Search results for: "Mindfulness"

  1. Page 101
  2. The World Does Not Endure
     … You have it within your power to shape your life.” The mind is not just a result of physical events. As the Buddha said in the very first verse in the Dhammapada, the mind is the forerunner of all things. All things are achieved through the mind. It’s the mind that comes first. That’s the opposite of what a lot of people … 
  3. The Reality Principle
     … That’s an analogy for a mind that’s developed the four brahmaviharas. When you develop these limitless qualities of mind, and the mind becomes very expansive. And it’s the nature of such a mind that the results of past bad actions don’t have such an impact. They don’t impinge on the mind as much. So this is one very good … 
  4. Concentration Work
     … As you get used to being with the breath, you can’t help but notice that your mind is relating to the breath in different ways. There are times when the mind wants to simply enjoy the breathing; other times when it’s trying to figure out why it can’t enjoy it. What’s going on? Is the breath uncomfortable? Or is the … 
  5. New Feeding Habits
     … You give the mind something good to hold on to instead of the unskillful qualities it’s been following. So these two strengths—mindfulness and concentration—are like food for the mind. They strengthen the mind. You get a good place to stay, like with the breath. You breathe in a way that feels really good. Again, you’re free to do this. All … 
  6. Staying, Moving, & Neither
     … Simply open and allow, and once you’re there with that kind of energy, it’s a lot easier for the mind to settle down in a way that doesn’t require a lot of effort, a lot of exertion. This is one of the problems with reading the texts too much. We get a lot of preconceived ideas of what the mind should … 
  7. Slings and Arrows of Ordinary Fortunes
     … The more consistently you can stay with the breath, stay with the body, the more the mind will settle down. Mindfulness leads naturally into concentration this way. The concentration gives you a sense of well-being. And if you find yourself getting worked up about how the mind is not settling down tonight, tell yourself there must be someplace inside here where things are … 
  8. Independent of the World
     … And my mind is free like a wild deer.” So learn to see that relinquishment is a good thing. Giving up is a good thing. It’s a form of wealth. And finally, calm: As the Buddha said, “There really is no happiness other than peace.” Of course, he’s talking about the happiness of the mind, the peace of the mind. When you … 
  9. The Dhamma Eye
     … For instance, the origination of suffering is craving—and where is craving? It’s in the mind. What’s the origination of the causal chain that leads to craving? It’s ignorance. That, too, comes out of the mind. You then begin to realize all the other things that come out of the mind: fabrication, name-and-form, consciousness, your experience of the six … 
  10. The Buddha’s Map
     … When you’ve made up your mind you don’t want to go there, that makes it a lot easier to see these disturbances simply as little becomings forming in the mind. And you can watch the process. As you try to nip the becomings in the bud, you see more and more clearly the stages by which the mind creates a state of … 
  11. Body & Food
    One of the basic principles of the practice is that if you want to see your mind in action, you’ve got to look at things that are very close to you. The more you deal with abstractions, the less you see. Your eyesight gets focused further and further away. As a result, you miss the motions of the mind. So you want to … 
  12. Passion, Dispassion, Compassion
     … But a mind free from passion doesn’t need that pain in order to be helpful. You see that there’s suffering and you want to help. That’s it. You don’t have to feel pain along with the people. You just see that it’s the right thing to do. The Buddha calls compassion of this sort an ornament of the mind … 
  13. New Eyes
     … Keep that in mind. As you’re sitting here, you’re harming no one. Keep that in mind. You’ve the opportunity to watch your thoughts simply as events, rather than having to use them to serve other people’s purposes and gain a living. Keep that in mind. So even though the results aren’t coming right away, a lot of other good … 
  14. The Carrot & the Stick
    To keep your mind on the path, you need to use both the carrot and the stick. Like getting a donkey: In the old days, you would put a carrot on the end of a very long pole and hold it in front of the donkey. The donkey, seeing the carrot, would walk after it. That way, you get the donkey to take your … 
  15. Goodwill & Kamma
     … The ways the seeds sprout also has to do with the quality of mind you’re bringing to the present moment. The Buddha talks about having a narrow mind or having an expansive mind. If your mind is narrow, your goodwill is narrow, your compassion is narrow, your empathetic joy is narrow, your equanimity is narrow. Your ability to deal with pain and not … 
  16. Mature Happiness
     … We develop mindfulness, which is the ability to keep something in mind—in other words, remembering that you want to gain some control over your mind and remembering what you’ve learned about how to do it. And you want to look at the mind in the right way so that you can step back from it and see it with some objectivity. To … 
  17. Energy
     … Either way, the pain and the pleasure overcome the mind, overcome your energy. This, as the Buddha said, is an important issue in the practice. He once told a wanderer that ever since he’d left home, he’d never allowed his mind to be overcome by pain or overcome by pleasure. The wanderer said, “Well maybe that’s because you’ve never experienced … 
  18. Living Honorably
     … That comes from something inside the mind itself. To see that—to comprehend that suffering and to abandon the cause—you’ve got to develop strength. This is why we’re meditating, to gain the strength of mind that comes from mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. These are the things that give you the strength to deal with these problems. As long as the mindfulness … 
  19. Alone at Death, but Not Lonely
     … You need mindfulness, you need alertness, you need ardency, you need concentration, you need discernment—particularly mindfulness and discernment. They put these two concepts together a lot in Thailand. There’s a Thai compound word: satipañña. When you take the compound apart, it means mindfulness-discernment; when you put it together, it means intelligence. It’s the opposite of ignorance—or at least these … 
  20. One Thing Only
     … If you notice that things are inconstant in the mind, especially if the level of stress or ease in the mind is inconstant, look at what you’re doing. When the level of stress goes up, what did you do? When it goes down, what did you do? When things seem to be perfectly still and perfectly at ease, try to maintain that stillness … 
  21. Resilience Plus
     … In other words, when you’re presented with people behaving badly, make your mind a mind which none of their behavior sticks to. And make sure you don’t feel oppressed by what they’ve done or what they’ve said. Think of your mind as being as large as the earth, as inflammable as the river Ganges. Now, if we were to stop … 
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