… He
finally comes to a big bull elephant in the middle of a clearing. When
he actually sees the elephant, that’s when he knows he’s got the
elephant.”
The same way, the Buddha said, there are footprints and scratch marks
all along the path. There’s a sense of well-being that comes when you
get the mind in a strong state …
… And it seems that in every case, they were having trouble simply adjusting to the fact that they were in Thailand, accepting things the way they were. So a lot of his teaching had to do with equanimity and patience. He probably saw that Westerners lacked these qualities and that they needed them to be reinforced before they could really get started on anything …
… You can interpret that statement in lots of ways. What it comes down
to is that we have a lot of similarities in terms of the big issues.
But in terms of how the particulars of those big issues get worked
out, we have our individual issues, which is why the Buddha had to
have so many different ways of teaching the path.
There …
… It’s the same way with the meditation. We start out trying to focus on the breath and we put a lot of pressure on it, for fear that if we don’t, the mind’s going to slip away. Of course, a lot of the pressure on the breath has an effect on the circulation of fluids and energies in the body. You …
… Don’t try to boil
things down to one idea and then just run with that all the
way—because you may run off the side of the road. Remember, this is a
middle way; it’s balanced. And finding balance is one of the most
difficult things to do. It requires the most discernment. If this were
simply a practice of running off …
… Step back a bit, learn to laugh at yourself in a good-humored way—not in a sarcastic way, but a good-humored way, a sympathetic way—and then get on with the practice. You’ll find then that things go a lot better.
So all of this comes under the issue of right attitude. It’s not listed as one of the factors …
… It’s the same way with the meditation. We start out trying to focus on the breath and we put a lot of pressure on it, for fear that if we don’t, the mind’s going to slip away. Of course, a lot of the pressure on the breath has an effect on the circulation of fluids and energies in the body. You …
… As the Buddha says, it’s good in the
beginning, good in the middle, good in the end.
As with any path, there are going to be difficulties along the way. He
never promised that it would be easy. But it’s always good. That’s why
it’s worth sticking with it. As he said, even if tears are running
down your cheeks …
… It’s useful, when you see your defilements, to be able to laugh at
them—not in a nasty way, but just in a good-humored, “This is the way
human nature is” kind of way. It’s always good to have that attitude
at the back of your mind. When you’re confident that this battle can
be won, then you can approach …
… There’s a right way and there’s a wrong way. The right way is to
pull on the udder. The wrong way is to twist the horn. Now, suppose
you’ve been twisting the horn for a long time and somebody says, “Hey,
twisting the horn doesn’t get any results.” So you stop twisting the
horn and say, “Well, this is pretty …
… If a man were to open watercourses leading off from both sides, the current in the middle of the river would be interrupted, diverted, & dispersed. The river would not go far, its current would not be swift, and it would not carry everything with it. In the same way, if a monk has not rid himself of these five hindrances… there is no possibility …
… Many times we have habitual ways of relating to sensations, and they’re so habitual and so consistent that we think there’s no choice at all. “This is the way things have to be,” we think, but they don’t.
That’s the other implication of the principle of kamma: You can change your actions. If some parts of experience are dependent on …
… after themselves with ease.” That way they can have the happiness of independence and self-reliance.
Another set of metta phrases is in the Karaṇīya Metta Sutta. They start out with a simple wish for happiness:
Happy, at rest,
may all beings be happy at heart.
Whatever beings there may be,
weak or strong, without exception,
long, large,
middling, short,
subtle, blatant,
seen & unseen …
… 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 …
… When Ajaan Lee got back to Bangkok
and started looking into how this might succeed, he found out there
was a senior monk in Bangkok who stood in the way, saying that if
he—the senior monk—was not involved in the project, it wasn’t going to
succeed. Ajaan Lee knew that he didn’t have that many connections in
the bureaucracy, so …
… Unlike ordinary ways of thinking, which simply entangle you, these ways of thinking disentangle the tangle. Sometimes they cut right through. If you worked at minutely disentangling every single tangle in your mind, there’d never be an end to it. So you use these ways of thinking as knives to cut right through everything, to come right here to the breath, because this …
… 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 …
… They mean freedom—freedom from
the way the mind has allowed itself to be enslaved, freedom from the
way it’s constantly kept in the dark, freedom from all agitation,
freedom from its own clinging. When you taste the sense of well-being
that comes from that freedom and you look at whatever pleasure
happiness that came out of giving in to your defilements …
… It might be down in the chest, in the throat, in the middle of the
head. Once you’re found your spot, watch over it.
As you direct your thoughts to the breath, you can also evaluate it
to figure out what feels good, what feels best, what kinds of
perceptions are best, what ways of breathing are best, so that you can
settle …
… 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 …
Isolating the Aggregates | Gather ’Round the Breath
… It’s the same way with the meditation. We start out trying to focus on the breath and we put a lot of pressure on it, for fear that if we don’t, the mind’s going to slip away. Of course, a lot of the pressure on the breath has an effect on the circulation of fluids and energies in the body. You …
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 …
