Search results for: middle way
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- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- Eight Principles… impact on the breath—because that’s another way of adjusting the breath: simply changing your perception of it. Visualizing the body as a sponge is one perception that can be helpful in opening up the breath energy. Or as Ajaan Fuang once recommended, you can visualize a column of breath energy in the middle of the body, from the head on down. Then …
- Harmless & Clearheaded… Try long breathing, short breathing, or longer or shorter, or more middling, deeper or more shallow. heavy or light or faster or slower. There are lots of ways of experimenting with the breath, which not only makes it more comfortable but also makes it more interesting to sit here. Here it is, this energy in your body that keeps you alive. It has a …
- Chopping Off Thoughts… So think of it relaxing and staying relaxed all way through. You have to be very watchful here. If your attention slips away, things will tense up again immediately if that’s your normal way of doing things. So you’re reeducating the body in how to breathe, and at the same time reeducating your mind, getting the mind to stay in the present …
- The Stages of Meditation… And then you move up to the next section, say, the solar plexus, and then the middle of the chest, the base of the throat, the head, down the back, out the legs. Starting again at the back of the neck, go down the shoulders and out the arms until you’ve covered the whole body. You can go through the body this way …
- 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 …
- Setbacks… If you lack that conviction, then no matter what, you get stuck in someplace and think, “Well this is it! No way out.” And you give up. You’re lost. But if you’re convinced there must be a way out, that gives you the chance to find it. In that way, in spite of your setbacks, you learn. If you’ve been through …
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