… 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 …
… around the navel, the middle of the chest, the back of the neck, wherever. Here again the steadiness and quality of your awareness is the medicine. The breath is a solvent that allows the effects of the medicine to spread through different parts of the body.
This is an important skill—learning how to stay focused in a way that’s healing—because that …
… Touched by contact in various ways,
he shouldn’t keep theorizing about self.
Stilled right within,
a monk shouldn’t seek peace from another,
from anything else.
For one stilled right within,
there’s nothing embraced,
so how rejected?2
As in the middle of the sea
it is still,
with no waves upwelling,
so the monk—unperturbed, still—
should not swell himself
anywhere …
… It becomes a way of occupying the whole
body with a sense of well-being. This is important because you need a
safe place. You want to be able to put wheels on this home and make it
mobile.
That way, it’s not only while you’re sitting here with your eyes
closed, but when you get up there’s still a sense …
… It adds, however, that the hut should be dismantled in such a way that the building materials can be used again. Those who dismantle it should then inform the offender to take his materials back. If he delays, and the materials get damaged for one reason or another, the bhikkhus who dismantled the hut are in no way to be held responsible.
During the …
… 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 is good to see such a …
… It is in this way that all fabricated dhammas are abandoned and unbinding can be fully realized. Other suttas discussing this level of right view include AN 7:58, AN 10:93, and Ud 1:10,
* * *
Staying near Sāvatthī … Then Ven. Kaccāna Gotta went to the Blessed One and, on arrival, having bowed down, sat to one side. As he was sitting there he …
… Otherwise, he’d drive you out, even in the middle of the Rains Retreat. Even then, you’d just have to take it and try to use your powers of observation.
‘In other matters, such as sitting and walking meditation, he trained me in every way, to my complete satisfaction. But I was able to keep up with him at best only about 60 …
… So if you have to criticize your behavior to yourself in order to get back on the path, do it in a way that lifts your spirits—and sometimes the criticism will have to be strong to get the desired effect—but don’t do it in a way that gets your spirits down.
Frivolous chattering refers to any random thoughts that come in …
… Resembling a ball of sealing wax,
set in a hollow,
with a bubble in the middle
and bathed with tears,
eye secretions are born there too:
The parts of the eye
are rolled all together
in various ways.’
Plucking out her lovely eye,
with mind unattached
she felt no regret.
‘Here, take this eye. It’s yours.’
Straightaway she gave it to him.
Straightaway …
… Then Vajjiya Māhita the householder left Campā in the middle of the day to see the Blessed One, but then the thought occurred to him, “Now is not the right time to see the Blessed One, for he is in seclusion. And it is not the right time to see the mind-developing monks, for they too are in seclusion. Why don’t I …
… This is why the Buddha talks about the path as being a middle way
where the voices in your mind, the imperatives that you tell yourself,
are wise and they’re just right. They get the results you want. That’s
how you know that things are balanced and that you really are
following the middle way. You tell the mind to settle down …
… They are a way of looking at the world but
they play a role in a path of action—determining how you’re going to
act.
For most thinkers, the underlying structures start with first
principles and then argue from those first principles to build a
structure, like building a building based on a foundation.
But the image the Buddha gives is of a …
… In the same way, there is the case where a certain monk, having gone to a village or to the wilderness, meets up with someone who upbraids him: ‘This venerable one, acting in this way, undertaking practices in this way, is a thorn of impurity in this village.’ Knowing this person to be a thorn, one should understand restraint and lack of restraint.
“And …
… Say there’s a sense of ease and wellbeing in the middle of the chest: How do you maintain that ease and wellbeing? What way do you breathe? How do you adjust your breath so as to maintain that sense all way through the in-breath, all the way through the out?
Once you can do that, how do you let that sense of …
… There are people who say that
because the Buddha said that the middle way is a middle way between
self-torture and self-indulgence, you shouldn’t try to inflict any
pain on yourself at all. But that’s ignoring huge parts of the Canon
where the Buddha says it’s really going to depend on the individuals
how much pain they have to …
Sn 4:14 Quickly
… Touched by contact in various ways, he shouldn’t keep theorizing about self. Stilled right within, a monk shouldn’t seek peace from another, from anything else. For one stilled right within, there’s nothing embraced, so how rejected?2 As in the middle of the sea it is still, with no waves upwelling, so the monk—unperturbed, still— should not swell himself anywhere …
Lodgings | The Buddhist Monastic Code, Volumes I & II
… It adds, however, that the hut should be dismantled in such a way that the building materials can be used again. Those who dismantle it should then inform the offender to take his materials back. If he delays, and the materials get damaged for one reason or another, the bhikkhus who dismantled the hut are in no way to be held responsible. During the …
