… And the best way to keep those
duties in mind is to simply be with the body in and of itself, how it
feels to be with the body right here right now.
For example, the breath: If you’re concerned about the duties of the
world, the breath has only one function for you, which is to keep you
alive. So when you …
… The first thing that you have to understand about pain is that some of it comes from your actions in the past—such as the way you’ve been using your body, the way you’ve been feeding it, the extent to which you have or haven’t been exercising it—but some of the causes for the pain are things you’re doing …
… Sometimes it lands on its base, sometimes on its tip, sometimes smack on its middle. We’re slippery characters, changing roles all the time [§41].
20. As a summary, what would be a good way to teach children some healthy lessons about kamma?
You might try the lessons the Buddha gave to his own son, Rāhula [§42].
First he taught Rāhula how important it …
… This message was aimed directly at the monks—on the grounds that they had no family to attend to them, so they should care for one another—but it’s phrased in such a way that the message applies indirectly to lay people as well: When you belong to a family, you’re duty-bound to look after the aged, ill, or dying members …
… This is the way it is with us; this is the way it is with other people.
When you see the truth in this way, the mind gives rise to disenchantment because it sees clearly that every thing of every sort simply arises and changes, and when it changes it disbands. The mind can let go and stay neutral, and the path arises. The …
… between heedless and heedful ways of living, and ends with the final attainment of total mastery. On the other hand, the plot must not show smooth, systematic progress; otherwise the work would turn into a treatise. There must be reversals and diversions to maintain interest. This principle is at work in the fairly unsystematic ordering of the Dhammapada’s middle sections. Verses dealing with …
… That required an act of imagination, not only in memory but also in coming up with that particular memory and deciding that he wanted to try that approach next—realizing that it was the middle way between two extremes.
He’d been thinking only in extremes. And all too often, when we’re faced with issues coming up in the meditation, we tend to …
… And you, monks, are very helpful to brahmans & householders, as you teach them the Dhamma admirable in the beginning, admirable in the middle, & admirable in the end, as you expound the holy life both in letter & meaning, entirely complete, surpassingly pure. In this way the holy life is lived in mutual dependence, for the purpose of crossing over the flood, for making a right …
… Other issues are problems that have to be settled in a formal way. Duty-issues, however, are formal ways of settling problems. They themselves, as Community transactions, are problems only in the sense that they have to be conducted strictly according to the correct formal pattern. If they aren’t, they are invalid, open to question, and have to be conducted again.
When a …
… Another fetter is uncertainty—doubts and hesitation, running back and forth, not knowing which way to go and ending up spinning around along with the world.
Once we know the ways of the body and mind, we’ll be released from these fetters. The mind will gain release from the body and shed the fermentations of defilement. This is called knowledge of the end …
… In this way, the Buddha finds a middle way that allows for freedom within the patterns of cause and effect in our actions.
In fact, these interacting patterns form the basic metaphysical principle on the nature of causality that the Buddha discovered in the course of his awakening. Together they form the fourth metaphysical implication of a healthy psychological attitude toward actions: that actions …
… Ānanda: “Master Ānanda, is there any one monk endowed in each & every way with the qualities with which Master Gotama—worthy & rightly self-awakened—was endowed?”
“No, brahman, there isn’t any one monk endowed in each & every way with the qualities with which the Blessed One—worthy & rightly self-awakened—was endowed. For the Blessed One was the arouser of the unarisen path …
… There are now
monk disciples of mine of middle standing. There are now junior
monk disciples of mine. There are now elder nun disciples of
mine… nun disciples of mine of middle standing… junior nun
disciples of mine… male lay disciples of mine, householders
wearing white, following the celibate life… male lay disciples of
mine, householders wearing white, partaking of sensuality… female
lay disciples …
… So think your way to settling down. Take a couple of good, long, deep
in-and-out breaths and notice where you feel the breathing. Where it
seems to be most prominent, focus there. And allow your attention to
stay there all the way through the in-breath, all the way though the
out. This part of the meditation requires training because the mind …
… This is one of the ways in which the meditation gets up off the
cushion and actually helps with your life. Remember the word for
meditation in Pali is bhāvanā. It means to develop. Whatever good
qualities you can develop in the mind, it’s all part of meditation.
Whether you’re sitting here with your eyes closed, or in the middle of
an …
… If you’re a painter, a skier, and a miner, you will see the same mountain in different ways depending on what you want from it at any given moment—beauty, adventure, or wealth. Even if you stay focused on nothing but the desire to paint, the beauty you want from the mountain will change with time—sometimes over years, sometimes from one moment …
… And in whatever way the Teacher or a fellow person leading the holy life teaches the Dhamma to the monk, in just that way the monk, with regard to that Dhamma, is sensitive to the meaning, is sensitive to the Dhamma. In him—sensitive to the meaning, sensitive to the Dhamma—joy is born. When he is joyful, rapture is born. In one who …
… Avoiding both of these extremes, the middle way realized by the Tathāgata—producing vision, producing knowledge—leads to calm, to direct knowledge, to self-awakening, to unbinding.
“And which is the middle way realized by the Tathāgata that—producing vision, producing knowledge—leads to calm, to direct knowledge, to self-awakening, to unbinding? Precisely this noble eightfold path: right view, right resolve, right speech …
… Ānanda: “Master
Ānanda, is there any one monk endowed in each & every way with
the qualities with which Master Gotama—worthy & rightly
self-awakened—was endowed?”
“No, brahman, there isn’t any one monk endowed in each & every
way with the qualities with which the Blessed One—worthy &
rightly self-awakened—was endowed. For the Blessed One was the
arouser of the unarisen path …
… It was rare for him to search out other people to refute in that way, but he saw the importance of emphasizing time and again that determinism is not the way things work. As he says, practice would be totally pointless if everything were predetermined by the past. So conviction also focuses on the principle that right now you can develop what’s skillful …
Pain | Good Heart, Good Mind
… The first thing that you have to understand about pain is that some of it comes from your actions in the past—such as the way you’ve been using your body, the way you’ve been feeding it, the extent to which you have or haven’t been exercising it—but some of the causes for the pain are things you’re doing …
Introduction to the Dhammapada
… between heedless and heedful ways of living, and ends with the final attainment of total mastery. On the other hand, the plot must not show smooth, systematic progress; otherwise the work would turn into a treatise. There must be reversals and diversions to maintain interest. This principle is at work in the fairly unsystematic ordering of the Dhammapada’s middle sections. Verses dealing with …
