… Having sown it there, he
would sow it in the middling field. Having sown it there, he
might not sow it in the poor field—sandy, salty, with bad soil—or
he might. Why is that? It would at least go toward cattle
fodder.”
“In the same way, headman, like the excellent field are the
monks & nuns to me. I teach them the Dhamma …
… Then there’s the way you talk to yourself about it, about how this
person behaves this way—always behaves this way—and it’s unbearable.
Something’s got to be done. Well, learn how to question that. We do
have the choice of how we talk about our experiences as we go through
the day. And the way we talk about our experiences …
… It’s the same with the middle way as a whole. It’s very easy to
practice in extremes. Sometimes it might be exhausting, but it’s easy
in the sense that you don’t have to do much thinking, just plow into
whatever you do. But finding the point of just right requires
discernment. And it’s going to take time. This is …
… Sometimes it falls splat in the middle, without much rhyme or reason.
Karma is what drives all this, but the workings of karma can be very
complex. And they can come out in very unexpected ways. We’ve been
through this so many times, the Buddha said, that it’s very hard to
meet someone who has never been your mother or your father …
… You gently hold that nice feeling all way through the in-breath, and all the way through the out-breath, adjusting your breathing so that it doesn’t disturb the feeling. Or you can just keep in mind the word “breath,” ”breath,” “breath,” as a way of reminding yourself not to leave the breath, when something else comes up. Or the general feeling you …
… It could be the
tip of the nose, the middle of the chest, the abdomen, any part of the
body where you have the sensation that now the breath is coming in,
now the breath is going out. Allow that area to stay relaxed all the
way through the in-breath, all the way through the out-, and all the
way through the spaces …
… One day he came to see the Buddha in the middle of the day, and the Buddha asked him, “What have you been doing today, great king?”
Let me read you his answer:
“Just now, lord, I was engaged in the sort of royal affairs typical of head-anointed warrior kings intoxicated with the intoxication of sovereignty, obsessed by greed for sensuality, who have …
… from the back of the neck down the spine,
out the legs; from the middle of the chest down through the stomach
and the intestines; down the shoulders, down the arms; all throughout
the head.
Think of the breathing as a whole-body process. In the Buddha’s
analysis, there’s breath element throughout the body. You feel it most
prominently as you breathe …
… In that way,
you develop a greater solidity. And the solidity is in and of itself a
gift to the people around you.
I recently saw an old New Yorker cartoon: a very chaotic office with
one person in the middle of the office who seemed calm. The boss was
talking to another of the workers, saying, “George over there: He’s a
center …
… It’s your kamma in the present experimenting with different ways of dealing with pleasure, different ways of dealing with pain, to see what approaches give the best results. Over time, as a meditator, your powers of judgment should get more and more precise in this way.
This is one of the reasons why the Buddha included evaluation as part of right concentration. You …
… A lot of the
Buddha’s meditation instructions involve teaching us how to think in a
way that’s useful, in a way that’s helpful. We may think, well, we
know how to think perfectly well, thank you, but if your thinking
causes suffering, if it causes harm, then no matter how clever it is,
you still don’t know how to think …
… It’s part of
the middle way, a pleasure that’s actually conducive to developing
clarity and discernment in the mind.
So work on your concentration to make sure that it’s something you can
rely on. Work on your virtue, work on your discernment so that you can
hold on to them with confidence.
When the Buddha says that the self is its …
… The body
has to function in a certain way, the brain has to function in a
certain way, to maintain that knowledge, and yet we know these things
can change.
This is why we need to look for a refuge. We talk about taking refuge
in the path, but even the path is uncertain until it’s reached the
goal. Once the goal is …
… If they don’t work, then try to imagine a different way of
changing things.
You may have noticed this when reading Ajaan Lee’s instructions for
meditation, especially in his Dhamma talks. In Keeping the Breath in
Mind, he gives you some basic principles, but in his Dhamma talks he
plays with all kinds of other ways of playing with the breath, ways …
… You can work with the mind, and that
gives a greater sense of well-being as you learn how to stay focused
and solid in the midst of all the changes that come your way.
After all, we do live in a middle level of being. The Buddha talks
about levels of being that are exclusively painful, those that are
exclusive pleasant, and then …
… He discerns, as it is has come to be, that ‘This is stress… This is the origination of stress… This is the cessation of stress… This is the way leading to the cessation of stress… These are effluents… This is the origination of effluents… This is the cessation of effluents… This is the way leading to the cessation of effluents.’ His heart, thus knowing …
… middle of the night. He saw beings
dying and being reborn in line with their karma, going up and down and
up and down. It’s almost as if samsara is playing a trick on people.
You work really hard to develop good karma and you get the rewards.
But then if you’re attached to the rewards, you start behaving in
unskillful ways …
… Or if the mind is feeling really irritable, you can think of relaxing everything going down to the legs, down to the toes, think of yourself sitting in the middle of the breath, putting the breath all around you, with relaxation spreading out from the center in every direction.
So: lots of ways of playing with the breath. Lots of ways of playing with …
… It’s a sensation of energy that flows through the whole body, and you’re sitting in the middle of this vast breathing process that affects every nerve, every muscle. The whole experience of your body is related to the breath. The more you can perceive the breath in that way, the easier it is to settle down. And the easier it is to …
… After all, the fact that there’s
pain in the body is problem enough, but you don’t want to be adding to
it by the way you breathe. And you want to see if the way you breathe
can actually help.
When I had malaria, I found that simply breathing became laborious. I
realized that because I was using certain muscles in the …
Portraits of the Buddha | Noble Warrior : A Life of the Buddha
… Having sown it there, he would sow it in the middling field. Having sown it there, he might not sow it in the poor field—sandy, salty, with bad soil—or he might. Why is that? It would at least go toward cattle fodder.” “In the same way, headman, like the excellent field are the monks & nuns to me. I teach them the Dhamma …
DN 12 Lohicca Sutta | To Lohicca
… He discerns, as it is has come to be, that ‘This is stress… This is the origination of stress… This is the cessation of stress… This is the way leading to the cessation of stress… These are effluents… This is the origination of effluents… This is the cessation of effluents… This is the way leading to the cessation of effluents.’ His heart, thus knowing …
