… This way you get to see things you didn’t see
before inside, both in the body and in the mind. Because as the mind
begins to gather around the breath like this, and you give it one
thing to stick with, you begin to see other movements in the mind:
other intentions that may come up, other thoughts referring to the
past, referring …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… Now, the Buddha did admit that there are various ways of conceiving
the path, but there are a limited number of variations. And they all
basically contain the same factors: virtue, concentration, and
discernment, sorted out in different ways.
When you look at the different lists in the Wings to Awakening, you
see that the factors are sometimes listed in different orders. For
instance …
… 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 …
… Resembling a ball of sealing wax,
set in a hollow,
with a bubble in the middle
and bathed with tears,
eye secretions are born there too:
The parts of the eye
are rolled all together
in various ways.’
Plucking out her lovely eye,
with mind unattached
she felt no regret.
‘Here, take this eye. It’s yours.’
Straightaway she gave it to him.
Straightaway …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… In the same way, it’s important that you keep your spirits up as you
practice. Realize that if you’re going to make your way to release, it
has to be through doing your duties. So don’t see these duties as
onerous, as a weight bearing you down. They’re an opening, an opening
to freedom: freedom from suffering, freedom from all …
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 …
… This, combined with mindfulness, is probably your best guarantee of getting the mind into balance, so that when things aren’t going the way you’d like them to, you don’t get upset, you don’t get flustered. You simply take it into account and see what you can do to balance it out.
So try to think in ways that are encouraging …
… Those are some of the ways you can release it, ultimately on the way to total release.
It’s in this way that you can use the mind to train the mind—to read its moods, to make it glad to be abandoning unskillful thoughts and developing skillful ones, to get it more concentrated, and to release it, step by step, from its various …
… 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 …
… It
might be around the heart, around the stomach, in the neck, or in the
middle of the head. Keep directing your thoughts to the breath energy
there.
Ajaan Lee’s image is of holding on to a post. You can run around the
post, and as long as you hold on, you don’t get dizzy, you don’t fall
down. But if …
… 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 …
… for the protection of those within and to ward off those without; in the same way, the disciple of the noble ones has heard much, has retained what he has heard, has stored what he has heard. Whatever teachings are admirable in the beginning, admirable in the middle, admirable in the end, that—in their meaning & expression—proclaim the holy life that is entirely …
… 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 …
… With some pains, if you breathe in
a particular way, the pains get worse. If you breathe in another way,
they go away. With other pains, the breath has nothing to do with
them. They’re just there.
How do you learn this? You learn by experimenting; you learn by trial
and error, by trial and success. We’re bringing the mind into a …
… 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 …
2 : Sensuality | The Buddha Smiles: Humor in the Pali Canon
… Resembling a ball of sealing wax, set in a hollow, with a bubble in the middle and bathed with tears, eye secretions are born there too: The parts of the eye are rolled all together in various ways.’ Plucking out her lovely eye, with mind unattached she felt no regret. ‘Here, take this eye. It’s yours.’ Straightaway she gave it to him. Straightaway …
