Search results for: committee

  1. The Open Committee
    The Open Committee March 7, 2005 The mind is like a committee with an open membership. It seems that anybody has the right to say anything at the meetings. No one ever checks credentials to see who’s coming in and with what kinds of intentions. If you sit and watch the thoughts that go through the mind for a while, you begin to … 
  2. Organizing Your Inner Committee
    Organizing Your Inner Committee February 6, 2011 As you meditate, you want to bring the whole mind to the breath. Sometimes it’s easy. You’re in the mood, everybody in the mind is in the mood, and they all can settle down. But other times, some members of the committee would rather do something else. They have their other agendas, their other desires … 
  3. Training Your Minds
     … They’re like a huge committee, with lots of different agendas. What we’re trying to do as we meditate is to find which members of the committee are most skillful, who actually do have the ability to bring about some happiness, a happiness that doesn’t have any bad side effects. If your happiness involves the suffering of other people, there are going … 
  4. Sorting Yourselves Out
     … For the time being you want some space here inside so that you really can settle down and the members of the committee that do want to settle down will have a chance to get a sense of ease and well-being with the breath. Which means you can’t just grab on to the breath and force it. You want to simply allow … 
  5. Today Is Better than Yesterday
     … You have to just stick with the breath, stick with it, stick with it, and don’t let the cynical and lazy members of the committee take over. Because this is another thing you’ve got to keep in mind, which is that the mind is like a committee. Although it may have been that a few of the members were meditating really well … 
  6. Home Schooling Your Inner Children
     … Otherwise, its greed, aversion, delusion, and ignorance will just take over, along with all the other members of the committee, and there will be nothing left of your meditation. Notice that not all of the members of the committee are adults. We do have some children. The Buddha’s is attitude is not that you pamper your inner child, although, as the one psychologist … 
  7. Unskillful Voices
     … It’s like a committee discussing ideas: “How about doing this? Well, how about doing that?” You’ve heard about people with multiple personalities, the really extreme cases where they get schizoid and the multiple personalities refuse to recognize each other. That’s unhealthy. For most of us, though, there is a dialogue in the mind, and it’s healthy that there is. What … 
  8. Why Train the Mind
     … You can deal with all of the committee members in the mind: all the ones who have other ideas about where happiness should be and why you shouldn’t be sitting here watching your breath right now, you should be thinking about something else. As you deal with those voices and can get past them, you find that there are other, subtler ones that … 
  9. Perceptions of the Breath
     … As we mentioned earlier today, the mind is very much like a committee. Some perceptions will attract some members of the committee and other perceptions will attract others. You want to find a perception that gathers in the calm, solid, alert factions of the mind, the factions that really do want to put an end to suffering and are willing to do what’s … 
  10. Ups & Downs
     … Let’s go back and look at it again.” This is where the image of the mind as a committee comes in useful: You were able to take care of some of the committee members, but others are still active. They may have been quiet the last time you went through, but now they’re showing that they’re still there. It’s time … 
  11. Right Speech, Inside & Out
     … If any members of the committee are out of order, let them know. Because this business of verbal fabrication inside the mind, as Ajaan Lee pointed out, is the most important issue on the path. It can do the most damage, but it can also be the most helpful. It can be helpful in the sense that it reminds you of what right view … 
  12. Book search result icon Gather ’Round the Breath Don’t Worry, Be Focused
     … This is a skill you have to practice because it’s so easy—as you tell yourself you’re going to stay with the breath—for other members of the mind’s committee to have other ideas. Here you’ve got a whole hour. You could think about all kinds of things, and as soon as your mindfulness lapses, or your alertness lapses, there … 
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