… In the same way, there are different kinds of Dhamma—so you can choose to stay with whichever of the 40 types of meditation themes you like.
When you stay mixed up with your defilements, or like to run back and forth with your external concepts and perceptions, you’re no different from a person floating in a boat in the middle 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… For instance, a pain in your knee may actually come from a lack of circulation in the middle of your back or in your face. When that’s the case, you have to let breath energy flow in the middle of the back or in the face if you want to prevent the pain in the knee. The relationships between circulation of breath energy …
… Remember that famous passage where King Pasenadi comes to see the
Buddha in the middle of the day, and the Buddha asks him: “Where are
you coming from in the middle of the day?” The king is very frank,
unusually frank for a politician. He says, “I’ve been spending my time
obsessed with the things that people obsessed with power are usually
obsessed …
… 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 …
… You’ll end up sinking in the middle of the sea.
The Buddha contemplated this fact, which is why he advised us to develop our goodness. On one level, developing goodness is involved with the way we use our material possessions. On another, it’s involved with the way we look after our actions, improving the way we use our physical body so that …
… 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 …
… Or like the spider in the middle of a web: The spider is in one spot, but it’s sensitive to the whole web. Try to maintain this sense of centered but broad awareness all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out. Maintain this quality of awareness as long and as steadily as you can. Try to master it …
… You dawdled through the
practice saying, “Well, I’ll put it off till tomorrow and I won’t push
myself too hard.”
As Ajaan Maha Boowa says, for many of us, the middle way is right in
the middle of the pillow.
So you don’t want that regret.
That’s one way of stirring up a sense of desire: realizing there are
dangers …
… But to what extent is that rhythm caused by things going on in the mind that you’re not fully aware of?
The best way to see that is to consciously change the way you think about the breath, to change the way you breathe, to go against what’s subconscious. That’s how you dig up some subconscious assumptions. There’s a resistance …
… In the same way, as we deal with our aggregates—form, feelings,
perceptions, thought fabrications, consciousness—there are unskillful
ways of trying to control them and there are skillful ways. You can
actually turn them into the path.
All five aggregates, for instance, are involved in concentration.
Form, of course, would be the breath. Think of the breath going
through the whole body. Feeling …
When the Buddha first described his path, he called it a middle way
between two extremes: indulgence in sensual pleasures on the one hand,
and self-affliction on the other. This has led a lot of people to
think that the path is kind of a neutral mind state, not all that
pleasant, but not all that painful. That’s not the case. An …
… difficulty, in the same way, when the awareness-release through equanimity is thus developed, thus pursued, any deed done to a limited extent no longer remains there, no longer stays there.” — SN 42:8
§47. Think: Happy, at rest,
may all beings be happy at heart.
Whatever beings there may be,
weak or strong, without exception,
long, large,
middling, short,
subtle, blatant,
seen & unseen …
… The more consistently you can allow them just to be—all the way
through the in-breath, all the way through the out-—the more you find
a sense of rapture developing, a sense of ease, fullness, refreshment.
This is called developing your inner resources for the sake of
alertness, for the sake of mindfulness, concentration, and
discernment.
That’s one of our duties …
… In the same way, intelligent people who want the inner quality of dispassion have to take the discernment that comes from concentration and use it to evaluate sights, sounds, smells, tastes, etc., so that these things can serve a purpose and not do them any harm. Whoever eats an entire fish—bones, scales, fins, feces, and all—is sure to choke to death on …
… The Buddha noted that neither extreme was effective in putting an end to suffering, so he found a pragmatic Middle Way between them: Right and wrong were determined by what actually did and didn’t work in putting an end to suffering. The public proof of this Middle Way was the Sangha that the Buddha built around it, in which people agreed to follow …
… It’s like lying on your back out in the middle of a big field. If you
look up in the sky and there’s nothing on the ground that you can
compare things to, you look at the clouds you don’t know what they’re
doing. Which clouds are staying still, which clouds are moving, you
can’t really tell, because there …
… So one way that you can show goodwill to all beings and really help
them to be happy is to sit here and practice, to work on your mind.
Another way of expanding your awareness is to keep expanding it
through the body as you work with the breath energy in the body. You
get a sense of comfort from the way you breathe …
The Fresh Flavor of Dhamma | The Heightened Mind
… In the same way, there are different kinds of Dhamma—so you can choose to stay with whichever of the 40 types of meditation themes you like. When you stay mixed up with your defilements, or like to run back and forth with your external concepts and perceptions, you’re no different from a person floating in a boat in the middle of a …
SN 35:206 Chappāṇa Sutta | The Six Animals
… 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 …
