Search results for: middle way

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  2. Streams of Anger
     … Then there’s the way you talk to yourself about it, about how this person behaves this way—always behaves this way—and it’s unbearable. Something’s got to be done. Well, learn how to question that. We do have the choice of how we talk about our experiences as we go through the day. And the way we talk about our experiences … 
  3. Believe in Your Actions
     … You can work with the mind, and that gives a greater sense of well-being as you learn how to stay focused and solid in the midst of all the changes that come your way. After all, we do live in a middle level of being. The Buddha talks about levels of being that are exclusively painful, those that are exclusive pleasant, and then … 
  4. Not Swept Away
     … The good news of the Buddha’s teaching is that it doesn’t have to be that way. All too often the Buddha is accused of being pessimistic, but the whole import of the four noble truths is that you don’t have to suffer. You don’t have to get blown away. At the very least, suffering is manageable. As someone once said … 
  5. Your Inner Teacher
     … It could be the tip of the nose, the middle of the chest, the abdomen, any part of the body where you have the sensation that now the breath is coming in, now the breath is going out. Allow that area to stay relaxed all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out-, and all the way through the spaces … 
  6. Capture Your Imagination
     … If they don’t work, then try to imagine a different way of changing things. You may have noticed this when reading Ajaan Lee’s instructions for meditation, especially in his Dhamma talks. In Keeping the Breath in Mind, he gives you some basic principles, but in his Dhamma talks he plays with all kinds of other ways of playing with the breath, ways … 
  7. Book search result icon The Truth of Rebirth 5 : An Appropriate Frame
     … Either the life force was identical with the body, thus allowing no way for rebirth to occur after the body dies; or else there was a soul or life force separate from the body, which either died along with the body or else survived death. Yet when the Buddha’s contemporaries pressed him to take sides on this question and related questions, he consistently … 
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  8. Precarious Knowledge
     … The body has to function in a certain way, the brain has to function in a certain way, to maintain that knowledge, and yet we know these things can change. This is why we need to look for a refuge. We talk about taking refuge in the path, but even the path is uncertain until it’s reached the goal. Once the goal is … 
  9. The Graduated Discourse
     … middle of the night. He saw beings dying and being reborn in line with their karma, going up and down and up and down. It’s almost as if samsara is playing a trick on people. You work really hard to develop good karma and you get the rewards. But then if you’re attached to the rewards, you start behaving in unskillful ways … 
  10. Skillful Thinking
     … A lot of the Buddha’s meditation instructions involve teaching us how to think in a way that’s useful, in a way that’s helpful. We may think, well, we know how to think perfectly well, thank you, but if your thinking causes suffering, if it causes harm, then no matter how clever it is, you still don’t know how to think … 
  11. Delight in Concentration
     … One of the ways of taking pleasure in doing this, even before you can find a sense of well-being with the breath, is to talk to yourself about what a good thing it is that you’re on this path. The Buddha lists six different ways of taking delight that he says can lead to the end of the effluents. It’s interesting … 
  12. The Source of Goodness
     … In that way, you develop a greater solidity. And the solidity is in and of itself a gift to the people around you. I recently saw an old New Yorker cartoon: a very chaotic office with one person in the middle of the office who seemed calm. The boss was talking to another of the workers, saying, “George over there: He’s a center … 
  13. Bewildered
     … For instance, when a feeling of pain appears in fabrication, it’s accompanied by the way you breathe and by your perceptions. So, you can ask yourself, “To what extent is the way I’m breathing aggravating this pain? Can I breathe in another way? And to what extent is the way I’m talking to myself about the pain getting in the way … 
  14. Chronic Pain
     … After all, the fact that there’s pain in the body is problem enough, but you don’t want to be adding to it by the way you breathe. And you want to see if the way you breathe can actually help. When I had malaria, I found that simply breathing became laborious. I realized that because I was using certain muscles in the … 
  15. The Buddha’s Investment Strategy
     … Even good qualities of the mind are inconstant, but the more you invest in them, the longer their impact, the longer their ability to support you, all the way through the process of aging, all the way through the process of illness, all the way through the process of death. These things stay there. And they can help you. The body is something you … 
  16. Faith in the Buddha’s Awakening
     … All the qualities you develop are good qualities of mind, noble qualities of mind, which is why they say that the Dhamma is good in the beginning, good in the middle, good in the end. The quality of ardency is especially important. It’s what helps the other good qualities of the mind grow. It’s part of right effort. Right effort involves three … 
  17. Making a Difference
     … It can be the tip of the nose, the middle of the head, the base of the throat, the chest, the abdomen. When you find a spot that you like, then allow the breath at that spot to feel comfortable: comfortable coming in, comfortable going out, with no tension building up with the in-breath and no holding on to tension or pushing out … 
  18. Yes & No
     … May the jhana factors be balanced.” But it doesn’t happen that way. You can’t just wish your way into these things. You have to learn your skills. And saying Yes to the breath is one skill. Learning how to say No to everything else is another skill. All too often, when we say No to a thought, we clamp down on the … 
  19. The Image of the Raft
     … You talk to yourself about which ways of breathing are skillful, which ways of breathing are not, and how you might change things. Once the breath is comfortable, how do you maintain that sense of comfort? And when you can maintain it, how do you let it spread? All that talking to yourself is fabrication. Then there’s consciousness, which is aware of all … 
  20. W.W.B.R.
     … When Ajaan Lee is talking about the different ways of meditating in his book, Frames of Reference, he starts out with different ways of thinking. Think about the 32 parts of the body, think about the body in terms of the elements, think about how inconstant things are, to develop a sense of *samvega. *It’s the samvega that helps pull you away from … 
  21. What We’re Here to See
     … That way, we can actually deal with those stupid things in an intelligent way, in an effective way, in a way in which we find something that’s more than we expected—that it really is possible to put an end to suffering and find a happiness that’s totally blameless, totally changeless. When the mind finds that, it’ll take on a new … 
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