Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 108
  2. The First Noble Truth
     … to figure out what it is that weighs the mind down, what puts a squeeze on the mind, and why. In fact, by centering his four noble truths on the issue of suffering, he’s saying that this is the most important issue you’ve got to understand and resolve. And the first step lies in actually seeing what suffering is. When you really … 
  3. The Path Is and Isn’t the Goal
     … If the mind is going to do any thinking and evaluating, have it think about and evaluate the breath. This is an important part of getting the mind to settle down. It’s not just a wobbly stage that you have to get past. It’s the process of fitting the mind together with the breath. You want to think about the breath very … 
  4. Willing to Learn
     … Then work on the more refined skills that come from just sitting here with the pain, sitting here with the stress in the mind, and realizing that the physical pain doesn’t have to stress the mind. You’re doing something wrong if you let it stress the mind. It’s not that you’re doing something wrong that causes the pain, but there … 
  5. Feeding on Feeding
     … The body feeds off the food, but the mind gains pleasure out of these activities because it’s found that this is how you survive, this is how you take in parts of the world and make them part of yourself. That’s what eating is all about: taking what’s not-self and making it self. The mind gets pleasure out of the … 
  6. Your Own Karma
     … When these things arise in the mind, you want to encourage them, either through thinking or not thinking. Sometimes we think that meditation is not thinking but sometimes you need to think in ways that encourage skillful qualities in the mind. This is why the Buddha has that whole list of recollections: recollection of the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha; your own past generosity … 
  7. When You Practice on Your Own
     … As you learn how to deal skillfully with feelings, you gain more and more insights into the mind as the mind is settling down. At the same time, you’re making sure that the mind doesn’t wander off to other things. You begin to notice: What does it mean to “wander off” to other things? What happens? You begin to see the process … 
  8. Equanimity
     … You don’t simply force the mind to be equanimous through force of will. You’re coming out the other side of having fed the mind and your inner sense of the body so well that the equanimity comes from a sense of satisfaction. Your own internal needs are met, and you can view the world with a lot more peace, with less hunger … 
  9. The Wealth of Simplicity
     … He said, “Lots of times we think that when the mind has lots of thoughts, it’s wealthiest, but no, actually that’s when it’s poor. When the mind has only one or two things that it’s thinking about: That’s when it’s wealthy. It can give those things its full attention.” It is like an exotic fruit in the market … 
  10. Getting Yourself
     … It’s because it’s a useful tool in looking into the mind. It’s a useful strategy for getting the mind very still, very clear, very balanced, with very strong sense of well-being, so that you can start looking into the parts of the mind you normally don’t want to look into, and see the defilements that you ordinarily pretend not … 
  11. Consciousness, Awakened & Not
     … You’re very conscious of this fact in the beginning as you’re trying to get the mind into concentration and you find it difficult. But as you get more and more inclined in the direction of stillness, as the mind gets more and more content to be there, the effort goes underground. So you have to develop your sensitivity, to keep on looking … 
  12. The Larger View
     … Even before you’ve carried it out, you’ve set the mind in the right direction. When you look at the larger picture, you’ll see that there are lots of stories of how people have turned themselves around, done unexpected things. Fact is often a lot stranger than fiction because the mind can change very quickly. As the Buddha said, the mind can … 
  13. A Genius about Your own Mind
     … Because the mind finds it so easy to slip off to the past and the future, it’s quite an accomplishment to stay right here continually with the breath coming in and going out. So whatever skills can get you here, either by taking an interest in the mind in the present or by taking an interest in the breath in the present, you … 
  14. The Carrot & the Stick
     … The stick here is reminding yourself what happens to you when you allow greed, anger, and delusion to take over the mind. Just look at the crazy things that people do. You can look at the newspapers; you can look at people you’ve known. People do really destructive things to themselves simply because they allow greed to get a toehold in their minds … 
  15. The Karma of Pleasure
     … But the only way to find that is, first, to develop this ability to create a sense of ease and well-being within the body through the breath, a sense of ease and well-being that come from secluding the mind from unskillful states, getting the mind concentrated, and really seeing the karma of pleasure. This is what you’ve got to do in … 
  16. A Legacy of Strengths
     … And where do our actions come from? They come from the mind, so we’ve got to train the mind. That’s our working hypothesis. Then, based on that, we make an effort. That’s the second strength, persistence. It’s not just sticking with things. It’s realizing there are unskillful things that could come up in the mind so you do your … 
  17. Timeless Practice
     … If you find yourself breaking any of the precepts, that carelessness is going to come into the mind. And whatever regret that comes from having harmed either yourself or other people becomes an obstacle. Either you deny that harm, in which case you set up even more ignorance in the mind, or you wound yourself again and again and again with regret. So either … 
  18. Maybe the Buddha Knew Something
     … There’s a part of the mind that really thrives on restraint. You find that as you look for purer and purer comforts in terms of things to look at and things to listen to. You turn more and more to the mind: the qualities you can develop in the mind that give a sense of well-being when things outside are not quite … 
  19. How Completion is Found
     … The intention is to get the mind to settle down. And in the course of working on that intention, you’re going to gain understanding of the mind as well. If the mind wanders off, you have to understand how to bring it back—and how to bring it back in such a way that it likes to stay. That requires understanding. You can … 
  20. Survival Dhamma
     … It doesn’t really dig down deep into the mind. It can be very easily erased—and very easily grow skewed if you don’t have the honesty that comes with virtue, and the steadiness of gaze that comes with concentration, the depth of well-being that comes with concentration that allows you not to let your hunger get in the way. Because the … 
  21. A Safe Harbor
     … The past bad actions you’ve done, as the Buddha said, are hardly felt at all, because the mind is so much more expansive now. This is a form of safety that can come from training the heart. Even more so when your concentration develops and you develop even further insight into the ways the mind can create suffering for itself: You develop the … 
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