… Some people arrive at the attitude of “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die,” as if that were the best way to spend your time in the light of death. Wisdom requires more than just thinking about death. It also requires thinking about your potential as a human being, your potential for happiness, where that potential truly lies, and what you …
… Then Pañcakaṅga the carpenter left Sāvatthī in the middle of the day to see the Blessed One, but the thought occurred to him, “Now is not the right time to see the Blessed One, for he is in seclusion. And it is not the right time to see the mind-developing monks, for they too are in seclusion. Why don’t I go to …
… That’s one way you have to look for a balance so that contentment and being unburdensome follow the middle way of moderation.
Another set of balancing qualities are contentment on the one hand, and shedding pride and being modest on the other. Some people like to make a show of how frugal they are. This, the Buddha said, is the danger of developing …
… We’re remarkably blind in that way. We’re like the penguins in the story Charcot told of his sailors down in Antarctica. They were staying next to a penguin colony, and the sailors found that they could kill a penguin right in the middle of the colony, take it back, and make penguin pâté, as long as they were quiet about it. The …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… in the middle of the chest going down through the stomach, the intestines. Then the breath energy going down the shoulders and the arms.
That’s just to get you started. If you look at some of Ajaan Lee’s Dhamma talks from later years, after he had done his guide to breath meditation, you find that he also had other ways of dealing …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… The ability to question and test one’s beliefs in an appropriate way is called appropriate attention. The ability to recognize and chose wise people as mentors is called having admirable friends. According to Iti 16–17, these are, respectively, the most important internal and external factors for attaining the goal of the practice. For further thoughts on how to test a belief in …
… They can dress themselves up and disguise themselves in all kinds of Buddhist 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 leads to the highest ease, so the path itself should be easeful, too.” But then you think of all the paths you’ve encountered in the …
… Just figure out a way to get through the whole body systematically: navel, solar plexus, middle of the chest, base of the throat, the head, down the shoulders, out the arms, down the back, out the legs. Survey how all the different parts of the body feel with the in-breath, with the out-breath, all the way through the in-breath, all the …
… 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 …
… 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 …
On Target
August 28, 1956
To sit in meditation in a way that’s right on target, the mind has to be on the path. This means that it stays in the present, without tripping over preoccupations that it likes or dislikes. It’s established solely in the middle way. If it misses this target, it’s not on the path. It’s not …
… Then a second time, when the night was far advanced, at the end of the middle watch, Ven. Ānanda got up from his seat, arranged his robe over one shoulder, stood facing the Blessed One, paying homage with his hands placed palm-to-palm over his heart, and said to him, “Lord, the night is far advanced. The second watch has ended. The community …
… 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 went to bad. It’s made …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
MN 78 Samaṇa-Muṇḍika Sutta | Muṇḍika the Contemplative
… Then Pañcakaṅga the carpenter left Sāvatthī in the middle of the day to see the Blessed One, but the thought occurred to him, “Now is not the right time to see the Blessed One, for he is in seclusion. And it is not the right time to see the mind-developing monks, for they too are in seclusion. Why don’t I go to …
An All-around Eye | Beyond All Directions
… That’s one way you have to look for a balance so that contentment and being unburdensome follow the middle way of moderation. Another set of balancing qualities are contentment on the one hand, and shedding pride and being modest on the other. Some people like to make a show of how frugal they are. This, the Buddha said, is the danger of developing …
