Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 109
  2. Ending Suffering
     … So even though the parentheses of the body—in other words, the pain of birth, the pain of death—may be unavoidable, they don’t have to make inroads on the mind. The mind can find freedom in the midst of all this. It all depends on whether you’re serious enough to wish for true happiness and honest enough to see the suffering … 
  3. A Clear, Calm Lake
     … You try to calm the mind. When the mind is full of worry and anxiety, you basically turn off or block off a lot of the things that would be helpful. You suddenly can’t remember the good lessons from the past. So you try to calm it down. Ajaan Lee’s image is of the ocean: When the ocean is flat, you can … 
  4. The Reality Principle
     … These are forms of compassion and goodwill because they open up the mind and make it more expansive. When the mind is in a more expansive state, the amount of suffering grows less. So it’s good to develop these qualities in the mind. One way of developing them is to learn how to develop the same attitudes toward your breathing. Have goodwill towards … 
  5. Unattractive
     … They have to do something else to get the mind to settle down. You can think thoughts of goodwill to put the mind in a good nice warm state, and then the breath flows more easily. Sometimes you have to deal with thoughts of lust, which is why we have the contemplation of the body, or as the Buddha says, the contemplation of the … 
  6. Bringing Right resolve
     … We try to milk as much satisfaction and gratification out of them, and our constant commentary on them, we have to realize, is where we drag the mind down. If this is the kind of stuff you’re fascinated with, the kind of stuff you’re fixated on, then pleasure and pain become the big issues in life. The issue of purifying the mind … 
  7. The Graduated Discourse
     … As the texts say, the mind untrained is very unpliant, it’s very resistant, like the kind of wood that snaps when you try to bend it, whereas the trained mind is pliant. When you try to bend it in the right direction, it’ll go that direction. The problem is that you have to train your mind. It’s a matter of the … 
  8. Laying the Infrastructure
     … Any of the obstacles—some of the seemingly positive things that are signs that the mind is beginning to settle down or things that happen in the body or the mind as the mind begins to settle down: You don’t want them to distract you, either. You‘re working on your ability to stick with one thing no matter what else happens. And … 
  9. The Buddha’s Narratives & Yours
     … When issues come up in the mind, you try to think of the issue in light of what the Buddha experienced, what he found on the night of his awakening. For example, narratives come up. You’re sitting here meditating, and all of a sudden a story from yesterday or earlier today or last week or last year or early on in your life … 
  10. On an Even Keel
     … But for the purpose of getting the mind to settle down, you want to make them one. Have them all occupy the same place: your awareness, the breath, the sense of pleasure. But keep that perception of breath in mind. Otherwise, you zone out. If you can’t make the breath comfortable, well, again, remember: Make the mind like earth. Tell yourself, “If I … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. Even Shame Can Be Skillful
     … People sometimes ask, how are you going to gain any insight focusing on the breath? It’s right here in the maintaining that you begin to see the mind, see the movements of the mind, because you’re giving yourself a good standard against which to measure things. Otherwise, the mind moves around, and because everything is moving, it’s like being in the … 
  13. The Karma of Meditation
     … As he says, you hardly feel it at all when the results of old karma come, because the mind is in a different state. The other way of preparing the mind to deal with anything bad coming in from the past is to try to train the mind so that it’s not overcome by pleasure or by pain. In other words, you can … 
  14. Learning How to Talk to Yourself
     … You can talk yourself out of certain moods; or if the mind seems to be like a crowd, bent on making you miserable, at the very least you don’t have to give in to the crowd. If you’re feeling lonely, you can ask yourself, “Why do I not like being alone?” See what the mind says. Tell yourself you don’t have … 
  15. A Healthy Ego
     … In fact, the Buddha said heedfulness is the source of all good qualities in the mind. You realize that if you don’t train your mind, the mind can create a lot of problems. It’s like having a Rottweiler in your house. If the Rottweiler isn’t trained, it’s going to create a lot of problems. The second quality is altruism, which … 
  16. Harmony Inside & Outside
     … Get the mind to settle down so that you can see where the craving is, because that’s the problem. As long as there’s going to be craving, focus your craving on the path, on what you can do to observe your precepts, what you can do to get the mind concentrated, what you can do to start analyzing what’s going on … 
  17. At Play
     … You can ask yourself, “Where are you in the body?” That was one of Dogen’s questions when he was teaching how to de-think thinking: “Is the body sitting in the mind or is the mind sitting in the body?” Where is your mind in the body? We tend to think of our awareness as being focused in the head, but there’s … 
  18. The Evening News
     … You get sensitive to when there’s rapture and pleasure coming from getting the mind concentrated. Then you see how those things together with the perceptions that go with them—the perception of the breath, the perception of the feelings, the perception of the body—have an impact on the mind. They fabricate the mind. Then you allow that impact to calm down. With … 
  19. What You’re Choosing to Do Right Now
     … But as we get the mind more calm, get the mind to settle down, we can begin to sense these movements in the mind. We use the Buddha’s vocabulary to sort out what’s what. What’s going on in there? The fact that we’re making choices right now is what allows us to practice. It’s what allows us to find … 
  20. Precept Meditation
     … This requires mindfulness and alertness, which are important factors in training the mind. You have to keep your precepts in mind and be alert in watching over your actions to make sure they don’t go against your original intent. At the same time, you have to develop strategies for fending off any intentions that would go against your intent to be harmless. This … 
  21. An Exercise in Freedom
     … You develop them through exercising the powers of the mind, which is what we’re doing as we meditate. The mind is capable of developing mindfulness, alertness, conviction, persistence, concentration, discernment, goodwill—all kinds of good qualities. The more you exercise these qualities, the greater your range of freedom, the greater your range of choice. But the Buddha starts with basics. He starts with … 
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