Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. Harmless & Clearheaded
     … My mind is too distracted.” It’s like saying, “I can’t go to the hospital to have my disease treated because I’m too sick.” If you’re sick, you have to do whatever is required to get to the hospital, to get to the doctors so that they can treat your illness. And same with the mind: When the mind is distracted … 
  3. Potentials for Rapture
     … It’s the same with the mind. The mind has lots of potentials right now. It has the potential for the hindrances and it has the potentials for the factors for awakening. All the difference as to which side gets developed lies in the quality the Buddha calls appropriate attention. For instance, there are parts of the body right now that are relatively pleasant … 
  4. Oneness
     … But in the meantime, you’ve got to keep your mind well protected, well energized. This is when the mind enters into fixed penetration in a very strong and solid way. This is the heart of the path. The other factors will come out of this and surround this — or, as the Buddha says, support this. But this oneness of the mind with its … 
  5. Unskillful Habits
     … As you stay here, you get to see a lot of things going on in the mind, a lot of things going on in the body. Yet, while you’re with both the mind and the body, you’re able to step back from both a bit. You can sense the mind as you get grounded in the breath. You get out of your … 
  6. A Frame for the Day
     … You make up your mind to stay with the breath, to breathe comfortably, and then to stick with that intention. You begin to notice that you begin to give rise to feelings of pleasure—a sense of ease in the body, ease in the mind—all because you made up your mind to focus on a particular topic and to stick with it, and … 
  7. Three Types of Equanimity
     … When you’re meditating, you really are trying to get the mind under your control. You are trying to make a difference. Mindfulness is a governing principle that underlies concentration practice, and it has a task that it keeps in mind: to try to give rise to skillful qualities and try to maintain them. In other words, you don’t just watch them coming … 
  8. The Language of the Heart (2)
     … They’ve understood their minds and hearts in a way that allows them to bring suffering to an end. What this means is that we have to learn how to understand our minds and hearts in that way, too. We can’t say, “Well, now that the Dhamma’s come here, I want Dhamma in line with my language or with my way of … 
  9. Mundane Right View
     … It begins in these good qualities of mind. Generosity and gratitude are happy-making qualities. You don’t have to wait for some faraway future events to gain the rewards. Having a mind that feels generous, having a mind that feels gratitude: Those are spacious mind states here and now. They’re good mind states to be in, good to build on, good sources … 
  10. The Power of Human Effort
     … This is a good way of uplifting the mind—or as the texts say, gladdening the mind. These recollections put you in the right mood to meditate. You think about the kind of person the Buddha was, the person who found this path. You think about how good the Dhamma is, and how noble the example of his noble disciples. Of course, each of … 
  11. Admirable Friendship
     … We practice generosity to train the mind; we practice virtue to train the mind. But sometimes when we do, the focus on the mind is indirect. But when you’re meditating, you’re directly focusing on the mind in and of itself. You start first by focusing on something right next to the mind: the breath in the body, how you sense it right … 
  12. Xtreme Drama
    One of the forest ajaans, talking about the early years of his practice, talked about how his mind would progress, progress, progress, then the whole thing would come crashing down, with nothing left. Then it would start progressing again, and it would crash again. He began to notice there was a cyclical pattern to the ups and downs. He learned to anticipate them—and … 
  13. Free Sources of Energy
     … And holding that perception in mind, holding that way of thinking in mind, will give you energy. So much of the way we suffer comes down to how we talk to ourselves—that element of verbal fabrication. How we talk to ourselves determines what we crave, what we cling. If you do it in ignorance, there’s going to be suffering. If you bring … 
  14. A Room of Your Own
    What you’re doing as you’re meditating is creating a room of your own here inside the body, here in the present moment, a room where you can keep your own diary and not worry about who reads it—in other words, a place where you can inspect your mind in all honesty and not have to engage in denial or in other … 
  15. For Your Good the Good of Others
     … It’s also techniques, strategies for dealing with all the different ways the mind creates suffering. Learn to think strategically as you get the mind to settle down. Then once the mind has settled down, learn how to use that settled-down mind in a strategic way as well. It has lots of uses as you go through the world. It’s not just … 
  16. Appropriate Attention, Appropriate Intention
     … When you can lose interest in the other things that pull you away from developing concentration, then you can really work on that intention to get the mind focused. Then it becomes an issue of learning how to understand your mind: What does your mind like to settle down with? Concentration is not meant to be a process of forcing yourself to stay with … 
  17. Taming the Elephant
     … Again, this comes under directed thought and evaluation, as you learn how to adjust the mind to the breath or the breath to the mind. You all learn how to be together on good terms. So, take an interest in this. This is an important part of the meditation: learning how to listen to the needs of the body. Notice when you’re putting … 
  18. Put Your Books Back on the Shelf
     … But, as the ajaans like to say, it all comes down to one mind. The mind has lots of different defilements, lots of different tricks. There’s one of the passages in the Canon where an elephant trainer says that, when dealing with an elephant, within a week you know all of the elephant’s tricks it would try to play to avoid being … 
  19. Respect for Concentration
     … That’s what mindfulness and alertness are about. Mindfulness is to keep reminding you to stay here. Alertness is watching to see what’s going on. And you make little adjustments as you go. If you find any ways of breathing that are uncomfortable or make the mind either too sleepy or too edgy, just drop those. Look after the kinds of breathing that … 
  20. The Uses of Equanimity
     … When the Buddha taught Rahula, he said, “Start out by making your mind like earth. When disgusting things are thrown on the earth, the earth doesn’t shrink away.” We can also add that when wonderful things are thrown on the earth, the earth doesn’t get excited. The Buddha then said, “Make your mind like water. When water has to wash away disgusting … 
  21. The Fangs of Conceit
     … There’s stress in the mind. There’s suffering in the mind, and we’re causing it to ourselves. That’s the big irony. There’s enough stress and suffering in the world without our additional piling it on. And everything we do should be for the sake of happiness. You’d think that’s why we would act to begin with, or to … 
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