… The more
sensitive you are to the breath, the more you stay with the breath all
the way in, all the way out, trying to make it comfortable, all the
way in, all the way out, then the better the meditation will go. If
any part of the breath starts getting too long, just allow it then to
turn around. If it’s been …
… down into your bones, down into the
middle of the brain, working through any tension that might be lurking
there inside.
If that feels good, keep it up. If it doesn’t, you have all kinds of
other ways of breathing you can test: in-long/out-short,
in-short/out-long, in-short/out-short, deep or shallow, heavy or
light, fast or …
… You don’t know when you’re going to get there, but you know that you
have to follow this path very carefully, because it is a middle way.
If it were a path of extremes, it would be easy. Just go for extreme
effort. Pull out all the stops. Those who are the strongest would win.
But it’s not that way.
As …
… 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 …
… Any issues
you may have had with people during the day, get them out of the way,
because you’re trying to give the mind a place it can settle down in,
right here, right now. And you don’t want those attitudes to be
getting in the way.
If you’re worried about issues in the future, remind yourself: The
best way to …
… That way, you can
watch what’s going on and watch it in a way that gives rise to a sense
of well-being.
This part of the path is really important, because if you don’t have
that sense of pleasure, that sense of refreshment as you meditate,
it’s very easy to wander off. At the same time, you’re not getting …
… That’s the only way you’re going to come to any kind of certainty. And it’s the only way you’re going to lead a life that provides a good container for the practice. You see this so many times on retreats when people come in off the street to spend a whole week just being with their breath. If they have …
… Then you can turn back to look at the movies again., until you can see
through the way the mind deceives itself, the way it deludes itself.
In that way, you’re in control. Once you’re in control, it’s a lot
easier to live life the way you want it to be lived, to do with your
life what you really want …
… 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 …
… Thus, when you find your thoughts heading in the direction of anger or dislike, you should sit down and think in two ways –
(1) Try to think of whatever ways that person has been good to you. When these things come to mind, they’ll give rise to feelings of affection, love, and goodwill. This is one way.
(2) Anger is something worthless, like …
… Truth, Dhamma, restraint, the holy life,
attainment of Brahmā dependent on the middle:
Pay homage to those who’ve become
truly straightened:
That, I call a man
in the flow of the Dhamma.
After hearing these verses, Sundarika asks for Acceptance into the Saṅgha, and the sutta concludes in the same way as the account given here.
9. This is a play on words …
… Whenever the Tathāgata merges his body with his mind and his mind with his body, and remains having alighted on the perception of ease and buoyancy with regard to the body, then his body becomes lighter, more pliant, more malleable, & more radiant.
“Just as when an iron ball heated all day becomes lighter, more pliant, more malleable, & more radiant; in the same way, whenever …
… 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 …
… wake up in the middle of one of your created worlds, and say, “Oh, this is suffering. It doesn’t have to be here.” And you look in the right place instead of placing the blame on other people in the past or in the present. The suffering doesn’t come from them. The suffering comes from the way the mind thinks about things …
… At the end of his period of austerities, he
had the wisdom to realize that there must be some other way. He was
willing to abandon the pride that develops around the practice of
austerities and was able to find the middle way. That was his wisdom.
His purity lay in the fact that once he had seen what had to be done,
he …
… What kind of feeling are you fostering in the way that you’re being attentive? In this way, the fact that you’re paying careful attention to the breath moves you into the area of feelings as a frame of reference, which is the territory of the second tetrad.
The Buddha’s second tetrad has four steps. The first is to determine that you …
… Then move up to the middle of the chest, and the same way around the body in the chest area, then the base of the throat, and the head. You can go down the shoulders to the arms, and then start at the hips, going down the legs to the toes. Work through the body, section by section, making sure that whatever section you …
… Where does that start? How does
it spread through the body? What are the energy channels? What are the
energy centers? When the in-breath starts coming in, where does it
feel like it starts? Around the navel? The middle of the chest? Ask
yourself. Look. And when the energy starts to spread, is there
anything to get in the way? If there is …
… What’s interesting about the breath? Well, you can breathe in all
kinds of ways. You have all kinds of ways of visualizing the breath to
yourself, experiencing the flow of energy through the body. It can
actually deal with physical pains and help with some illnesses.
As I mentioned the other night, Ajaan Lee’s method of dealing with the
breath—thinking of …
… But it’s not the case that
you go straight to those things without having to muck around with
your defilements, because the defilements are going to get in the way
one way or another. Because our habit is to deal unskillfully with
whatever comes up, then when the results of skillful actions come and
are nice, we tend to get complacent—an unskillful …
Thoughts About Thinking
… Any issues you may have had with people during the day, get them out of the way, because you’re trying to give the mind a place it can settle down in, right here, right now. And you don’t want those attitudes to be getting in the way. If you’re worried about issues in the future, remind yourself: The best way to …
Virtue | Basic Themes
… Thus, when you find your thoughts heading in the direction of anger or dislike, you should sit down and think in two ways – (1) Try to think of whatever ways that person has been good to you. When these things come to mind, they’ll give rise to feelings of affection, love, and goodwill. This is one way. (2) Anger is something worthless, like …
Sn 3:4 Sundarika Bhāradvāja
… Truth, Dhamma, restraint, the holy life, attainment of Brahmā dependent on the middle: Pay homage to those who’ve become truly straightened: That, I call a man in the flow of the Dhamma. After hearing these verses, Sundarika asks for Acceptance into the Saṅgha, and the sutta concludes in the same way as the account given here. 9. This is a play on words …
