Search results for: "The Mind"

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  2. The Right to Repair Your Mind
     … The Buddha’s approach to the mind is that you have the right to repair your mind. There are a lot of people out there who say, No, somebody else has to do this for you. But he’s saying that you’ve got the wherewithal within yourself to solve the mind’s problems, particularly the problem of suffering. The four noble truths are … 
  3. Hold a Mirror to Your Mind
     … So why do we glom them together? It’s part of the mind’s message to itself. The mind sends messages into the future, saying, “Watch out for this, watch out for that.” Often those messages prime us to suffer, as we shrink away from the area where we’re told the pain is. But you can change that relationship, as I said, by … 
  4. Between Either & Or
     … What’s the mind doing around the pain? Sometimes you’ll gain this understanding with subtle pains, and sometimes it requires more extreme ones, when the mind is cornered and can’t find any other way out aside from sharpening its discernment into what your perceptions are doing to build a bridge from the pain into the mind. So instead of having you pursue … 
  5. Slowing Down to Look
     … that the more the mind is dealing in abstractions, the easier it is for the mind to lie to itself. We always have that uneasy relationship with abstract teachings. There are times when we want to hear a convenient abstract teaching that we can carry into our lives, and then there’s part of us that rebels. The mind goes back-and-forth, wanting … 
  6. Fear of Others
     … You have to learn how to look past them and say, “Well, what exactly would be so horrible about their disliking you or their looking down on you?” Which part of the mind would be injured? Learn how not to identify with that part of the mind. Which part of the mind feels threatened? Again, learn how not to identify with it. That’s … 
  7. Three Recollections
    One of the basic principles of getting the mind into concentration is that you have to gladden it first. There are lots of ways of doing this. Sometimes just thinking about doing the concentration is enough to get you glad. You have an opportunity to sit here with your eyes closed, and with no other responsibilities right now. You don’t have to deal … 
  8. Freedom from Fear
    Part of the formula for right mindfulness, and the means for getting the mind into right concentration, is “putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world.” In times when that’s hard, when you have anxieties about what’s going on in the world, fear about what’s going to happen, you have to learn how to get that fear under control … 
  9. Faith in the Buddha’s Awakening
     … And as we watch the breath, we also watch the mind to make sure it stays with the breath. That’s alertness. If we catch it wandering off, then we bring with a quality called ardency, which means that as soon as we catch it wandering off, we bring it right back. While the mind is with the breath we try to be as … 
  10. Cooking the Mind
     … Instead, you focus on applying the heat right now and see how the mind responds as you cook it. The heat is the heat of your effort. Ajaan Lee has a nice image. He says it’s like putting a hunk of rock into a smelter. You apply the heat and the metals you want to get out of the rock will come out … 
  11. Mending the Social Fabric
     … There’s a lot that can be done with the breath to soothe the body, to soothe the mind, to heal the body, heal the mind, strengthen the body, strengthen the mind. And when we all see eye-to-eye on this, then it’s a good society to live in. It makes it easier to share, because we remember that physical survival is … 
  12. Doubts
     … The Buddha gives you a similar method for sorting out the truths of the mind, for overcoming doubts about your own mind and the power of the mind to find happiness. After all, that is the big issue. The question about whether the world is eternal or not is not really the big issue. The big issue is: Can you find true happiness? And … 
  13. Mindful & Grateful for Lessons in Freedom
     … We remember the different instructions that tell us what we can do with the breath and what we can do with the mind so that we can get the breath and the mind to stay together. We’re trying to develop a state of concentration. And from the concentration, we want to be able to see the mind clearly—to see particularly where it … 
  14. Investing Your Intention
     … because the mind works this way. The mind’s really good at hyping things. And we wouldn’t fall for external hype unless it were already a habit in the mind. It may sound like we’re bad-mouthing the pleasures of the world, but you have to make a choice: Do you really want peace of mind or do you want to keep … 
  15. Concentration Work
     … If they’re more talented in the area of analyzing the mind, they’re encouraged in the direction of discernment. Ajaan Fuang, though, would turn tables on people. If they were already talented in concentration, he’d have them work more in learning how to think about and analyze the movements of the mind. If they were already talented in analyzing things, he’d … 
  16. How to Really Depend on Yourself
     … If something comes up in the mind and you’re not sure about how trustworthy it may be, just stay with your sense of awareness. Watch it pass while the awareness stays. And that way it would cause no danger. As you can see, there’s no one way of solving all the problems of the mind. You get the basic principles, but then … 
  17. Adult Education
     … You give the mind one thing to focus on, and very quickly you notice that it’s going to focus on other things instead. Which you might not have really noticed, unless you’d given yourself one thing, one task to stick to. So you learn things about the actions of the mind. As you get really sensitive to the actions of the mind … 
  18. Patience & Curiosity
     … To what extent can this breath be related to rapture or pleasure? How do you perceive the breath? How do you adjust the rhythm and texture of the breath so that you can breathe in and out sensitive to rapture and pleasure? He says to learn how to breathe in and out gladdening the mind, steadying the mind, releasing the mind. He provides those … 
  19. A Mind Like Earth
     … But that kind of stress doesn’t have to weigh down the mind. It’s the stress that we add that really weighs the mind down. But you can’t see what you’re adding if you’re in the midst of adding it all the time. You have to step back into one part of the mind and look at the other parts … 
  20. In Search of What’s Skillful
     … the defilements that bubble up into the mind. There’s sensuality, there are views, and then there’s ignorance. When he abandoned that ignorance, he was able to let go of his views and attain full awakening. So in each case, no matter how amazing the knowledge was, he never stopped there. He kept asking: What’s the most skillful thing to do here … 
  21. A Self Rightly Directed
     … You begin to see the varieties of things that can arise in the mind, skillful and unskillful, and you learn how to direct the mind in a skillful direction. That’s what it means to direct yourself rightly. So when thoughts come up in the mind that get in the way of the practice, you have to remember: They’re not the direction you … 
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