Search results for: middle way

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  2. 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 … 
  3. The Path of Adventure
     … We start somewhere in the middle. We come to the practice with some virtue, some concentration, some insight already. But we also come with a lot of other things that are not part of the path. They’re obstacles. Our virtue is not all around. Our concentration and insight are not all around. Sometimes there are little gaps, sometimes the gaps are enormous. So … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. Understanding Pain
     … It’s because the circulation isn’t going well in the back of the neck or in the middle of the back. This is why you start up there, at the top of the back, and think of the breath energy going all the way down the spine and out the leg. Wherever there’s tension that tends to tighten up in those areas … 
  7. Page search result icon Non-Reactive Judgment
     … They can dress themselves up and disguise themselves in all kinds of ways. Laziness in particular can dress itself up like the Dhamma and say, “Well, the Buddha said for you to follow the middle way. It’s leads to a sense of ease, so the path itself should be easeful, too.” But then you think of all the paths you’ve encountered in … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. Calm in the Storm
     … down through the head, down through the neck, the torso, and right in the middle of the body. As you breathe in, the breath goes into that line from all directions, and as you breathe out, it goes out from that line in all directions. So see what way of conceiving or perceiving the breath energy is helpful for you right now. The breath … 
  10. Three Recollections
     … the fact that someone was able to find the way to the end of suffering and able to teach it to others. You can take heart in that. You can also reflect on the Dhamma. The Dhamma is available to all. And it teaches us a path that, as they say, is good in the beginning, good in the middle, good in the end … 
  11. Eyes in the Back of Your Head
     … This way makes it easier to develop that balance between the center and the full-body awareness. First you have to go through the body. Notice where the blockages are. But before you look at the blockages, first you’ve got to get at least one spot that feels good. Maintain that steady sense of fullness all the way through the in-breath, all … 
  12. Birth Is Suffering
     … The purpose of this is to pull you out of the different sides of conflicts in a way that’s not escapist, in a way that actually is good for the people involved in the conflict. If you can help get them out, too, then you’re happy to do it. Then finally, resolve on harmlessness, which the Buddha basically says is equivalent to … 
  13. Holding On to the Path
     … And there’s a way in which you could say that there are things you have to be attached to, things you have to desire. Desire does play a role in the path. It’s a part of right effort. You have to want to let go of unskillful qualities and you have to want to develop skillful ones. It’s written in the … 
  14. Book search result icon Ten Perfections II. Truth
     … the first one doesn’t see, the middle one doesn’t see, the last one doesn’t see. In the same way, the statement of the brahmans turns out to be a row of blind men, as it were: the first one doesn’t see, the middle one doesn’t see, the last one doesn’t see. So what do you think, Bhāradvāja: this … 
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  15. Guardian Meditations
     … You have to think your way to stillness, think your way to a place in the mind where the mind is willing to stop its thinking and settle down. There are lots of different lists of topics in the commentaries—40 different meditation topics in all. And there’s a standard list that’s very popular in Thailand. It’s called the guardian meditations … 
  16. Significance
     … You show some responsibility when you do, when you’ve acted in a way that doesn’t harm anyone. That’s really significant. That’s something we should learn how to appreciate more and more. There is room for individual expression. You look at the different perfections, and generosity in particular: There are lots of different ways you can be generous. The Buddha placed … 
  17. Things Aren’t as They Should Be
     … Let those with ears show forth their conviction.” When he went to teach the five brethren, even before he said anything about the middle way or the four noble truths, he said, “The deathless has been attained, and if you follow what I teach you, you can attain it, too.” When Sariputta heard a very short synopsis of the Buddha’s teachings and gained … 
  18. A Sense of Yourself
     … When Ajaan Lee got back to Bangkok and started looking into how this might succeed, he found out there was a senior monk in Bangkok who stood in the way, saying that if he—the senior monk—was not involved in the project, it wasn’t going to succeed. Ajaan Lee knew that he didn’t have that many connections in the bureaucracy, so … 
  19. Conviction in Charge
     … He finally comes to a big bull elephant in the middle of a clearing. When he actually sees the elephant, that’s when he knows he’s got the elephant.” The same way, the Buddha said, there are footprints and scratch marks all along the path. There’s a sense of well-being that comes when you get the mind in a strong state … 
  20. A Larger Perspective
     … You can interpret that statement in lots of ways. What it comes down to is that we have a lot of similarities in terms of the big issues. But in terms of how the particulars of those big issues get worked out, we have our individual issues, which is why the Buddha had to have so many different ways of teaching the path. There … 
  21. All-around Eye
     … Don’t try to boil things down to one idea and then just run with that all the way—because you may run off the side of the road. Remember, this is a middle way; it’s balanced. And finding balance is one of the most difficult things to do. It requires the most discernment. If this were simply a practice of running off … 
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