Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 115
  2. How to Be Alone
     … There are also the skills of steadying the mind when the new mood you’re trying to create is still unstable. What can you do to make it more and more solid? And then there are the skills of releasing the mind, knowing how to free the mind from a relatively skillful mood to reach an even more skillful one. Even when you’ve … 
  3. Taking Responsibility
     … How can I get the mind to be more still? How can the mind be focused? How can it be settled down? These are useful questions to ask for the purpose of gaining tranquility. For the purpose of insight the questions are: How should fabrications be regarded? How should they be analyzed? You get some answers but then again you have to take those … 
  4. Protection in all Directions
     … There are certain actions in the mind that lead to suffering; there are certain actions in the mind that lead away from suffering. As you start out with these basic principles of what’s skillful, you find that in order to really strengthen your actions—especially skillful mental acts, but also your skillful bodily acts and your skillful verbal acts—you need to have … 
  5. Coping & Beyond Coping
     … We create that place by giving the mind something good to focus on, something nearby—the breath, the way you feel the body from inside. When we talk about the breath, it’s not the air coming in and out through the nose. It’s more the feeling of energy that flows through the body as you breathe in, as you breathe out. It … 
  6. Dethinking Thinking
     … The body has a sense of forward and back, but why does the mind have to carry that in? We tend to think of the mind as being like the eyes that face forward. But what happens if you think of the mind just as being a radiance going out in all directions, and all directions are equal? Then, of course, there are concepts … 
  7. Catch Yourself Lying to Yourself
     … This earnestness is what translates into truth as a meditator, being earnest in watching yourself so that you can catch the mind lying to itself. You begin to realize all the layers that are going on in the mind—layers of discussion, layers of decision—and you can begin to pry them apart. That’s genuine discernment. We like to think that discernment is … 
  8. Licking Yourself Clean
     … One of the reasons we recite those chants on goodwill, compassion, appreciation, and equanimity is to create a sense of wellbeing in the mind. Thoughts of goodwill are good thoughts to think. They feel good. They put the mind at ease. You don’t have to struggle with anybody. You don’t have to settle any old scores. It feels good to be thinking … 
  9. The Skills of a Hunter
     … Little thoughts’ll come into the mind. Anything that would come in saying, “This is boring. This is stupid. This is whatever,” you’ve got to treat as defilements. You can’t side with them. You’ve got to side with your desire to really know the mind, and to master the skills that are necessary for doing so. So be very clear about … 
  10. The Uses of Equanimity
     … to get the mind solid in the face of whatever comes up. But that solidity has to come from learning how to develop strengths: a sense of well-being, a sense of ease inside the body, an ease inside the mind, so as to assist in keeping you solid. The secret to patience or endurance is to focus not on the hard things you … 
  11. Duties
     … There’s an interesting sutta where a deva comes to see the Buddha and talks about how the mind is trembling, the mind is fearful and anxious because of its duties: duties that have already arisen and duties that have yet to arise. We don’t usually think of devas as having duties. They’re supposed to be up there in heaven just having … 
  12. Tools of Perception
     … This is how you get the mind into deeper and deeper concentration until the point where you really don’t feel the need to breathe. The energy sources in the different parts of your body nourish everything else. The mind is still enough so that you don’t need a lot of oxygen to nourish the brain. The oxygen you get through the pores … 
  13. Loving Yourself
     … Because if you act on unskillful intentions, it leaves a scar on the mind. And no matter how much denial you may build up around it, it makes it harder and harder to just be with yourself, harder to be true to yourself, true with yourself, to admit what’s actually going on in the mind. There are two places where you can see … 
  14. Generating Good Energy
     … Because you find that as the mind settles down into different layers of concentration, the way you experience the breath is going to change. When you get the mind into the first jhana, there’s a sense of breath energy suffusing throughout the body. But you’re standing outside of it a little bit, watching over, like the bathman and the bathman’s apprentice … 
  15. Two Types of Dukkha
     … This is why we sit and meditate, closing our eyes to the world, so that we can see what the mind is doing right now that’s adding unnecessary suffering, adding unnecessary stress to what we’re experiencing. We try to bring our attention as much as we can into the present moment so that we can watch the workings of the mind. Otherwise … 
  16. Defilements at the Door
     … They don’t have to invade the mind and remain. That’s the phrase that the Buddha uses: “invade the mind and remain.” They may present themselves to your awareness, but they don’t have to come inside. It’s like the difference between the third establishing of mindfulness and the fourth. The third talks about different states of mind, those imbued with passion … 
  17. The Four Noble Truths
     … To comprehend pain, you need a good solid place to keep the mind so that it can watch the pain and really be interested in comprehending it, rather than just wanting it to go away. That means you’ve got to put the mind in a position of strength, a place where it feels safe—not threatened or overwhelmed by the pain. So we … 
  18. Feelings of Unworthiness
     … As the Buddha said, nothing can change as quickly as the mind. There’s no analogy that he could give for how quick the mind is to change its course. Now, that can be a negative thing, but it can also be a positive thing, as when you have a good change of heart. You realize that your past may be bad—you either … 
  19. Mindfulness of Death
     … Finally, there’s discernment—seeing what’s skillful in the mind, what’s unskillful in the mind, and knowing how to talk yourself into doing what’s skillful and out of doing what’s unskillful, regardless of your likes or dislikes. When you reflect on the fact of your own death, remind yourself, “These are the qualities I’ve got to develop in myself … 
  20. Noble Ardency
     … If you’re very mindful and alert and ardent, the mind’s going to settle down. Right mindfulness is how you get the mind to settle down, and that’s how you get it to stay settled down. The quality of ardency in there is what gets the concentration stronger and stronger. Ardency is also very directly related to the development of discernment. As … 
  21. The Desire for Truth
     … If you’re not really clear about what you’re doing, how can you know the results of your actions? So you watch the mind. You’re alert to see what the mind is doing. You’re alert to the breath. And then when you learn anything about the relationship between the mind and the breath—how to get the mind to settle down … 
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