Get in touch with the awareness that already fills the body as …
… Think of it going up
and down a line drawn right down through the middle of your body from
the head down to the base of the spine—in front, in back, down the
legs, out the arms—in whatever way it’s going to flow. If you find
there’s a sense of blockage in any part of the body, think of the …
… He discovered that the principles of causality work in such a way that you can bring yourself to the Uncaused by being as skillful as possible in what you do. And the discernment that shows you how to act in those ways, that detects what in your intentions is skillful and what’s unskillful, what in the results of your actions are satisfactory or …
… Learn to drop the thought right in the middle and come back to the
breath. When you come back, reward yourself with a really nice breath,
one that feels really refreshing. That way, the next time you wander
off, you’ll be more inclined to come back because you know when you
come back it feels good.
While you’re with the breath, try …
… Then he went off and practiced austerities for six years,
until he was ready to admit that that, too, wasn’t the way out.
Eventually he found a way that worked: the middle way, which
essentially is composed of three things—virtue, concentration, and
discernment.
The symbolism of our circumambulation right now relates to that. The
incense relates to virtue. There’s a saying …
… That way your practice becomes timeless.
Or as he would say, make your practice samma. The word means “right”
but it also means “just right,” and it also means you want to do it
all the time. “Just right” doesn’t mean a middling right. It means
whatever is appropriate for the task.
Sometimes if really strong anger comes up in the mind, you …
… Stay with it all the way in, all
the way out, and notice what feels comfortable. As the Buddha says,
you try to make yourself sensitive to the whole body and then try to
breathe in a way that gives rise to feelings of ease.
So that’s what you experiment with as you meditate—sometimes feelings
of ease, sometimes feelings of more energy …
… It’s the way it’s been ever since I was born, so
it’s the way it’s going to be until I die.” But the Buddha didn’t
think in that way. As with so many other things, he saw a sense of
self as something we do. We want pleasure, we want to avoid pain,
and so we try to get …
Attention & Intention
… When you’re still in the middle of the river, don’t be too quick to let go of the raft or you’ll drown. Wait until you’ve gotten to the shore. Then you let go. But all the way across the river, from this shore to the far shore, it’s a matter of developing attention and intention. You let go of …
Generating Energy | Gather ’Round the Breath
… Look at the way you think, look at the way you breathe, look at the way you hold your body. See if there’s anything you can change. Any ways of thinking that are keeping you down, learn to question them. Any ways of breathing that are stifling your energy, just drop them. Ask yourself: Which parts of the body are getting starved of …
