Search results for: "Mindfulness"
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- Truth with BoundariesI once read the true story of a woman who’d gone through a really bad period in her mind. Then she got out through a neurotic breakthrough. In other words, the neurosis she was in simply broke. What enabled her to make it break was that whatever thought was hounding her mind, driving her crazy, she would ask herself, “What if the opposite …
- Pushing the Three Characteristics… And one good way of testing the principle of inconstancy is to try to make your mind as constant as possible. A good way of testing the principle of stress is to see how much ease you can get as you focus the mind. And the way of testing the principle of not-self is to see how much control you can exert over …
- Around in Circles… just the mind staying alert to the breath right here. There are not too many variables, it would seem. But it’s plenty enough to keep you busy, plenty enough to give you all the raw material you need to learn about the mind in the present moment. Because that’s when the mind does all its work: in the present moment. We often …
- Positive Right Speech… You have to keep your mind in line, exercise some restraint over your thoughts; keep the topic of your meditation in mind—that’s mindfulness; and be alert to what you’re doing. And when the mind does settle down, show some respect for it. It may not seem like much. But again, look at the people around you. They may be imperfect, but …
- Goodwill as Wealth… Sometimes you start with people who are close to you, but then you begin to realize, why stop there? You want to develop a spacious mind. You’ve got this sense of well-being filling the body and filling the mind, and the ability to extend thoughts of goodwill to everybody, without exception, makes the mind even more expansive. Then it’s like living …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
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