Search results for: "Mindfulness"

  1. Page 109
  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. Not Just a Witness
    I’m reading a book on the psychology of Now, how the mind creates its sense of what’s going on in the present moment. The author points out, as she goes from one revelation to the next, that we don’t just pick up stimuli from outside and then put them together to see what we’ve got. We anticipate; we generate perceptions … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. A World of Limitations
     … Actions do have their results, depending on the quality of mind with which you do the action, and the quality of mind you have when you receive the results. That’s the big fact of life right there. So we learn how not to fight it, but how to use it to our advantage. This means that time spent developing good qualities of mind … 
  9. A Meditator is a Good Friend to Have
     … When they talk about things being unconscious or subconscious, it’s not that there’s a basement in the mind where whatever happens has to be unconscious and in the dark. It’s simply that we’re not paying attention. Thoughts go flitting through the mind and then leave an imprint on the body. Or events in the body can have an impact on … 
  10. To Be Debt Free
     … Many people say, “The real work is with insight, so let’s go straight to insight.” But insight doesn’t happen in a really deep way until the mind has been stilled through mindfulness, concentration, and right effort, which are the three concentration factors of the path. There are times when getting the mind into concentration seems kind of dumb. Nothing new is happening … 
  11. The Challenge
     … If you really want to see how an action gives good or bad results, you have to get the mind to be very mindful, very alert, consistently. That’s why you have to train it in mindfulness and alertness and the consistency that leads to good concentration. You focus on the breath because that helps you step out of your usual dialogue inside the … 
  12. Karma Storms
    We come to a quiet place like this and we like to think that our minds will settle down right away. There’s nothing outside to disturb us, but the problem is that we come with our karmic baggage: habits of mind that we can see in the present moment, and also old karma that we can’t see where it’s coming from … 
  13. Accepting the Buddha’s Standards
     … There has to be at least part of the mind that’s standing very still and watching whatever is happening, not the least bit stirred by those things. Otherwise you just slip along with them, accepting this as the normal way of the mind. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Part of the practice is learning that the mind at normalcy … 
  14. Discernment All Along
     … So, basically the Buddha is telling you to hold up a mirror to your mind in action. Watch the mind as it’s engaged with the breath. Watch the mind as it’s engaged with all the various skillful things that are parts of the path: virtue, concentration, discernment—and see what you can learn. It’s easiest to learn when you’re engaged … 
  15. The Limits of Old Kamma
     … We’re sitting here with lots of different potentials—potentials in the body, potentials in the mind. As we meditate we explore to see which potentials lead to the greatest happiness, the greatest pleasure. Allow the breath to be pleasurable and also notice what your mind is doing, what potentials you have in your mind: What thoughts could you be thinking right now? What … 
  16. Audacious & Undaunted
     … This is how the Buddha’s awakening is relevant to us, because from there he went on to look into his own mind in the present moment. The third knowledge, which he gained when looking there, was what ended the effluents, in other words, the outflows of the mind that keep the mind going in this process of death and rebirth and re-death … 
  17. Mind Your Own Business
     … I kept wondering, “What do people do who are watching movies every day? Isn’t their mind a cacophony?" Well, the same principle applies to your conversations, because the things you talk about to yourself and to other people start reverberating around in the mind. Then when you’re sitting here trying to get the mind quiet, and particularly if there’s been something … 
  18. How to Be an Admirable Friend
     … The trouble comes from the fact that the mind’s thoughts are out of control. So the mind needs a measure of control, and this is where you exercise that control by developing mindfulness and discernment around the breathing. So you come back to the breath. Try to make the breath as interesting as possible. In other words, notice how the breath energy has … 
  19. How to Think about Death
     … Whereas if you can train the mind to contemplate these things and find ways of perceiving your own aging, illness, and death in a way that doesn’t disturb the mind at all, that lifts a huge burden off the mind. This comes under the principle of respect for heedfulness—in other words, realizing that we have to take time to think about things … 
  20. Start with Yourself
     … Then another element in an emotion is how the mind talks to itself, the dialogue you have inside. This is why we have these chants every evening, to train the mind in telling itself the right things. For example, you remind yourself, “May all living beings be happy.” Just keep repeating that over and over in your mind. Remind yourself that this is a … 
  21. Pain & Distraction
     … After all, the whole purpose of the practice here is to develop purity of mind, and purity of mind is just this: that the mind can separate itself from things. It can let go of whatever comes up. Doesn’t have to latch on. Isn’t hungry. Doesn’t have to feed. Ajaan Fuang’s comment was that everything else that happens in the … 
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