Search results for: middle way
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- Jhāna & Discernment… Ask yourself, “Where do you feel it most clearly now?” Try to stay with that, all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out-. And if long breathing feels good, keep it up. If it doesn’t, you can change: Make it faster, slower, shorter, more shallow, heavier, lighter. Try to get in touch with what feels good right now …
- Judgmental vs. Judicious… One way of doing that, of course, is to wait until all the information is in. Then you pass judgment. But we live a life in which not all the information is in, and yet we still have to act. In fact, that’s the way most of our life is. So we have to practice what’s called success by approximation, doing our …
- Truths That Are Noble… This is why the Buddha said his path is admirable in the beginning, admirable in the middle, and admirable in the end, because it requires us to be responsible all the way through.
Head & Heart Together
Mindfulness Defined
… The Buddha discovered that the way you attend to sensory contact is determined by your views about what’s important: the questions you bring to each experience, the problems you want to solve. If there were no problems in life, you could open yourself up choicelessly to whatever came along. But the fact is there is a big problem smack dab in the middle …Show 2 additional results in this book- Seclusion… There’s another passage in the texts where they talk about how once you settle down, you remind yourself that here you are out in the middle of a very quiet countryside, not quite wilderness here, but it’s quiet. All the issues related to back home, if they come up in your mind, aren’t really related to anything around you. Issues coming …
- Your Ancestral Territory… That way—when, in the course of the day, something difficult comes up, either from outside or inside—you go to the breath, and surrounding the breath are thoughts about the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha, thoughts about the brahma-viharas, to give you some perspective on the issue facing you. That way, as you stay with the breath, you’re not simply hiding …
- Watch What You’re Doing… In other words, you tell yourself to focus on the breath in a certain way, to work with the breath a certain way, then you do it, and then you have to evaluate the results—one, to make sure you’re doing things the way you tell yourself to do, and when the results don’t come out, you have to figure out why …
- A Well-stocked Memory… People learned the Dhamma by listening to it and memorizing it, and there was a very systematic way of memorizing long passages of Dhamma. We’ve lost that ability now. Our memories get shorter and shorter because we get more and more dependent on gadgets to keep things in mind for us. Which is sad, because those gadgets are not going to be with …
- The First Noble Truth… You want sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations to be this way, and they’re not that way. Sometimes the pleasures and pains come from your desire to gain awakening. Those, the Buddha said, are actually useful. There’s the pain that comes when you realize, “Okay, there’s awakening out there and I haven’t gotten there yet.” He says not to try …
Swept Downstream
… This gives you an island that gets you out of the flood for a bit, but you’re still in the middle of the river. You haven’t made it all the way across. But it gives you something to hold on to in the meantime. So you want to be really good at this. As Ajaan Lee used to say, the people who …- Opting Out… This is another example in how the Buddha’s teaching is the middle way that steps outside of the either/or that so many people in society present us with. It steps out by framing the issue in a totally new way. The Buddha’s question is: Do you want to be free? That’s in line with the example he gives. He left …
- A Slave to the Dhamma… As we say in the chant, it’s admirable in the beginning, admirable in the middle, admirable in the end. Sometimes it’s hard, sometimes it’s easy, but it’s admirable all the way.
- Giving Meaning to Life… There is another passage where the Buddha talks about the way beings wander on in this world. It’s like throwing a stick up into the air. Sometimes it lands on this end, sometimes it lands on that end, sometimes it lands splat in the middle. No real pattern. No real direction. This doesn’t mean that life is hopeless. But it means simply …
- The Power of Perception… There’s a passage where the Buddha calls concentration a “perception attainment.” The perception lies at the heart of what we’re doing here, maintaining the perception of breath all the way through the in- breath, all the way through the out-, and then learning how to augment that perception, because a perception on its own can’t withstand the force of a lot …
- Stop & Think… We think in these ways as a way of getting the mind to finally settle down. Ajaan Maha Boowa’s image is of two different kinds of trees. Undirected meditation, he says, is like a tree out in the middle of a meadow. If you want to cut it down, it doesn’t involve much calculation as to which direction you should cut it …
- Four Mountains Moving InThere’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 …
- A Position of Strength… If they are in good shape, try to maintain them that way. This way, you give yourself strength. Again, it’s the strength of having friends. In Thailand, one of the old ways of teaching the strength of harmony or of concord in a group would be to show a little kid a stick, and say, “Can you snap the stick in two?” The …
- In Accordance with the Dhamma… It doesn’t involve doing anything demeaning, and it doesn’t involve anything less than honorable, which is why the Buddha said that it’s admirable in the beginning, admirable in the middle, admirable in the end. It’s good all the way through.
- 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 …
- 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 …
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