Search results for: middle way

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2. Play AudioCompassionate Duties
    … He recommends instead the middle way, the noble eightfold path. That’s a value judgment right there. Toward the end of his life he was asked if there were awakened beings in other teachings, and he said any teaching that has the noble eightfold path can give rise to awakened beings. If there’s a lack of the noble eightfold path, then no awakened … 
3. Play AudioThe Basic Medicine
    … Everyone comes up here wounded in one way or another, suffering either from things outside or from things inside. At the time of the Buddha people were suffering from greed, anger, and delusion just as we are. With modern culture, modern society, it seems as if we have more diseases of the mind, more complex ways of getting involved in creating delusion, but they … 
4. Play AudioHow to Leave Meditation
    … Whether you’re focused on the chest, the middle of the head, wherever, there’s some spot in the body where you should feel most natural in your focus. And some ways of breathing are particularly conducive to get your mind to settle down. If you notice that, make a note of it. As you sit down to meditate the next time, remember what … 
5. Play AudioTechnique & Attitude
    … men, women, children, young, old, middle-aged, wealthy, poor, sick, healthy, smart, dumb in the ways of the world. But they’ve all taken the practice and they taken it to heart, and they have all been able to benefit from it in the ways that the Buddha promised. At some point in their practice they all had the same strengths and weaknesses that … 
6. The Karma of Questions De-perception
    … If the new sensations aren’t helpful in that way, you can throw the new tool aside. For example, if you have a sense of being on one side of a blockage, try thinking of being on the other side. Try being on both. Think of the breath as coming into the body, not through the nose or mouth, but through the middle of … 
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7. Play AudioDoing, Maintaining, Using
    … The breath, when you’re not watching it, just comes in and out every which way. But take some time to notice: What kind of breathing really feels good for the body right now? You can focus on the body in any one spot: the tip of the nose, the middle of the chest, at the abdomen. Those are the three main spots, but … 
8. Play AudioTranquility & Insight Together
    … We’re already shaping our experience—through the way we breathe, through the way we think about things, the perceptions we apply to things, the labels, the ideas we impose on our experience. These are all active processes. And as the Buddha said, we do these things out of ignorance for the most part, and as a result, even though we’re looking for … 
9. Play AudioTo Have a Purpose
    … But it’s a good hypothesis, because if it is true that your actions can accomplish a lot, this is a hypothesis that doesn’t get in the way of your potential for genuine happiness. It actually opens the way to accomplishing as much as you can. So why choose the hypothesis that closes off the doors? The problem is that our desires go … 
10. Play AudioSqueezing Goodness Out of the Aggregates
     … in the middle of the jungle just using his breath. There was no one there to tell him how to do it. He had to use his own ingenuity. So when you find troubles coming up in your meditation, don’t just give up. Tell yourself: There must be a way around this. When you believe that there is a way, you’re going … 
11. Play AudioVictory
     … You have your ways of shaping this experience and if you’re not paying careful attention to what you’re doing, middle-level management takes over—in other words, your old habits. You can find yourself tensing up over a little pain here and there without even realizing that it’s happening. It’s almost like somebody else is giving the orders. Part of … 
12. Play AudioEncouragement
     … Keep reminding yourself that’s the way skills are. If this were a very simple skill, the kind of skill where you could make steady progress, it wouldn’t have such a deep impact on the mind. The mind is a very complex phenomenon, so its progress, its growing mastery, is going to be a complex process as well. Ajaan Lee makes a comparison … 
13. Play AudioMerit & Skill
     … That’s another translation of the way the Thais understand the word kusala: it’s intelligent, *chalaad. *You combine your desire for happiness with your intelligence. That way, you find the right motivation, the right gift, the right person to receive the gift, the right motivation for your precepts, the right ways to observe the precepts in ways that don’t offend other people … 
14. Play AudioA Centered but Broad Awareness
    Take a couple of good, long deep in-and-out breaths, and then try to breathe in a way that feels good and refreshing for the body. If long breathing doesn’t feel good, you could change the rhythm. Try to find a rhythm and texture that feels right for you. Or ask yourself, “What parts of the body need energizing? What parts of … 
15. The Mind Like Fire Unbound Chapter IV
     … Avoiding both of these extremes, the middle way realized by the Tathāgata—producing vision, producing knowledge—leads to calm, to direct knowledge, to self-awakening, to unbinding. ‘And what is the middle way realized by the Tathāgata that—producing vision, producing knowledge—leads to calm, to direct knowledge, to self-awakening, to unbinding? Precisely this noble eightfold path: right view, right resolve, right speech … 
16. Play AudioStand Your Ground
     … That’s not a good way to live. A much better way is to think of garbage pail as having a big hole in the bottom, so that everything just goes right through, right through. In other words, you know what people are saying, you know what they’re doing, but you don’t take that as something to focus on. You keep breathing … 
17. Play AudioAn Examined Life
     … That’s one way of thinking about death. The other way is to realize that there are things you can do to prepare. In other words, there are skillful and unskillful ways of living, skillful and unskillful ways of dying. I’ve seen this in my own life. I’ve seen two teachers of mine approach death, and I’ve also seen my father … 
18. Play AudioStart the Year Right Here
     … After all, the path is one that’s admirable in the beginning, admirable in the middle, admirable in the end—admirable not just in the sense that it’s noble, but also in the sense that it’s a good path to follow. Even when you don’t get all the way to happiness, you realize that being on this path is a good … 
19. Play AudioLarge-hearted Goodness
     … Starting in the middle of the chest right at the heart and then going down through the stomach and the intestines. This is good nourishment, because you don’t have to fight anybody for it. It’s right there, it’s free, and it’s very immediate. When you get familiar with the breath and the different ways of breathing, you find that you … 
20. Play AudioTrust in the Power of the Mind
     … middle, admirable in the end. But the best is saved for last. In the beginning, you’re making a gamble. You don’t know if the Buddha’s right or wrong about things like rebirth or karma. But you do know that they’re good things to believe, in the sense that they affirm your power to shape your life in a good way … 
21. Play AudioSense Restraint
     … Sometimes you want it to stop, but that’s like going out into the middle of the highway: The cars are coming along, and you’re telling them to stop. Of course, they’ll run over you. The wise thing to do then is to get out of the way. So that’s where the real problem is. It’s not with your eyes … 
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