Search results for: "The Mind"

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  2. Wild Horses
     … Just as the fire clings to the wind, the mind clings to the craving. That’s what carries you on. It might sound good that you can go where you crave to go, but craving, like wind, can go in some pretty strange places. Think about what it’s going to be like when you die. You find that you can’t stay in … 
  3. Analyzing Anger
     … When you breathe in ignorance and talk to yourself in ignorance and hold perceptions and feelings in the mind in ignorance, you’re going to suffer. When we work with these things in breath meditation, we bring knowledge to them: seeing where they’re stressful, seeing where they’re not stressful; seeing where they’re helpful, skillful, where they’re not helpful, not skillful … 
  4. Rottweilers in the House
     … You look at things that can aggravate lust, and sure enough lust starts getting stirred up in the mind. Or you listen to things that might get you angry, upset, or fearful, and there’s already a tendency in the mind to want to be upset or angry or fearful, and you’re simply adding fuel to a fire. But it’s not the … 
  5. What You Can’t Change, What You Can
     … So try to open the mind, ventilate the mind a little bit to get an idea of what can be done, what can be changed. That way, you’ll be able to sit here with the breath. If the breath is going well, you keep it going well: That’s your empathetic joy. If it’s not going well, you can change it: That … 
  6. The Sport of Wise People
     … Building a Home for the Mind November 25, 2015 The texts often talk about concentration as being a home for the mind—vihara-dhamma—the place where the mind can settle in. Before you can settle in, though, you have to build a house. And as Ajaan Lee said, the work in building this house lies in the directed thought and evaluation. You find … 
  7. Lessons from Jhana
     … the speaker in the mind, commenting on things. And just being with the perception, just the one word—instead of speaking in sentences and questions, you’re just saying that one word over and over, breath, breath, breath and focusing on one sensation—can seem a little threatening, a little difficult. But if you can convince yourself that this is what the mind can … 
  8. Getting Connected Inside
     … As you get to know the body in different ways, you begin to realize how much the mind has closed off certain ideas or certain of its own activities, so that some parts of the mind’s activities are hidden from other parts of the mind. But as you begin to open things up in the body, you begin to open things up in … 
  9. Determination
     … And once those things are dropped, it’s easier for the mind to settle in and to be willing to stay right here. And as you stay right here, you realize you’re not depriving yourself. You’re finding a new source of well-being inside. And it goes deep inside. Here it is, right close to the mind. The breath is the closest … 
  10. Reclaim Your Breath
     … You need the sense of rapture or refreshment that comes when the mind settles down and there’s a sense of balance inside the body and in the relationship between the mind and the body. That way, this bath of breath really does feel refreshing, and it goes deep, deep, deep into the brain, deep, deep into the heart, all the parts of your … 
  11. Quick on the Draw
     … As soon as you see a thought appearing in the mind that’s going to take off in that direction—and you know the direction it’s going to take you, it’s not like you haven’t had an experience with these things—you have to recognize the part of the mind that wants to go along with an unskillful thought as something … 
  12. The Challenge
     … When you come to meditation with that experience behind you, it’s a lot easier to give up a lot of the things that are really closest to the heart, things inside the mind: your sense of who you are, your narratives of who you are, where you are going, all the attachments of the mind. You’d think that because these things are … 
  13. Control from Within
     … If we don’t train the mind, we’re going to suffer. If we do train the mind, we have the opportunity not to suffer. That’s our big choice in life. The Buddha once said the point that distinguishes a wise person from the fool is that the wise person sees the necessity of training the mind, whereas the fool doesn’t. That … 
  14. Body as Path
     … The really important part is that it’s good for the mind. So this is how you take the body, this aggregate of form, and turn it into part of the path. When you get the mind in a good state of concentration like this, all the aggregates are here. There’s the form of the body, there’s a feeling of pleasure, there … 
  15. Buddhist Engineering
     … But the important thing, as the Buddha described it, is the importance of the mind in this causal sequence. First verse in the Dhammapada: “All phenomena are preceded by the mind, made by the mind.” Then he uses that principle to illustrate karma. If you act with a clear, bright mind, the results will be good. If you act with a clouded, defiled mind … 
  16. Strength to Be Good
     … It puts the mind in a better mood; it’s healthier for the body. And when the mind is in a better mood, it’s a lot more likely to be willing to do what has to be done. Many times we know what we should be doing but we don’t want to do it because we don’t feel like it. Or … 
  17. A Home & a Mobile Home
    One of the standard terms for concentration is *vihara-dhamma, *which can be translated as “a home for the mind.” As you focus on the breath, you want to get the mind so that it feels at home here, in a home that’s solidly built and a good place to stay. Otherwise, the mind goes roaming out looking for scraps outside to give … 
  18. Acceptance
     … And the mind moves from one to another. When you sit down to meditate, part of the mind is with the program and part of the mind is not, which can be the cause for a lot of frustration. But you can learn how to use these many selves to your advantage. Remember, each of your selves is the result of an activity aimed … 
  19. Discernment All Along
     … Watch the mind as it’s engaged with the breath. Watch the mind as it’s engaged with all the various skillful things that are parts of the path: virtue, concentration, discernment—and see what you can learn. It’s easiest to learn when you’re engaged in skillful activities or engaged in the attempt to do something skillful. If you find yourself getting … 
  20. A Slave to Craving
     … But it was when he talked to himself about the rewards of how you can get the mind still, and the usefulness of having a still mind, that he was willing to make the sacrifice. So it’s a good lesson to learn, because you’re going to need that as you meditate. Ideas come into the mind and they see you have an … 
  21. A Greater Happiness
     … And the fourth one is not having seen the true Dhamma, not realizing that there is a deathless element in the mind that’s not touched by aging, illness, or death—the part of the mind that has nothing to fear. So we work on these four issues in the meditation. First, we do it by developing a sense of ease that doesn’t … 
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