… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… One of the most effective ways of changing that balance of power is to be consciously aware of how you’re breathing and to consciously smooth out, sort through, untangle any patterns of tension that would come up with the emotion. That way you can reclaim the breath, you can reclaim the power of the breath, so that it’s on the side of …
… 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 …
… the level of form as in the middle; to see the past as below, the future as above, and the present as in the middle. Then he taught them to look inside themselves—from the feet below, to the tips of the hair above, and all around in between.
Once they had contemplated in this way, they came to know clearly for themselves. This …
… But you’re not going to gain discernment that way. You gain discernment from making choices and then learning how to read them. It’s not the case that you’ll go immediately to total understanding of what’s the past karma you’re experiencing right now and what’s the present karma. You learn bit by bit.
Start by trying to get the …
… 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 …
… The way you breathe is very much affected by the states of your mind. When you’re worried, you breathe in a certain way. When you’re happy, you breathe in another way. When there’s anger, there’s still another way of breathing. If you keep at certain ways of breathing, it’s going to have an effect on other aspects of the …
… can be ardent, alert, and mindful
all at once—in that way, you provide yourself with a safe haven. It’s
the little world you inhabit inside as you fend off the world outside.
As the Buddha said, when you have this refuge
inside, it’s like having an island in the middle of a flood, or like
having a lamp in a dark …
… 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 …
Thursday — Goodwill | Sublime Determinations
… 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 …
