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aac93fb
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Buddhist psychology has developed a distinct system of classification. Rather than dividing thoughts into classes like "good" and "bad," Buddhist thinkers prefer to regard them as "skillful" versus "unskillful." An unskillful thought is one connected with greed, hatred, or delusion. These are the thoughts that the mind most easily builds into obsessions. They are unskillful in the sense that they lead you away from the goal of liberation."
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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569bbe8
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At each sitting you gain some results, but they are often very subtle. They occur deep within the mind, and only manifest much later. And if you are sitting there constantly looking for huge, instantaneous changes, you will miss the subtle shifts altogether.
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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0f232bf
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Knowing this body to be like a clay pot, Establishing this mind like a fortress, One should battle Mara with the sword of insight, Protecting what has been won, Clinging to nothing.
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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83f38dc
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When you are totally absorbed in the subject of your meditation, when you merge with or become one with the subject, you are completely unaware. That too is not jhana, at least not what Buddhism considers "right jhana." In right jhana, you may be unaware of the outside world, but you are completely aware of what is going on within."
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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4d57977
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When you begin the jhana meditation practice, you avoid anything not conducive to gaining concentration. On the cushion, you avoid the hindrances, the reactions that would pull you away from your meditation subject. Off the cushion, you practice the same skills by avoiding the thoughts, words, and deeds that perpetuate the hindrances.
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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ce58e22
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Our six senses are like hungry animals. They always look for something outside us to consume.
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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ee31c88
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When you see deeply, as a real experience, with your own wisdom-eye, that all conditioned things are impermanent, your mind state changes. Your superficial understanding of impermanence becomes a deep understanding and you attain the stream-entry path.
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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b91593a
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The second type, the Dhamma-follower or Wisdom-follower, is a person whose primary vehicle on the path is a deep understanding of the Dhamma. He uses the intellect extensively. His reason leads him to the deep, wordless understanding that is true wisdom. He can attain the stream-entry path through penetrative insight alone, without attaining jhana. His insight allows him to destroy doubt.
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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5cd6f0b
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Mindfulness picks the objects of attention, and notices when the attention has gone astray. Concentration does the actual work of holding the attention steady on that chosen object.
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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60d19b0
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The distraction itself can be anything: a sound, a sensation, an emotion, a fantasy, anything at all. Whatever it is, don't try to repress it. Don't try to force it out of your mind. There's no need for that. Just observe it mindfully with bare attention. Examine the distraction wordlessly, and it will pass away by itself.
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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6b0f7b4
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Mindfulness is presymbolic. It is not shackled to logic. Nevertheless, mindfulness can be experienced--rather easily--and it can be described, as long as you keep in mind that the words are only fingers pointing at the moon. They are not the moon itself.
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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d9dea90
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Mindfulness is extremely difficult to define in words--not because it is complex, but because it is too simple and open. The same problem crops up in every area of human experience. The most basic concept is always the most difficult to pin down. Look at a dictionary and you will see a clear example. Long words generally have concise definitions, but short basic words like "the" and "be," can have definitions a page long."
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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974fe6c
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Watch the sequence of events: Breathing. Breathing. Distracting thought arising. Frustration arising over the distracting thought. You condemn yourself for being distracted. You notice the self-condemnation. You return to the breathing. Breathing. Breathing. It's really a very natural, smooth-flowing cycle, if you do it correctly. The trick, of course, is patience. If you can learn to observe these distractions without getting involved, it'..
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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30847d3
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You will have problems in meditation. Everybody does. You can treat them as terrible torments or as challenges to be overcome. If you regard them as burdens, your suffering will only increase. If you regard them as opportunities to learn and to grow, your spiritual prospects are unlimited.
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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da3f554
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Mindfulness of impermanence in any of the four foundations is the entry point. Seeing anicca leads you to seeing dukkha and anatta. Seeing these three marks of existence leads you to liberation.
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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f9b81b9
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A mind that grabs on to things constantly is constantly swept away, distracted. It cannot stay steady and uninvolved. It cannot simply see what is there. Equanimity releases you from this distraction. It is the dominant factor in the fourth jhana and it is the reason that the jhana can yield deep wisdom.
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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3656851
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Why do you have to do all this after attaining a jhana? Jhana is like a juggling act. You keep things suspended in the air or balanced. Then you drop them. Then you start over.
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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25b647e
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True concentration itself is free from such contaminants. It is a state in which the mind is gathered together and thus gains power and intensity. We might use the analogy of a lens. Parallel waves of sunlight falling on a piece of paper will do no more than warm the surface. But if that same amount of light, when focused through a lens, falls on a single point, the paper bursts into flames.
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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1643452
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Concentration holds an object before mindfulness. Mindfulness then pays close attention to it. Then investigation finds that it is constantly changing, thus showing the signs of unsatisfactoriness and selflessness.
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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204f2b3
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Pin your attention to the simple sensation of breath at the nostrils. Stay with it as the breath naturally slows down and becomes fine and light. Allow thoughts of the breath to drop away. Stay with the simple sensation. Just let the process happen. Don't try to rush it.
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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d1274ba
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Jhanic happiness is calm, peaceful, and smooth. It is not excitement. It is almost the opposite. Spiritual happiness makes you relaxed, calm, peaceful, and concentrated.
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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5fe8c47
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Where does all this junk come from, and more important, what can we do about it? It comes from the conditions of our own minds. It is a deep, subtle, and pervasive set of mental habits, a Gordian knot that we have tied bit by bit and that we can only unravel in just that same way, one piece at a time. We can tune up our awareness, dredge up each separate piece, and bring it out into the light. We can make the unconscious conscious, slowly, ..
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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d027d72
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Our human perceptual habits are remarkably stupid in some ways. We tune out 99 percent of all the sensory stimuli we actually receive, and we solidify the remainder into discrete mental objects. Then we react to those mental objects in programmed, habitual ways.
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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b4b85ff
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Every mental state has a birth, a growth, and a decay. You should strive to see these stages clearly. This is no easy thing to do, however. As we have already noted, every thought and sensation begins first in the unconscious region of the mind and only later rises to consciousness. We generally become aware of such things only after they have arisen in the conscious realm and stayed there for some time.
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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8ae7ee3
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If you are miserable you are miserable; that is the reality,
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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e695163
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In the practice of meditation you become sensitive to the actual experience of living, to how things actually feel. You do not sit around developing sublime thoughts about living. You live. Vipassana meditation, more than anything else, is learning to live.
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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7500802
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we train ourselves to ignore the constant impulses to be more comfortable, and we dive into reality instead. The irony of it is that real peace comes only when you
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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065c737
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Is this task or behavior really necessary or is it just a way to be busy?
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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c7f61ca
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The mind can never be focused without a mental object. Therefore we must give our mind an object that is readily available every present moment. One such object is our breath. The mind does not have to make a great effort to find the breath.
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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1ef525d
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Remember that you are not supposed to continue your counting all the time. As soon as your mind is locked at the nostril tip where the inhalation and exhalation touch and you begin to feel that your breathing is so refined and quiet that you cannot notice inhalation and exhalation separately, you should give up counting. Counting is used only to train the mind to concentrate on one object.
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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5dac223
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You can learn to perceive your life as an ever-flowing movement. You can learn to see the continuous flow of all conditioned
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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dc8bf83
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Ordinary human thinking is full of greed, jealousy, and pride. A man seeing another man on the street may immediately think, "He is better looking than I am." The instant result is envy or shame. A girl seeing another girl may think, "I am prettier than she is." The instant result is pride. This sort of comparison is a mental habit, and it leads directly to ill feeling of one sort or another: greed, envy, pride, jealousy, or hatred. It is a..
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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dcccbff
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Rather than noticing the differences between oneself and others, the meditator trains him- or herself to notice the similarities.
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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d46e7c6
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The meaning of faith here is closer to confidence. It is knowing that something is true because you have seen it work, because you have observed that very thing within yourself. In the same way, morality is not a ritualistic obedience to a code of behavior imposed by an external authority. It is rather a healthy habit pattern that you have consciously and voluntarily chosen to impose upon yourself because you recognize its superiority to yo..
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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955526e
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You are who you are, and lying to yourself about your own weaknesses and motivations only binds you tighter to them.
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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61e58a1
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The lowest level is adherence to a set of rules and regulations laid down by somebody else. It could be your favorite prophet. It could be the state, the head of your tribe, or a parent. No matter who generates the rules, all you have to do at this level is know the rules and follow them. A robot can do that. Even a trained chimpanzee could do it, if the rules were simple enough and he were smacked with a stick every time he broke one. This..
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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c80c813
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We usually do not look into what is actually there in front of us. We see life through a screen of thoughts and concepts, and we mistake those mental objects for reality. We get so caught up in this endless thought-stream that reality flows by unnoticed.
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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eb4219f
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You can't ever get everything you want. It is impossible. Luckily, there is another option. You can learn to control your mind, to step outside of the endless cycle of desire and aversion. You can learn not to want what you want, to recognize desires but not be controlled by them. This does not mean that you lie down on the road and invite everybody to walk all over you. It means that you continue to live a very normal-looking life, but liv..
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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d40c44d
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When you first begin this procedure, expect to face some difficulties. Your mind will wander off constantly, darting around like a bumblebee and zooming off on wild tangents. Try not to worry. The monkey-mind phenomenon is well known. It is something that every seasoned meditator has had to deal with. They have pushed through it one way or another, and so can you. When it happens, just note the fact that you have been thinking, daydreaming,..
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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53b83f7
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There is a short ragged breath and there is a deep long one. I wonder what's next?" No, that is not vipassana. That is thinking."
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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f052453
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Meditation objects are like launching pads. Once you have gained jhana, everything that follows after that is the same. The concentrated mind is on its own, alone, dependent upon nothing external. Whatever object has been used for abandoning hindrances and gaining concentration is left behind.
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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c3c77ec
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Buddhist practice is an ongoing investigation of reality, a microscopic examination of the very process of perception. Its intention is to pick apart the screen of lies and delusions through which we normally view the world, and thus to reveal the face of ultimate reality.
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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52c4df9
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The Dhammapada, an ancient Buddhist text (which anticipated Freud by thousands of years), says: "What you are now is the result of what you were. What you will be tomorrow will be the result of what you are now. The consequences of an evil mind will follow you like the cart follows the ox that pulls it. The consequences of a purified mind will follow you like your own shadow. No one can do more for you than your own purified mind--no parent..
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Henepola Gunaratana |
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f6a0337
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After sitting motionlessly, close your eyes. Our mind is analogous to a cup of muddy water. The longer you keep a cup of muddy water still, the more the mud settles down and the water will be seen clearly. Similarly, if you keep quiet without moving your body, focusing your entire undivided attention on the subject of your meditation, your mind settles down and begins to experience the bliss of meditation.
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Henepola Gunaratana |