Search results for: middle way
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- To 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 …
- Victory… 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 …
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 …- Squeezing 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 …
- Merit & 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 …
- The Culture of the Practice… Sometimes it lands on this end, sometimes it lands on that end, sometimes it lands splat in the middle. Why? In the course of the second knowledge, he saw that it was because of the karma of beings. Stated simply: Those who acted on skillful intentions tended to go to good destinations. Those who acted on unskillful intentions tended to go to bad destinations …
- A Centered but Broad AwarenessTake 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 …
- Skillful Selfing… Down the shoulders, down the arms, in the middle of the torso. What we’re trying to develop here is whole-body awareness. The sense of ease fills the body, your awareness fills the body, and in Ajaan Lee’s phrase, you “use the breath as the solvent to get the ease to spread throughout the body.” Then you try to maintain this. This …
- Stand 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 …
- An 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 …
- Start 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 …
- Trust 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 …
- Large-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 …
- Sense 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 …
- Training Your Inner Critic… You can look at the Buddha’s teachings as advice on how to fabricate all these three kinds of fabrication in skillful ways. He even gives you instructions on how to breathe: Breathe in a way that makes you sensitive to rapture, sensitive to pleasure; breathe in a way where you’re aware of the whole body; breathe in a way where you gladden …
- Dhamma Medicine… In the same way when you practice, you’re the one who’s responsible. The Buddha tells you what works—what’s good for the mind, what’s bad for the mind—but it’s up to you to follow the instructions. The path he lays out is very similar to the three kinds of treatment you get when you go to, say, a …
- The Brahmaviharas on the Path… So when you think in these ways, holding these perceptions in mind, you can develop a more and more genuine feeling of goodwill, a feeling that’s not threatened by the fact that other people are going to continue to act in sometimes really outrageous and horrible ways. Because when you see them acting in horrible ways, you’ve got to have compassion for …
- The Dhamma Wheel… Because we’re thirsty in these ways, we feed off the things that we identify with, that we cling to. So the duty here is to abandon these three kinds of craving. Craving for sensuality is not so much craving for sensual pleasures as craving for the mind’s activity of fantasizing about pleasures. We engage in that a lot more than we do …
- Asalha Puja… Think about and evaluate the breath so that there’s a sense of ease and well-being in the way you breathe. This is how you get the mind into concentration. Concentration is part of the path. When you practice the path, that’s called paying homage through the practice—patipatti-puja—the kind of homage the Buddha preferred. Tonight’s Asalha Puja. We …
- An Island in the Flood… You’re crossing a river and you get to an island in the middle of the river. The river has the potential to flood, but you’ve got an island that’s high enough, so that even when it floods, you’re not swept away. But it’s a way station on the way to the other side. What does it mean to practice …
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