Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 101
  2. Death Without Drama
     … We want to learn to keep the mind from being overwhelmed. The Buddha talks about feelings invading the mind and remaining. What he means is that the feelings overwhelm you. He trained himself so that he was not invaded by the feelings and he was not overwhelmed. They didn’t remain. A feeling would come and it would just slip away, like water off … 
  3. The Meaning of Happiness
     … So as we meditate, we’re here partly for the sake of the sense of ease and well-being that comes as you get the mind to settle down, but also for the sake of using that settled well-being as a tool to gain greater insight into the mind, and to strengthen our generosity, strengthen our virtue, strengthen all good qualities in the … 
  4. Taking Stock
     … As you give rise to a sense of well-being inside, a lot of the hardness in the mind begins to soften up. All the walls inside the mind—the areas where you’re in denial about this, that, and the other thing—begin to soften up as well. Your resentments about other people, those get to soften up too. As a sense of … 
  5. True Friends & False
     … Why does pain have so much power over the mind? And the same with the pleasure: Why does pleasure have so much power over the mind? You want to look into these things so that eventually you can get beyond their power. But in the meantime, before you can get to that point, you’ve got to develop this foundation where you can watch … 
  6. Training Your Inner Teacher
     … the mind—but then, of course, there’s part of the mind that’s going to act as the teacher. The teacher has to learn how to deal with the student: when to give the student a little bit of slack; when to tighten up the leash; when to be stern; when to have a sense of humor. Try to think of all the … 
  7. Categorical Truths
     … Notice if you’re feeling a lot of energy or not much energy—in other words, seeing in what ways the mind may be out of balance right now. If its thoughts are going any place aside from the present moment, bring them back in. Then you put these things together—the mind and the body—right at the breath. Take a couple of … 
  8. Doubt vs. Discernment
     … You do both of those things by looking into the mind and asking yourself, “What’s skillful in here? What’s unskillful in here? What qualities in the mind, when I act on them, lead to stress and suffering? What qualities lead away from stress and suffering?” Immediately after that, you act on what you see, to put it to the test. That’s … 
  9. An Exercise in Sensitivity
     … Otherwise, you just go back to the mind’s old ways of wandering around. Although it’s true that you can learn some things by watching the mind wandering around, you can learn a lot more by watching it as you try to get it to settle down and under control. That’s because there are parts of the mind that resist getting under … 
  10. Ask Yourself the Buddha’s Question
     … It’s not just a matter of forcing the mind down, sticking its head under water. You’re going to stay here with a sense of ease and well-being so that the mind is happy to stay here. If it’s not comfortable with the breath, not interested, it’s like a child being forced to stay in the house. You lock the … 
  11. Two Things to Keep in Mind
     … So as we’re meditating, we’re going to back off from the world and get back into the mind to see if we can change a few of these processes going on in the mind that are making us suffer. This is part of the good news of the Buddha’s teachings: that regardless of what’s happening in the world, that’s … 
  12. The Noble Eightfold Path to the Deathless
     … And as you’re carrying through, you begin to realize more and more that the important element is the mind. The mind’s got to be trained beyond just simply having right view. You’ve got to work on developing skillful qualities in the mind and abandoning unskillful ones. That’s right effort. And you have to develop powers of concentration. That starts with … 
  13. Consciousness, Name, & Form
     … First, you get the mind really still, and to do that, you have to see things on their own terms: as events in the body, events in the mind—what the Buddha calls name and form on the one hand, and consciousness the other. Consciousness is your awareness. Form is your sense of the body as you feel it from within in terms of … 
  14. Question & Probe
     … So you’ve got to come up with new questions every day—which means that the mind has to be constantly on the offensive. And the fact that you’re on the offensive like this keeps you from being a stationary target for the pain. The same principle applies with the mind. When some emotions are painful, you can ask yourself, “Well, what’s … 
  15. Observe Your Concentration
     … From the sense of joy, the mind becomes serene; and when the mind is serene, it becomes concentrated. So, while you’re listening to the talk on the aggregates, you can look at your mind in concentration and see that the concentration is made up of those same five aggregates. That other passage in the suttas then goes on to explain that when you … 
  16. Complaining Rights
     … But, again, that desire to get the sympathy is going to stand in the way of your seeing, “This is what I’m actually doing that’s causing the suffering.” The doing is very subtle, which is why we have to get the mind really still when we practice concentration, because there are lot of little subtle movements in the mind that we otherwise … 
  17. Samvega & Pasada
    Focusing on the breath, trying to get the mind to stay with the breath, can sometimes be a very chastening experience. On the first level, there’s the simple difficulty of getting the mind to stay with one thing: something as simple and nearby as the breath, and yet you find it slipping off, slipping off, slipping off. You start out with the best … 
  18. Feelings Not of the Flesh
     … Pain not of the flesh, for instance, has to do with your desire to get the mind to be trained in concentration and to gain awakening. As the Buddha says, when you realize that you can’t get the mind to stay equanimous in the face of negative things, you should regard it as an instance of bad fortune. “This doesn’t bode well … 
  19. The Kindness of Body Contemplation
     … It’s not like we’re saying the body is bad and the mind is good. There’s something deeper than even the mind that we’re after. As the Buddha says, this “something” can be touched by the mind and it’s touched and seen at the body. The potential opening to it is always right here in the present moment where the … 
  20. Goodwill for the Whole Committee
     … All actions come out of the mind. That’s why we train the mind to get more and more sensitive to its own actions. What’s radical about all this is what counts as an action. There are lots of things that we think of as things or identities but that the Buddha would prefer that we think of as actions, because it’s … 
  21. Appropriate Attention
     … So, as you go through your meditation and you run across something that wears the mind down, weighs the mind down, ask yourself, “What are you craving? What are you clinging to? And how?” If you can see that you’re craving something that’s placing a weight on the mind, how about letting it go? Each of the four noble truths has a … 
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