… It was only when he found the middle way that he was able to reach the end of suffering: going to something that doesn’t age, doesn’t grow ill, doesn’t die. And part of that way is right view. That’s what the four noble truths are: the terms of right view.
So these are the truths that guide us in that …
… of temptation, that get in the way of our practice. It’s not the case that they always obstruct us. Sometimes they turn into our friends and companions; sometimes into our workers and supporters; sometimes into our slaves, helping us and caring for us. This is why, if you’re discerning, you have to walk a middle course. On one hand, you have to …
… Again, we tend to delight the other way around. We delight in
our cravings; we delight in our defilements. We don’t take much
delight in working at making the mind more responsible, making it more
trustworthy.
So you have to learn how to think in terms that counteract that old
tendency. It’s good that you’re able to sit here and find …
… Here are these shells, gravel, and pebbles, and also these shoals of fish swimming about and resting.’ In the same way, the monk discerns, as it 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 mental effluents… This is the origination …
Your practice doesn’t come together simply because causes and
conditions happen to be that way. There’s something inside you that
has to want it to happen and to make it happen.
You look at the images the Buddha gives for people who do the
practice: people who are searching for something; people who are
struggling, fighting in battles; people who are being …
… You were actually
going to figure out what kind of breathing would lead to rapture, what
kind of breathing would lead to pleasure, how to breathe in a way that
you’re conscious of the whole body, how you can calm bodily
fabrication, how you can breathe in a way that calms mental
fabrication, and how to breathe in a way that gladdens the …
… We have to look after the breath in this way, in the same way that we catch baby chicks to put in the coop. If we hold them too tight, they die. If we hold them too loosely, they run away. We have to gather them in our hands in a way that’s just right. That way they’ll all end up safely …
… There are skillful actions on the worldly level, in other words, there
are skillful ideas that help you live in the world in a happy and
pleasant way. There are unskillful ones, which make you live in an
unpleasant or unhappy way. There are mixed ones, and then there are
the ideas that take you beyond ideas, take you beyond action entirely.
Those ideas …
… Then
you hold onto the raft as you use your hands and feet to make your way
across the river.
When you get to the other side, okay, *that’s *when you let go. Don’t
let go before you’ve gotten to the other side, though. If you let go
in the middle of the river, you just get washed away.
So, as …
… He started his first sermon by explaining the noble
eightfold path as the middle way between self-torture and indulgence
in sensual pleasure. And to the very last person he taught, he said
that it’s only in a teaching where you have the noble eightfold path
that you’re going to find anyone awakened.
The eight folds of the path are actually eight …
… in the middle of the sea. They keep climbing on board, climbing on board, until the day when the beings of the world have no more belief in the teachings of the religion. That’s when the ship will no longer have any function. Those who are still left in the sea will have to stay there adrift, with no more way of escape …
… There’s a nice buzz, say, in your hands, or in the middle of the chest. Allow that nice feeling to be unaffected by the in-and-out breathing. Don’t squeeze it. That way it gets a chance to grow stronger. Even as you breathe out, allow this feeling to stay full. As it grows stronger, let it spread. It’s usually accompanied …
… The Sakyan capital city,
Kapilavatthu, was located in the northwest of the Ariyan
world—the middle Ganges valley.1 The following passage states
that the bodhisatta’s father was a king
(rājan), but it has to be
borne in mind that this title was used not only by rulers who
would count as “king” in the modern sense, but also by the
oligarchs in …
… And was there
a continent behind the mountains, or were they simply a chain set in
the middle of the sea? A lot of things they didn’t know at all. Just
finding a path through the mountains was quite an endeavor.
But they learned about the mountains in two ways. One was through
their initial forays, just trying to find a path through …
… The gradual slope is the practice of getting
more and more sensitive to what’s actually happening right here, and
also getting more and more sensitive to what it means to practice the
middle way, to know when you’re putting too much pressure on things
and when you’re not put enough pressure on things. That sort of
sensitivity you can develop only …
… You
look for ways in which you can improve your life around you, the life
of the people around you, and you work at it. You look for ways in
which to improve things. Try to find some form of right livelihood and
engage in it.
The second quality is that once you’ve gained your livelihood in a
good way, you try to …
… This way, you learn how to become your own doctor. There’s nobody who
can stand over your shoulder and say, “Now you breathe this way, now
you breathe that way, now you focus on this, you’d better drop that.”
If there were somebody doing that and they were accurate, they would
scare you—that somebody could read your mind that accurately. What …
… So right effort doesn’t mean just a middling effort, it means
appropriate effort, appropriate to what you can handle—and appropriate
to the task.
As I said earlier, as the Buddha pointed out, there are some problems
in the mind and all you have to do is to look at them and they go way.
Others require a lot of effort. You have …
… They make it part of their self-image and do unskillful things with it, rather than seeing it as something of the world that has temporarily come their way.
The wise question to ask when gain comes your way is, “How are you going to squeeze the best use out of it?” This doesn’t mean squeezing as much pleasure as you can. It …
… If
there’s a pleasant feeling, say, in the middle of the chest, try to
breathe in a way that keeps that pleasant feeling going all the way
through the in-breath, all the way through the out, without any breaks
in-between. Don’t let the in-and-out of the breath disturb the ease
and spaciousness and pleasure that come with that …
The Demons of Defilement | Inner Strength & Parting Gifts: Talks by Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo
… of temptation, that get in the way of our practice. It’s not the case that they always obstruct us. Sometimes they turn into our friends and companions; sometimes into our workers and supporters; sometimes into our slaves, helping us and caring for us. This is why, if you’re discerning, you have to walk a middle course. On one hand, you have to …
