… the
tip of the nose; the middle of the forehead; the middle of the
head—when he says middle of the head, think of drawing a line from
left to right, front to back, and right there, where the lines
intersect, that’s the middle of the head; the palette; the base of the
throat; the tip of the breastbone, or a point just …
… A Framework for the Frame
Readings
The First Teaching
The Last Teaching
On the Word, “Path”
On the Word, “Noble”
On the Word, “Right”
On the Middle Way
II. The Arising of the Path
Readings
The Discovery of the Path
Supplementary Factors
The Path-factors & their Relationships
III. Right View
Mundane Right View
Transcendent Right View
Final Right View
This/That Conditionality
Readings
Mundane …
… That’s what I’ve got to focus on.”
There was a time when King Pasenadi came to see the Buddha in the
middle of the day. The Buddha asked him, “Where are you coming from,
great king, in the middle of the day like this?” And the king said,
“I’ve been dealing with the sorts of things that people in power,
obsessed …
… Once the mind is in this state of awareness and supported by all
the other elements in the path—right view, right resolve, right
action, right speech, right effort, right mindfulness—it can do
amazing things to your understanding of yourself, your understanding
of the way the mind acts, the way it creates suffering for itself, the
way it doesn’t have to create …
… It’s the food of the middle way. As the Buddha said in his first sermon, the middle way is a middle way between indulgence in sensual pleasures and indulgence in self-torture. But that doesn’t mean it’s a middling feeling, halfway between sensual pleasure and sensual pain. It’s a pleasure of a different sort—the pleasure of form, the body …
… These teachings explain the middle way, don’t they?
A: Basically, what’s middle about the middle way is not that you’re halfway between pleasure and pain. It’s a matter of learning how to approach pleasure and pain not as ends, but as means. You use pleasure and use pain for a higher purpose. For example, we’re using the pleasure of …
… 8, 2005)
The Web of Pain
Friends With Pain
Pain & Distraction
Digging Out of Despair
Mistakes
Mindstorms
Everybody Suffers
Social Anxiety
Self Esteem
People Suffer from Their Thinking
Body as Path
This Fathom Long Body
Body as Path
Seeing with the Body
The Middle Way
Getting into the Body
The Energy in the Body
Breaking Old Habits
A Seeker’s Habits
Breaking Old Habits …
… Or think of it in another way: The mind is cool and refreshed like a lotus blooming in the middle of a pond. It’s surrounded by nourishing water, cool and with an appealing scent. If you’re sitting here in the meditation hall without any hindrances in the mind, it’s like a lotus in the middle of a pond. This is also …
… After a while, you forget
that there were decisions made to make the movie this way. It could
have come out in many different ways. It didn’t have to be the way it
was. But you watch it many times and it acquires an inevitability.
So remind yourself that these things are not inevitable. Take the
pattern of the mind being still for …
… Dependent Co-arising
Goodwill All Around
Truths of the Will
Taking Responsibility
Overwhelmed by Freedom
A Refuge from Modern Values
Two Kinds of Middle
Shoot Your Pains with Wisdom
Wilderness Wealth
Disenchantment
In the Land of Wrong View
Right Mindfulness
The Best of a Bad Situation
Five Strengths
The Humble Way to Awakening
Ignorance
In Terms of the Four Noble Truths
Faith in the …
… of good family, having gone forth in this way, may be greedy for sensual pleasures, strong in his passions, malevolent in mind, corrupt in his resolves, his mindfulness muddled, unalert, uncentered, his mind scattered, & his faculties uncontrolled. Just as a firebrand from a funeral pyre–burning at both ends, covered with excrement in the middle–is used as fuel neither in a village nor …
… So one way of maintaining breath awareness throughout the day is
finding the first spot that tends to get seized up. Where do you
habitually react first, say, when something negative happens, when
there’s fear, anger or whatever? Again, it might be in the middle of
the chest, the throat, wherever. When you’re engaged in an activity
that doesn’t allow you …
… Ajaan Maha Boowa had a very useful analogy for different ways of
getting the mind to settle down. In some cases, he said, your mind is
like a tree standing out in the middle of a meadow. If you want to cut
the tree down, you can cut it down in any direction, and you don’t
have to think too much about which …
… The one who practices for his/her own benefit and for that of others.
“Just as a firebrand from a funeral pyre—burning at both ends, covered with excrement in the middle—is used as fuel neither in a village nor in the wilderness: I tell you that this is a simile for the individual who practices neither for his/her own benefit nor …
… The middle of the house, the place where everybody was coming past: That’s where she did her writing.
It’s a good image for our meditation. We’re in the middle of an intersection here and we have to learn how to create the ivory part, the part where we can have a space for ourselves to do the work that’s really …
… A very concrete way of learning how to provide for your own happiness in the immediate present—and at the same time, strengthening your alertness—is to let yourself breathe in a way that’s comfortable. Experiment to see what kind of breathing feels best for the body right now. It might be long breathing, short breathing; in long, out short; or in short …
We sometimes think of the middle way as halfway between sensual
pleasure and self-torture, but that’s not quite right. It’s halfway
between two forms of devotion: devotion to sensual pleasure and
devotion to self-torture. And the middle way is not devotion to a
middling pleasure, a middling pain. It’s devotion to the heightened
mind—in other words, to the …
… It’s astounding—how well it was said by the Blessed One: ‘All beings are subject to death, have death as their end, have not gone beyond death.’”
“That’s the way it is, great king. That’s the way it is. All beings are subject to death, have death as their end, have not gone beyond death. Just as all a potter’s …
… Avoiding these two extremes, he simply drops the question and focuses attention on what is directly perceivable—the way one factor in dependent co-arising functions as a prerequisite for the next. To focus on what might or might not lie behind these factors would be to tie oneself up in speculations about what, by definition, can never be experienced. But by focusing on …
… This image would have special resonances with the Buddha's teaching on the middle way. It also adds meaning to the term samaṇa—monk or contemplative—which the texts frequently mention as being derived from sama. The word sāmañña—“evenness,” the quality of being in tune—also means the quality of being a contemplative: The true contemplative is always in tune with what is …
Contents | On the Path : an Anthology on the Noble Eightfold Path Drawn from the Pāli Canon
… A Framework for the Frame Readings The First Teaching The Last Teaching On the Word, “Path” On the Word, “Noble” On the Word, “Right” On the Middle Way II. The Arising of the Path Readings The Discovery of the Path Supplementary Factors The Path-factors & their Relationships III. Right View Mundane Right View Transcendent Right View Final Right View This/That Conditionality Readings Mundane …
Themed collections - dhammatalks.org
… 8, 2005) The Web of Pain Friends With Pain Pain & Distraction Digging Out of Despair Mistakes Mindstorms Everybody Suffers Social Anxiety Self Esteem People Suffer from Their Thinking Body as Path This Fathom Long Body Body as Path Seeing with the Body The Middle Way Getting into the Body The Energy in the Body Breaking Old Habits A Seeker’s Habits Breaking Old Habits …
91 Itivuttaka
… of good family, having gone forth in this way, may be greedy for sensual pleasures, strong in his passions, malevolent in mind, corrupt in his resolves, his mindfulness muddled, unalert, uncentered, his mind scattered, & his faculties uncontrolled. Just as a firebrand from a funeral pyre–burning at both ends, covered with excrement in the middle–is used as fuel neither in a village nor …
