Search results for: middle way

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  2. Concentration
     … to find some way around it. In Ajaan Lee’s image, the three main divisions of the path—virtue, concentration, and discernment—are like the posts for a bridge over a river. Virtue is the post on this side of the river, discernment is on the other side of the river, while the concentration post is right in the middle of the river, where … 
  3. Four Mountains Moving In
    There’s a passage where King Pasenadi comes to see the Buddha in the middle of the day, and the Buddha asks him, “What have you been doing?” The king in a remarkable display of frankness says, “Oh, the typical things that obsess a person who’s obsessed with power.” And the Buddha asks him, “Suppose a trustworthy person were to come from the … 
  4. Don’t Believe Everything You Feel
    We’re in the middle of a heat wave. It seems that no matter what you do in the course of the day, you feel drained by evening. It takes a fair amount of effort simply to come here and meditate. And when you’re feeling weakened by the temperature and tired from your work, your defenses are down, and feelings become very prominent … 
  5. The Right Touch
     … But the brightness isn’t only in the third noble truth; it’s also in the fourth, that the way to put an end to suffering involves nothing but good activities. We chant that again and again and again: “admirable in the beginning, admirable in the middle, admirable in the end.” Think about the path: It speaks to our better natures. In the actual … 
  6. Meticulous
     … And if you can’t do this with your words and deeds, there’s *no way *you’re going to be able to do it with the subtle movements of the mind. It’s in seeing cause and effect—and particularly the difference between a skillful way of speaking and an unskillful way of speaking, a skillful way of acting and an unskillful way … 
  7. A Good-Natured Attitude
     … We have to remember that this is a middle way. If it were a way of extremes, it would be very easy. You’d just push, push, push to the extreme and break through. But to find the point of just right requires that you act and then you reflect on your actions. Step back a bit. That’s what humor is all about … 
  8. Goodwill
     … Then you look out after me, and I’ll look out after you, and that way, we’ll come down safely.” His assistant says, “No, that’s not going to work. I have to look out after myself, you have to look out after yourself. In other words, I have to maintain my balance, you have to maintain your balance, and that way we … 
  9. Getting into the Body
     … Or you can think of the breath energy being centered in a line that goes down the middle of the front of the body, radiating from there. It doesn’t have to be pulled at all. As you breathe in, it radiates. When you can do this, you find that it changes the way you relate to the body. It’s a lot easier … 
  10. One Person
     … For a lot of people, it’s right in the middle of the chest or down at the tip of the sternum. Someplace in that central corridor of the body, you may call it, there’s a really sensitive spot. Try to breathe in a way that feels really good there. You can think of the breath energy coming in from the front; you … 
  11. The Dhamma Without Price
     … These are blameless ways of looking for happiness. And the Sangha is designed in such a way as to facilitate that. So as monks we should practice in a way to make ourselves worthy of people’s gifts. We do that by focusing on our practice, training the mind in an institution that places the training of the mind as its bottom line. As … 
  12. A Post for the Heart
     … And as they say with climate change, it’s not just that things are gradually warming up in every way. The weather goes through wild swings—extreme hot, extreme cold, floods, droughts—and that’s the way it is with human life. There are a lot of wild swings back and forth. But we want to be in the middle of the swings without … 
  13. Book search result icon Noble & True We Are Not One
     … Because each of us is trapped in the system of interconnectedness by our own actions, only we, as individuals, can break out by acting in increasingly skillful ways. The Buddha and members of the noble Saṅgha can show us the way, but actual skillfulness is something we have to develop on our own. If they find us trying to sleep in the middle of … 
  14. Book search result icon Sublime Determinations Thursday — Goodwill
     … Now, this doesn’t mean that you go out of your way to help other people when they abuse your help. Remember, one of the best ways to help others is to get them to act wisely. If you can’t do that, maybe it’s time to go your separate ways, wishing the other person well, but staying out of each other’s … 
  15. A Good Narrative
     … This feeling gives rise to a sense of urgency, but it can become a sense of hopelessness if it’s not balanced by the sense that there is a way out. Once you sense there is a way out and it’s something that you can actually do, that calms the lake, and once the lake is calm, it grows clear. There’s a … 
  16. Meditation as Play
     … What kind of breathing would gladden your mind right now? What way would be fun to breathe? Can you think of breathing in and out through the palms of your hands, the soles of your feet, through the base of your spine? What way of perceiving the breath would make it more interesting right now and have a good effect? Think of someone learning … 
  17. The Best Use of Your Time
     … You can breathe in any way. You can breathe long in, long out; short in, short out; long in, short out; short in, long out; heavy or light; fast or slow; deep or shallow—any way that feels good right now. That’s the carrot that pulls you in to the present moment, realizing that simply paying good attention to the way you breathe … 
  18. The Tricks of Denial
     … So in this case, you want to see, when something’s arising that pulls the mind in, what’s the allure? What do you think you’re gaining from thinking in those ways? And then try to balance that with looking at the drawbacks. Sometimes it seems to be working in a very perverse way, when things that you really don’t like about … 
  19. Worldly Dhammas
     … What’s even better is if you can maintain that perspective even when you’re in the middle of the game. This is what meditation does. It gets you in touch with a different level of reality. It’s like tuning your radio to a different station. The breath that’s the energy flow in the body: What does it know of gain? What … 
  20. An Island in the Flood
     … But for most of us, we’re not even walking on the water in an unstable way. We’re getting washed away, along with all the other debris in those rivers. The only really safe place is right here on the island. When you can stand here, the mind gains strength. And when the mind has the strength from concentration, it doesn’t have … 
  21. What’s Real
     … The suffering we create for ourselves is real, and the way we create it is real. Even though we may be operating under illusions, the suffering we create from our illusions is real. And the way we can solve that problem is also real. There’s a passage in the Canon where one of the Buddha’s disciples, Ven. Gavampati, reports that he heard … 
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