Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 105
  2. Carrying Your Duties Lightly
     … You really need practice with doing that, because otherwise the narratives come in and eat into your meditation, eat into the mind, and leave you with no concentration. Get in touch with that part of the mind they call “your face before you were born”: in other words, the part that has no knowledge of these narratives, doesn’t give them any reality. Learn … 
  3. Duties
     … We want to get the mind to settle down, because when the mind is settled down, it’s a lot stronger and a lot clearer. It can see things a lot more clearly and understand what it’s doing inside that’s creating suffering for itself. After all, that’s the message of the four noble truths: There may be pains caused by the … 
  4. Again & Again
     … It’s called meta-cognition—observing the mind in action. So keep doing this again and again, because it does have an impact on the mind. You begin to see when things go really well: This state of concentration is the best thing you can put together in the present moment, and you begin to see more and more clearly what you’re doing … 
  5. Food for Endurance
     … Then we can ask ourselves: “Which of these ways is the most conducive to keeping the mind happy, keeping the mind acting in skillful ways?” Choose that perception; choose those feelings. Then you can feed on those. That’s the food of intention. It’s in this way that we can create happiness from within, because we live in a world where we have … 
  6. Older than the Cosmos
     … And how do we know that they’re not worth laying claim to? Because they come out of the mind. You can see the process by which they all happen, and it starts in the mind. The Buddha calls craving the guide to becoming. He also calls it the seamstress, what stitches things together. It thinks, “This together with that and that together with … 
  7. The Fangs of Conceit
     … There’s stress in the mind. There’s suffering in the mind, and we’re causing it to ourselves. That’s the big irony. There’s enough stress and suffering in the world without our additional piling it on. And everything we do should be for the sake of happiness. You’d think that’s why we would act to begin with, or to … 
  8. Concentration Teamwork
    When you meditate, it’s important to have a clear sense of cause and effect around what’s going on in the mind. We’re trying to get a sense of ease, a sense of fullness and refreshment: That’s the result. In the Buddha’s terms, he says it’s born of seclusion. In other words, you’re secluding your mind from thoughts … 
  9. Alighting on the Dhamma
     … But if you do point those words at what’s going on in your mind—you allow them to point, you allow them to come into the mind, to illumine what’s going on in the mind—then you’ll benefit. You’ll be able to step back from things happening in the mind and see them in a new light. But as we … 
  10. Skilled in Aims
     … a well-being totally generated by the mind that’s quiet. We focus on the breath and, in working on the breath, we work on the mind. The intention to do this comes from within the mind. It’s not the case that the breath pulls at you and says, “Hey, hey, hey, pay attention to me!” It’s because we have right view … 
  11. Indulge in the Pleasure of Jhana
     … But how do you adjust it in a way that makes it better, so that the mind can permeate into the breath, the breath can permeate into the mind, so that there’s no sense of a boundary between the two of them? In other words, your body is willing to have you be aware of it and it’s not going to freeze … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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