There’s a passage in the Canon where King Pasanedi comes to see the
Buddha in the middle of the day. The Buddha asks him, “Where are you
coming from in the middle of the day? What have you been doing?” And
the king, in a remarkable display of frankness, says, “Oh, the typical
things that obsess someone who’s obsessed with power, gaining …
… 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. See also MN 97.↩︎
3. Loka: The term “world” here should be
understood in line with the definition given in SN 35:82.↩︎
4. See also SN 12 …
… When the Buddha taught what he called the middle way, it was to provide the alternative.
Part of the middle way is right concentration. It involves a strong sense of pleasure, but it’s a different kind of pleasure. It’s called the pleasure of form. Sensual pleasures come from sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations. The pleasure of form is more the …
… But in your own case, you may find that, as you breathe in, a certain part of the energy can run a circle that goes up the front and down the back, or up the back and down the front, whichever way you want the energy to go.
There are lots of different ways you can work with the energy. Don’t limit yourself …
… He came back and found the middle way. Okay, you can find the middle way too. He’s shown that it’s possible. And the confidence that there is a way out: That’s what kept him going, even when things looked pretty bleak. It can keep you going, too. That can be the mood you hang on to: the confident mood. And you …
… This mode of analysis dates back to the time of the Buddha, although Ajaan Lee develops it in a distinctive way. Think of this analysis not as an attempt at biology or chemistry—the sciences we use to analyze the body from the outside—but as a way of analyzing how the body feels from the inside. This is an aspect of awareness that …
… The mind has these potentials of greed,
aversion, and delusion, all kinds of unskillful ways of feeding on
this and feeding on that. If we don’t take care of that now while we
have the opportunity to practice, when will we take care of it? And
if we die with those habits still ingrained in the mind, we’re just
going to go …
… If you look at them one way, they’re two-dimensional patterns. If you change your brain and look at them another way, you’ll see them as a different pattern entirely. What was two-dimensional now becomes three-dimensional. Now with those images, it was simply a perceptual trick with no practical consequences. But with the body, you can actually give yourself an …
… Ajaan
Singh, one of his students, liked to go to bed early in the evening,
wake up in the middle of the night and meditate through the middle of
the night, then have a short nap before dawn.
That’s the kind of thing you can do when you’re meditating on your
own. Each of us has a different metabolism. So when you …
… After all, this is the middle way we’re
practicing. Sometimes it’s simply a matter of balancing between
extremes, but it’s also learning how to combine different qualities
that seem to conflict. After all, the mind is a complex thing. The
needs of the mind in training are complex. And this is not a onefold
path. Even with the practice of exercising …
… the middle of the chest to the large intestine, the rectum, and out into the air.
Once you’ve completed these five turns inside the body, let the breath flow along the outside of the body:
As you take an in-and-out breath, think of inhaling the breath at the base of the skull and letting it go all the way down the …
… One way to work toward it is to move your focus around
deliberately, stay with, say, the center of the chest for a while and
then move down to the abdomen or start at the abdomen and move up the
centerline in front of the body: stomach, middle of the chest, the
base of the throat, middle of the head, and then down on …
… The way it explains these has to do with kasina practice, but the terms have been adopted for other types of concentration as well. And because these terms are not explained in the Canon, different ajaans have come up with different ways of describing them.
One common explanation says that momentary concentration is your ordinary, everyday concentration where you listen to someone speak and …
… top of
the head, middle of the forehead, right at your palate, in your neck,
in the middle of the chest, right above the navel. Those are the main
ones, but you might find that you have a spot of your own.
In addition to identifying it, you want to learn how to work with the
energy there. The reason Ajaan Lee focuses on …
… One of the five major collections of suttas in the Pāli Canon, containing suttas of middle (majjhima) length.
Mettā: Goodwill; benevolence. One of the four brahmavihāras.
Nibbāna: Literally, the “unbinding” of the mind from passion, aversion, and delusion, and from the entire round of death and rebirth. As this term also denotes the extinguishing of a fire, it carries connotations of stilling, cooling, and …
… was born in the Middle Country, the Ariyaka race, the noble warrior class, & the Gotama lineage.
Sakya-putto Sakya-kulā pabbajito, sadevake loke samārake sabrahmake, sassamaṇa-brāhmaṇiyā pajāya sadeva-manussāya, anuttaraṁ sammā-sambodhiṁ abhisambuddho.
A member of the Sakyan clan, he left his Sakyan family, went forth into the homeless life, & attained Right Self-Awakening unsurpassed in the cosmos with its Devas, Māras, & Brahmās …
… Try to stay with the breath all
the way in, all the way out.
Allow it to be comfortable. Think of the whole body breathing: your
eyes, your brain, your neck, your lungs, your stomach, your legs, your
arms. Every part is letting the energy flow and is nourished by the
energy.
If your mind wanders off, just bring it right back. This is …
… Think of a lit candle in the middle of an otherwise dark room. The flame of the candle is in one spot, but its light fills the entire room. You want your awareness to be centered but broad in just the same way. Your sense of awareness may have a tendency to shrink—especially as you breathe out—so remind yourself with every breath …
… Right
concentration is a skill showing that there is a way to find happiness
that doesn’t require sensuality.
When the Buddha talks about the Middle Way, he’s not saying it’s just
a feeling halfway between pleasure and pain. It’s a different kind of
devotion to pleasure. He says the devotion to sensual pleasure is one
extreme and the devotion to …
… If there was no mistake, no harm, then take joy in the
practice—joy in the fact that you’ve acted in a harmless way, you’re
learning, you’re progressing in the path—and continue trying to
progress.
Now, obviously this applies to outside actions, but it also applies to
your meditation. As you settle down with the breath, this is what
directed …
AN 10:59 Pabbajita Sutta | Gone Forth
… 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. See also MN 97.↩︎ 3. Loka: The term “world” here should be understood in line with the definition given in SN 35:82.↩︎ 4. See also SN 12 …
Introduction | The Heightened Mind
… This mode of analysis dates back to the time of the Buddha, although Ajaan Lee develops it in a distinctive way. Think of this analysis not as an attempt at biology or chemistry—the sciences we use to analyze the body from the outside—but as a way of analyzing how the body feels from the inside. This is an aspect of awareness that …
