… He develops equanimity toward the symptoms he can’t cure so that he can focus on those he can—or at least on ways in which he can alleviate the patient’s pain and suffering. Instead of trying to force things in areas where he cannot make a difference, he channels his goodwill and compassion for the patient in other ways that are more …
… In this way, the Buddha finds a middle way that allows for freedom within the patterns of cause and effect in our actions. The fact of the patterns is what allows us to learn lessons from our actions today that we can apply with some confidence tomorrow. The fact of the openings in the intersection of the patterns is what allows us to develop …
… Rather, he’s saying that we have to deal with the anger in such a way that it doesn’t get in the way of responding in an appropriate way, or a skillful way, to what we see as wrong.
Once you get the anger out of the way, there are two things that can happen. One is that you may see that the …
… Tathāgatas ask in a way that is connected to the goal /welfare, not in a way unconnected to the goal/welfare. Tathāgatas have cut off the bridge in reference to things that are unconnected to the goal/welfare.
dvīhākārehi buddhā bhagavanto bhikkhū paṭipucchanti dhammaṁ vā desessāma sāvakānaṁ vā sikkhāpadaṁ paññāpessāmāti.
Buddhas, Blessed Ones, cross-question monks for two reasons: (thinking,) “I will teach the …
… However, this interpretation doesn’t fit in with the way the suttas actually use the term parimukhaṁ or other key words associated with meditation practice. In other words, even though the suttas don’t explicitly define the word parimukhaṁ, the ways they use the term, and the contexts in which they use it, show implicitly that neither “tip of the nose” nor “around the …
… The mind should be made to settle down in this way. The mind should be unified in this way. The mind should be concentrated in this way.’ Then eventually he [the first] will become one who has attained both internal tranquility of awareness & insight into phenomena through heightened discernment.”
— AN 4:94
§ 38. “I have also taught the step-by-step cessation of fabrications …
… I don’t think in that way. I don’t think otherwise. I don’t think not. I don’t think not not.’” — DN 1
§ 153. “Well then—knowing in what way, seeing in what way, does one without delay put an end to fermentations? There is the case where an ordinary uninstructed person—who has no regard for noble ones, is not well …
… This being the way things were, I left Wat Boromnivasa and returned to visit my supporters in Chanthaburi. During this period there were all sorts of people, jealous and angry with me, who tried to smear my name in every conceivable way, but I’d rather not name their names because I believe they helped me by making me more and more determined.
WITH …
… The mind lies in the middle of the sense spheres: eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind. That’s the way it is with a person who practices. If we’re careful, alert, and restrained, we’ll get to know ourselves. We’ll get to know the mind: what it’s doing and in what way.
A Road Through the Wilderness
Training the mind …
… All levels of becoming,
anywhere,
in any way,
are inconstant, stressful, subject to change.
Seeing this—as it’s come to be—
with right discernment,
one abandons craving for becoming
and doesn’t delight in non-becoming.46
From the total ending of craving
comes fading & cessation without remainder:
unbinding.
For the monk unbound
through lack of clinging/sustenance,
there’s no further-becoming …
… To develop insight, AN 4:94 recommends visiting someone skilled in insight and asking, “How should fabrications be regarded? How should they be investigated? How should they be seen with insight?” A way of understanding these terms in line with other passages in the suttas would be to say that regarding here has to do with noting the various ways of analyzing fabrications as …
… Trying to find awakening in ways apart from the noble eightfold path is like trying to squeeze oil from gravel, or milking a cow by twisting its horn (MN 126). The Buddha’s knowledge of the way to awakening is like that of an expert gatekeeper who knows, after encircling the walls of a city, that there’s only one way into the city …
… Thus the practice must focus on ways to understand and bring about dispassion for the causes of stress and pain here and now. As the Buddha points out in MN 106, equanimity plays an important role in this practice, but it can also become an object for passion and delight, which would then stand in the way of true release. Thus he notes here …
… This being so, he doesn’t attend to ideas unfit for attention and attends (instead) to ideas fit for attention.…
“He attends appropriately, ‘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.’ As he attends appropriately in this way, three fetters are abandoned in him: self-identification view …
… In this way, it plays a major role in right view.
As for feeling and perception, in Chapter 1 we have already noted the role of feeling in the pursuit of the middle way; in the section below—Final Right View—we will discuss the role of perception in performing the tasks appropriate to both the transcendent and the final levels of right view …
… Don’t act like a log, simply going through the motions of walking, sitting, meditating, sitting like a stump in the middle of a field without any sense of circumspection in the heart. This sort of going through the motions isn’t any different from the way people in general normally act.
To be a disciple of the Tathāgata, whose fame has spread throughout …
… 6) A woman may become ordained as a bhikkhunī only after, as a female trainee (sikkhamānā), she has observed the first six of the ten precepts without lapse for two full years. (Apparently she did this as a ten-precept female novice, although this point is controversial.)
7) A bhikkhunī is not to insult or revile a bhikkhu in any way. According to the …
… Touched by contact in various ways,
he shouldn’t keep theorizing about self.
Stilled right within,
a monk shouldn’t seek peace from another,
from anything else.
For one stilled right within,
there’s nothing embraced,
so how rejected?
As in the middle of the sea
it is still,
with no waves upwelling,
so the monk—unperturbed, still—
should not swell himself
anywhere.” — Sn …
… As for the exception—a constricted mind and a scattered mind—both members of the pair are unskillful; they’re paired because they represent two extremes between which you have to find a middle way to bring the mind to concentration.
There are eight pairs in all:
a mind with passion / a mind without passion
a mind with aversion / a mind without aversion
a …
… That gratified the king.
“In the same way, monks, the wanderers of other sects are blind & eyeless. They don’t know what is beneficial and what is harmful. They don’t know what is the Dhamma and what is non-Dhamma. Not knowing what is beneficial and what is harmful, not knowing what is Dhamma and what is non-Dhamma, they keep on arguing …
Grief & Remorse | Good Heart, Good Mind
… He develops equanimity toward the symptoms he can’t cure so that he can focus on those he can—or at least on ways in which he can alleviate the patient’s pain and suffering. Instead of trying to force things in areas where he cannot make a difference, he channels his goodwill and compassion for the patient in other ways that are more …
On Majjhima Nikāya 61
… In this way, the Buddha finds a middle way that allows for freedom within the patterns of cause and effect in our actions. The fact of the patterns is what allows us to learn lessons from our actions today that we can apply with some confidence tomorrow. The fact of the openings in the intersection of the patterns is what allows us to develop …
MN 101 Devadaha Sutta | At Devadaha
… Thus the practice must focus on ways to understand and bring about dispassion for the causes of stress and pain here and now. As the Buddha points out in MN 106, equanimity plays an important role in this practice, but it can also become an object for passion and delight, which would then stand in the way of true release. Thus he notes here …
