Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. The Lightning Bolt
     … It’s to get you to stay heedful, that there is important work in training the mind, and you don’t want to put it off to tomorrow or next week or even just the next breath. You’ve got this breath right now. What can you do to train the mind with this breath? What work needs to be done? Make that your … 
  3. To Take Danger in Stride
     … Your mind is a dangerous mind. But it also learns how to take those dangers in stride, realizing that there are skills that you can develop to minimize the dangers. And even though outside dangers are always there, you can learn to overcome the dangers inside the mind—and that’s what really counts. Virtue, concentration, and discernment are basically survival skills. Attitudes of … 
  4. Honesty & Integrity
     … When the mind goes into a blank, there’s a lesson there as well. You learn what kinds of objects the mind can stay focused on and stay alert, and what kinds of objects are not conducive in that way. Sometimes you stay with one point in the body, and that point begins to disappear as the breath gets more and more refined. You … 
  5. Everybody Benefits
     … Sometimes when you read about the different teachers who emphasize just watching the mind or observing the mind, you might say, “Why are we spending so much time with the breath? Why aren’t we focusing directly on the mind?” Well, working with the breath helps expand your sensitivities, making you sensitive to areas of the mind you wouldn’t have known otherwise. If … 
  6. The Graduated Discourse
     … As the texts say, the mind untrained is very unpliant, it’s very resistant, like the kind of wood that snaps when you try to bend it, whereas the trained mind is pliant. When you try to bend it in the right direction, it’ll go that direction. The problem is that you have to train your mind. It’s a matter of the … 
  7. Determined on Awakening
     … The more calm you can find in the mind, the better. It’s good to learn how to appreciate calm. For so many people, calm is dull. Calm is boring. But as you practice concentration, as you practice all the various parts of the path, you do begin to appreciate that the mind at peace is the happy mind. And your standards for what … 
  8. Non-Verbal Discernment
     … If the pressure isn’t right, the mind won’t settle down. If there’s too much pressure on the breath, you feel confined. If there’s too little, you float away. So, how can you stay with the breath consistently? And how can you keep the mind happy to be there consistently? The mind likes a lot of variety, and you have to … 
  9. The Noble Truths Come First
     … We’re going to work directly on our minds, because the problem is in the mind. It’s not out there. So focus on what your mind is doing. See if you can bring the mind to a state of stillness, so that you can have a sense of satisfaction being here. One of the reasons we feel so hungry for everything and so … 
  10. Observe Yourself in Action
     … How does a becoming form? Even before there’s a sense of I or me doing this in a particular world, there will be events in the mind. When we talk about them, they seem abstract because we’re so used to talking in terms of becoming, but they’re really pretty simple and immediate. There are events in the mind, and you can … 
  11. Step by Step
     … This is how you develop something good in the mind, and it’s a mind like this—a mind that’s been trained—that can do something good out in society. As we all know, the good that’s done in the society may last or it may not last. Just as there are many voices in your mind, there are many forces out … 
  12. A Genius about Your own Mind
     … Because the mind finds it so easy to slip off to the past and the future, it’s quite an accomplishment to stay right here continually with the breath coming in and going out. So whatever skills can get you here, either by taking an interest in the mind in the present or by taking an interest in the breath in the present, you … 
  13. Defabricating Anger
     … Which is not a good mind state to have. So one of the things you can learn is how you put together a feeling of anger, and it’s done in the same way, with the same three things: the way you breathe, the way you talk to yourself, the images and labels you hold in mind, and the feelings you focus on. When … 
  14. The Joy of Growing
     … What part of the mind wanted to forget—wanted to go out and travel around? You’re dealing with a lot of minds in here, a lot of voices. We talk about training the mind, but it’s more like training the minds. So on the one hand, you have to be strict with anything that wanders away, and you have to encourage the … 
  15. Faith as a Virtue
     … The mind is the fore-runner of all things. We have to have faith in the potentials of the mind; conviction that the Buddha discovered them—they really are true—and in the principles of action—that if you act on skillful intentions, there are going to be good results; if you act on unskillful intentions, there are going to be bad results. Yet … 
  16. Holding on Strategically
    There are a lot of passages in Ajaan Maha Boowa’s teachings where he talks about learning how to see the distinction between yourself and a pain—say it’s in the body—and he identifies your self with the mind for that purpose. And there are people who will jump on that and accuse him of saying that there is a self. They … 
  17. Heedfulness is the Path
     … And because your actions come out of your intentions, you have to look at the qualities in your mind that shape your intentions. Those are the real dangers in life. So, you can’t even trust your own mind, or rather, you can’t trust everything that comes into the mind, let’s put it that way. The question, then, is who can you … 
  18. Always in Training
     … The Buddha said that the human mind is very unreliable, very quick to change. That applies to minds outside and to your mind as well. So you have to have a couple of ways of reminding yourself of the need for heedfulness. And heedfulness is what? The realization that there are dangers but that they can be avoided by the way you act. If … 
  19. Humility
     … In fact, the word bhavana, “developing,” here, is the same word for meditation, but it means specifically developing whatever good qualities are needed in the mind. No matter how much effort needs to be invested in developing mindfulness and alertness, you’re happy to put in the effort. You see the benefits that come from training the mind. The same with delighting in letting … 
  20. Not Pained by Pain
     … Now, his explanation here is focused on how to give rise to a sense of pleasure, and then refine that pleasure in the course of getting the mind concentrated. Give rise to a sense of energy, and then refine the energy to have a calming effect on the mind—to get the mind into good strong concentration. But you can also use the same … 
  21. Fear of Death
     … The Buddha calls it an expansive mind state. When painful things happen in an expansive mind state, the impact is much different from things happening in a narrow and confined mind state. The image he gives is of a lump of salt placed in water. If you put the lump of salt in a glass of water, the water becomes unfit to drink. If … 
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