… So it’s pretty amazing that the body works, because each little cell in there is programmed to behave sometimes in a social way and sometimes in an antisocial way. It’s good to think about the body like this so that we don’t get heedless.
That’s a lot of what the body contemplation is for: to counteract our heedlessness. To begin …
… There’s a certain way of
breathing that goes with the anger: Do you enjoy that? A certain way
of thinking that goes with the anger: Do you enjoy that? Do you enjoy
the perceptions? What kick do you get out of the perceptions or the
feelings that go with the anger? These are the things about which
you’ve got to be very …
… We really want to be
happy, and there is a way to find true happiness that doesn’t cause
any harm at all.
So he’s not the sort of person who says to forget about your desire
for happiness, just accept things as they are, or try to submerge your
desire for happiness in working for the happiness of others. After
all, if …
… But even then, we have to part ways.
When we part ways, there’s a lot of sorrow. The tears you’ve shed over
the loss of a mother, the Buddha said, are more than the water in the
oceans. The tears you’ve shed over the loss of a father are more than
the water of the oceans, and so on down with …
… This is the right effort that really constitutes the middle way: in other words, appropriate effort, appropriate for whatever the occasion, whatever the defilement coming up in the present, and whatever your state of mind. Sometimes this requires very delicate work, very refined, very easy. Sometimes it’s hard and takes a lot of effort. You have to sit through a good amount of …
… This is why it’s called the middle way: the Dhamma always appropriate for curing every sort of defilement to the point where defilement no longer remains.
This is how you should understand the power of the middle way. Hold to this path in your practice, because release from suffering and stress is something with a value transcending all three levels of becoming. And …
… In this way, Sāvatthī provides the stage for a multi-faceted
glimpse into the middle period of the Buddha’s life, in his
role as teacher to devas and human beings at large and,
simultaneously, founder of and rule-giver for the Saṅgha.
At that time, Anāthapiṇḍika the householder was the
brother-in-law of the Rājagaha moneylender. Then he traveled to
Rājagaha on …
… He talks about the
middle way, developing all the eight factors of the noble path from
right view on through right concentration. Right view starts right in
with the issue of suffering. There is stress, there is suffering,
there is pain. He’s not saying life is suffering. He’s just saying
simply that there is suffering. We can’t deny that. And from …
… Yet you
can look at the rest of the world and try to straighten out the rest
of the world as much as you like, but, one, the world refuses to be
straightened out in a lot of ways; and two, you can develop a lot of
unskillful qualities that way. So you’ve got to turn around and look
at yourself.
Some people …
… This way isn’t the path; that way isn’t the path—so we take the middle as our constant preoccupation.
If we can gain release from pleasure and pain, this will appear as the path. Our mind will step into it and know, but it can’t yet go all the way. So it withdraws to continue practicing.
When pleasure arises and we …
… Find some way to psych yourself up for this.
And one of the ways to do that, of course, is to think about the fact that the Buddha really was an admirable human being and there are so few admirable people in this world. You should treasure those who are. Think of the passage we chanted just now: “The Buddha is immeasurable.” The qualities …
… Fine results are of high quality and are useful in all sorts of ways—like atomic radiation, which is so fine that it can penetrate even mountains. Crude things are of low quality and hard to use. Sometimes you can soak them in water all day long and they still don’t soften up. But as for fine things, all they need is a …
… Years back there was a movie called, The Devils, about a priest and
a nun in the Middle Ages. In the first scene, the nun’s walking around
with her head at a 90-degree angle because she’s so warped from lack
of having giving herself over to natural desires. You could tell where
the movie was going. I walked out—because it …
… But there is a middle way between intending and telling yourself not to intend, and that’s the escape. What allows for the escape is dispassion. It’s the point where you lose interest in this mud house, and you make it unfit for play. In other words, you take the mind to where it’s not going to build mud houses anymore.
You …
… From the skin all the way into the bones, it’s
breath. You’re sitting here in the middle of it, allowing it to come
in and go out like the waves at the edge of the ocean. There’ll be
some variety. You notice with ocean waves that they don’t all come
regularly; there’s an irregular rhythm to them. And the …
… You do it because this is the only way
to escape the suffering that can come when aging and illness start
closing in.
When the results aren’t coming as fast as you’d like, you find ways of
encouraging yourself. This is where the conviction comes in again.
When the results do go well, you try to figure out ways of putting
them …
… We’re looking for patterns—patterns in our behavior that
are unskillful—and for ways in which we can change our behavior so
it’s more skillful. For that, you have to look at your actions over
time and try to do them well, which is why there’s the ardency in
there.
There’s a strange passage in the Commentary, where it tries …
… the middle of the head—or wherever you feel that the breath, as you breathe in, seems to come from that spot. After all, the breath is not so much the air coming in and out of the lungs. The air on its own wouldn’t be doing anything. No matter how strong the wind outside, the air can’t push its way into …
… It’s in this way that you learn how to use your perceptions—and how to change your perceptions so that they actually are conducive to settling down.
As you work with the breath in this way, you’ll find that there are lots of different levels. It’s like the water table at Wat Asokaram. They dug their wells in a very unlikely …
… And this is one way
of analyzing things. Try to figure out what way of breathing is
skillful right now, what way is not skillful. That’s the Buddha’s
basic recommendation for how to analyze qualities: to ask that
question of what’s skillful and what’s not.
A couple of years back, I was talking to a group of people from up …
The Work of a Contemplative | Things as They Are : A Collection of Talks on the Training of the Mind
… This is why it’s called the middle way: the Dhamma always appropriate for curing every sort of defilement to the point where defilement no longer remains. This is how you should understand the power of the middle way. Hold to this path in your practice, because release from suffering and stress is something with a value transcending all three levels of becoming. And …
The World of Conviction
… Years back there was a movie called, The Devils, about a priest and a nun in the Middle Ages. In the first scene, the nun’s walking around with her head at a 90-degree angle because she’s so warped from lack of having giving herself over to natural desires. You could tell where the movie was going. I walked out—because it …
