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ON ANY GIVEN RETREAT where jhānas are taught, some people will experience jhānas; some will not. The likelihood of you experiencing a jhāna is inversely proportional to the amount of desire you have for it. After all, the instructions given by the Buddha for practicing the jhānas begin, “Quite secluded from sense desire, secluded from unwholesome states of mind, one enters and remains in the first jhāna”
Right Concentration
Leigh Brasington
I had expected him to try to talk me out of it. Or at least to berate me for being an idiot. He didn’t do either. There was a calm acceptance of terrible things that was part and parcel of Sanya’s personality. No matter how bad things got, I didn’t think anything would ever truly faze him. He simply accepted the bad things that happened and soldiered on as best he could.
Now for the converse. The optimistic explanatory style for good events is opposite that for bad events. The optimist believes that bad events have specific causes, while good events will enhance everything he does; the pessimist believes that bad events have universal causes and that good events are caused by specific factors. When Nora was offered temporary work back at the company, she thought: “They finally realized they can’t get along without me.” When Kevin got the same offer he thought: “They must really be shorthanded.”
Learned Optimism
Martin E.P. Seligman
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