Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 110
  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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