Search results for: "Mindfulness"

  1. Page 103
  2. Just Events
     … If you want to sense what kind of breathing is actually good for the body, what kind of breathing is good for the mind, what kind of thinking is good for the meditation, what kind of thinking is not, you have to have the mind in a non-reactive state in order to make changes and judge them skillfully. “Non-reactive” doesn’t mean … 
  3. Asalha Puja
     … Some pleasures, when you pursue them, are good for the mind; some pleasures are bad. Some pains when you pursue them are bad for the mind, some are good. So you need the discernment to figure out which is which. The same with different mind states: If your mind is scattered all over the place, that’s something you want to abandon; if it … 
  4. To Have a Purpose
     … We want to get our minds still. We want to develop good qualities of the mind. So we’ve come to meditate. And as we begin to see the results appearing, we can see the happiness that comes from having a purpose. Everything we do has a purpose of one kind or another. Every movement of the mind has its purpose. Even when we … 
  5. The Little Things
     … Like alertness and mindfulness: These qualities, the textbook says, benefit everything. When the suttas list the seven factors for awakening, they talk about which factors are good for when your energy level is down and which factors are good for when they’re up. But mindfulness—and here it means both mindfulness and alertness—is good for every occasion. Just like the qualities of … 
  6. Listening to the True Dhamma
     … When the Buddha describes the three qualities that go into mindfulness practice—mindfulness, alertness, ardency—mindfulness is the ability to keep things in mind. Alertness is knowing what you’re doing while you’re doing it. And ardency is trying to do it well. When Ajaan Lee explains those three qualities, he says that the wisdom faculty in those three is the ardency. You … 
  7. Doubt vs. Discernment
     … ardency, alertness, and mindfulness. Ardency is trying to do it well. Alertness is watching what you’re actually doing. Mindfulness is trying to keep in mind that you’re trying to stay with one topic—say, the body in and of itself—and you’re putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. The commentary, when explaining those three qualities, identifies sampajañña … 
  8. Befriending the Breath
     … The mind does have this tendency to want to jump around, network with his friend, network with that friend, check up on this one, see how they’re doing, watch out for any trouble that’s going to come along. This is a hindrance they call restlessness and anxiety, the part of the mind that says you’ve got to keep jumping around from … 
  9. Equanimity
     … I can work at this, step by step by step, and I can get there.” You develop insight along the way, and you see that the more insight you gain into the workings of your mind, the more freedom you have. There’s going to be a sense of joy. You can tell yourself, “Greed used to overcome my mind, but now I can … 
  10. The Wealth of Simplicity
     … One, is it true? Two, is it actually beneficial? And three, is this the right time and place for it?” In a place like this where people are meditating, trying to keep their minds quiet, you want to say only things that are helpful and that disturb their peace of mind as little as possible. This way, as we pare down our own issues … 
  11. Speaking Truth to Defilement
     … But if you’re meticulous about even the little things, then you get more sensitive to when the mind wants to misrepresent something a little bit, for whatever the reason. And that’s a really good sensitivity to develop because it makes you more sensitive to what’s going on deep in your own mind. We have lots of images about what kind of … 
  12. Fire Escapes
     … Why go out? The mind may come up with its reasons. But when you examine those reasons, you see that a lot of them have little real substance. They may be convincing if you glance at them—and this is how you often fall for a lot of things happening in the mind: A glancing idea comes in and then it’s gone. You … 
  13. Dhamma in Line with the Dhamma
     … And how do you do that? You practice the establishings of mindfulness. For example, you’re here with the breath. It’s called being with the body in and of itself. You’re ardent, alert, and mindful: mindful to keep the breath in mind, alert to see what’s actually going on with the breath, alert to what you’re doing around the breath … 
  14. Possessiveness
     … It brought a lot of people to awakening, but those particular traditions didn’t last long because there was no analysis of what goes on in the mind that other people could pick up and use in training their own minds. Once that talent of that Buddha to read minds was gone, that was it. So again, the story points to the need for … 
  15. Precept Meditation
     … This requires mindfulness and alertness, which are important factors in training the mind. You have to keep your precepts in mind and be alert in watching over your actions to make sure they don’t go against your original intent. At the same time, you have to develop strategies for fending off any intentions that would go against your intent to be harmless. This … 
  16. Beyond Nature
     … The advantage of coming to a place like this is that you get to look deep inside the mind to see where the wellsprings of these cravings come from, this process of fabrication that lies deep within the mind. As we meditate, we’re trying to study fabrication as we experience it. This is the conditioning process in the mind and in the body … 
  17. Trading Up
     … After all, it is your mind. It’s the way your mind relates to your body. That’s one of those issues about which nobody has ever written a book that’s fully exhausted the topic. How is it that we have this physical body, and we have this mind, and they’re related, yet they’re very different things. What is that relationship … 
  18. Your Inner Teacher
     … watching what’s actually going on—one, watching what’s going on with the breath, and then two, watching what’s going on with the mind. Are you staying focused with the breath? If not, come right back. So mindfulness and alertness work together. Ardency is the quality of mind that keeps them all together: the mindfulness and the alertness and the breath. Try … 
  19. The Buddha’s Rules of Order
     … The perceptions you hold in mind are also important. They’re like the subliminal messages they put on TV. They blip very quickly, but your mind can pick them up. Deeper parts of the mind pick them up, and those images can drive you. I think I’ve told you about the time I was visiting someone and he was watching a show on … 
  20. Endurance & Restraint
     … Finally, sacitta-pariyodapanaṁ, the purification of the mind, making the mind bright and pure, bright and clean: We train the mind to be pure in its thoughts and its words and its deeds, particularly through raising the level of the mind. Here, again, think about the fact that the word “mind” here, citta, can also cover the heart. We try to lift our hearts … 
  21. No Resistance
    Sometimes it seems that when you try to focus on the breath, the distracting sounds around you, other distracting things around you, impinge even more on the mind. But that’s simply because when you’re with the breath, there are not a lot of complications. When you’re thinking a complex thought, you have to block things out. The mind is very good … 
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