Search results for: "Mindfulness"
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- Terror & Revulsion… Now the Buddha has you develop this feeling as the mind has developed concentration. Through the practice, you’ve been learning these strengths of conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment, these strengths that nourish the mind. As you practice, you want to feed on these things. But ultimately they put the mind in a position where it’s so strong that it doesn’t …
- To Be Your Own Teacher… So as you’re looking after your own practice, learning to be more and more responsible for looking after yourself, it’s good to keep these three principles in mind. When you keep them in mind, you’re a lot less likely to go off course. The first one, restraint of the senses, is defined as learning how to see the little things that …
- Meditator, Mediator… What happens, of course, when we throw our weight around is that other parts in the mind throw their weight back. If you don’t have a sense of ease and well-being in the meditation, you start getting desperate after a while. Someone once called mindfulness hell: All you can do is be mindful of whatever comes up, and you don’t have …
- Eight Principles… The body may be wet, but the mind isn’t wet. He contemplated that, repeated it to himself and contemplated it at the same time, until the mind really did take note of the fact that wetness was not a property of the mind. It was a property of the body. But when you take possession of the body, there you are. You’re …
- Delight… We’re training the mind. We’re developing the mind’s good qualities and learning how to let go of its bad qualities. Because the mind has both. You see this clearly as soon as you try to focus on the breath. Other thoughts will come in that’ll try to pull you away. Sometimes they’re neutral thoughts, sometimes they’re relatively okay …
- Equanimity Isn’t Apathy… Learn to develop the mind that’s like earth. Learn to develop the mind that’s like fire—not in the sense of burning you up, but in the sense of being willing to burn anything, likable or not. That’s its natural duty. Think of the meditation as your natural duty. You’re here in this body. This body is causing suffering for …
- More than Just Letting Go… Or you’re developing unskillful qualities of mind as you fight a particular issue, in which case you’ve got to back off. You can’t just accept things happening in your mind that way. Because that’s the big arena of importance for the Buddha: what’s going on in your mind. And here again, as Ajaan Fuang mentioned to me one time …
- Changing the Pleasure Equation… Turn around and look at the mind that’s making these comments.” In other words, the fact that things change is not a big deal. The problem is that the mind is looking for happiness in things that change, looking for its happiness in things that are stressful, for happiness in things that are not-self. It’s that search for happiness: That’s …
- Choosing & Watching Your Choices… How can you know the long-term results of something you did a while back? It’s partly because the mind observing is part of the thing you’re trying to train. Ajaan Chah has a nice passage where he talks about how you’re coming here to observe the precepts, to meditate, so this function of the mind as the observer is something …
- Delight & Beyond Delight… It gives you a sense that the Buddha was right when he said, “All things have the mind as their forerunner.” You begin to see the influence that the mind has on basic experiences, even just of the body as you feel it from within. There’s a lot to explore there in terms of your perceptions, in terms of your inner conversation. Learn …
- Instruct, Urge, Rouse, & Encourage Yourself… Which is why Ajaan Lee pointed out that when the Buddha talks about the three qualities that are brought to mindfulness practice—and by extension to concentration practice—mindfulness, ardency, alertness: Ardency is the wisdom faculty. The way the Buddha defines mindfulness, you could be mindful of anything; you could hold anything in mind. Simply being able to remember things that were done and …
- One Thing Clear Through… lots of sensual pleasures, good things that come from good qualities of the mind. But those good things are not nearly as good as the qualities of the mind. If you focus on feeding on things outside, even the good things of the heavenly world, the mind deteriorates. You can imagine what it’s like living in a land where there’s nothing but …
- The Practice of Right View… It may be idle in its intent, but it actually has an impact on the mind. It’s something you’re doing, and it leaves kammic traces. Just as the Buddha discouraged idle, aimless speech, he also discouraged idle, aimless thinking. So learn how to look at your thoughts in terms of what they do, the impact they have on the mind. The Buddha …
- The Stairway Up… We can sit around and think about Dhamma abstractions from dawn to dusk and dusk to dawn, but the problems in the mind aren’t composed of abstractions. They’re not composed of memories. They’re composed of movements in the mind right now. Look at what the mind is doing, how it moves. Can you change the way it moves? You’ve got …
- Endurance with a Purpose… When you feel confident enough—the mind is rested enough, nourished by that sense of well-being—then you can actually look directly into the pain. This is where you get more focused on the other two types of fabrication. Verbal fabrications: What are you telling yourself about the pain? And mental fabrications: What are the images you have in mind about the pain …
- Recollection of Hell… You hold the perception of breath in mind, all this so you can create a sense of feeling that’s pleasant, easeful. You want to spread that throughout the body. Then you’ve got a consciousness that’s aware of all this. The fabrication of mindfulness is trying to keep you here. That’s what mindfulness is: a kind of fabrication, reminding you what …
- Use Your Imagination… I’ll make that a law inside my mind.” If the temptation seems persistent, you can ask yourself, “Well, why can’t I be more persistent that it?” What is the temptation, but one part of your mind? So why can’t another part of your mind, the skillful part of your mind, be just as persistent, just as insistent, just as tenacious? Learn …
- Educating Equanimity… Try to get the mind as still and as centered as possible, and then from that improved perspective look into the way the mind is reasoning around its reaction. Ask, “Well, why do you feel this way?” The mind will say, “Of course, I feel this way.” “Why?” See if you can get some answers, and then test the answers to see if they …
- Respect Opens Possibilities… One is, being single-minded as you listen, really focusing all your attention on the Dhamma. The word he uses for single-minded is ekagga. It’s sometimes translated as “one-pointed.” In fact, some people, when they talk about concentration—which is defined as cittass’ekaggata, which they translated as “one-pointed-ness of mind”—they say you have to get so one …
- Where to Look in the Present… Keep in mind what you want to accomplish here. You do want to get the mind to settle down. You do want it to be clear. You do want to have a sense of ease and well-being. The Buddha describes right concentration as including rapture as well. So those are the things you’re aiming at. The question is learning how to aim …
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