Search results for: "Mindfulness"

  1. Page 117
  2. Meditate to Win
     … You watch the mind thinking, you watch the mind as it focuses, you watch the mind as it’s doing the meditation. That requires a certain distance. You’re not totally immersed in these activities. There are times in concentration practice when you do get totally immersed. That’s basically to give the mind a chance to rest and get still. But then once … 
  3. Pleasant Practice, Painful Practice
     … to get to the point where the mind is neither taken with attractiveness or unattractiveness, to realize these are perceptions you apply that are not all that useful. When you can get past them, the mind is freed from a lot of worries and a lot of concerns. This is a method of practice that’s really important. Now, it’s not pleasant. As … 
  4. Honest & Observant
     … And then you make up your mind you’re not going to repeat it again. There’s another place where the Buddha advises, when you realize you’ve done something wrong, that you make up your mind not to repeat the mistake, and then you spread goodwill: goodwill for yourself so that you don’t beat yourself up too much, goodwill for the person … 
  5. Habits & Practices
     … After all, to hold to a precept, you have to be, one, mindful to keep it in mind. That’s what mindfulness means. Two, you have to be alert to watch what you’re actually doing. And three, you have to be ardent. You have to put out effort. These are the three qualities that also go into establishing mindfulness. When mindfulness is well … 
  6. Stop Squirming
     … But fortunately, that’s not the stress or suffering that weighs the mind down. If it were, there wouldn’t be anything you could do about it. What really weighs the mind down is the stress of the four noble truths: the stress that comes from craving and ignorance. And that’s a cause you can do something about. You can replace ignorance with … 
  7. Dwellings
     … As the Buddha said, perceptions and feelings shape the mind. So what are the feelings right now that are shaping your mind? What are the perceptions? Can you change them? When he talks about being mindful of feelings, he talks about feelings “not of the flesh” and “feelings of the flesh.” Feelings of the flesh are simple sensory sensations that are pleasant, painful, or … 
  8. You Can Make a Difference
     … But the way the Buddha explained karma, there are influences coming in from the past, but the way you experience those influences is going to depend on your mental actions and mind state right now. So, even though you may have bad influences coming from the past, you can counteract them, you can minimize them. He talks mainly about developing an unlimited mind state … 
  9. Caring Enough to Doubt
     … And unlike a lot of the pleasures of the world that dull the mind, this pleasure doesn’t. It gives you a sense of well-being, a sense of strength, and clarity in the mind. As you pursue it, you begin to see, “Oh, yeah, it is possible to let go of unskillful qualities.” Maybe not everything right away, but you see that the … 
  10. More than Ordinary Heedfulness
     … The Buddha’s actually pointing out that the mind doesn’t have to stay on the “normal” human level. We meditate so that we can transform it. But how many people come to the meditation to be transformed? Most people simply want a nice place for the mind to hang out and don’t ask for much change beyond that. But the Buddha’s … 
  11. Merit: Actively Happy
     … The Buddha also calls goodwill a resolution and a form of mindfulness. It’s something we have to make up our mind to do and to keep in mind. Because, usually, goodwill is something we have for some people but not for everyone. So it requires an act of will that you then remember— which is what mindfulness means. You remember that you’re … 
  12. Questioning Your Way to Certainty
     … As you stick with this, you begin to read your mind states more and more clearly, so that you can know when a particular mind state is going to lead to an unskillful action and you drop it. You get a better and better sense of when the mind states are skillful. It’s by looking at things in terms of action and result … 
  13. Pain
     … And because they’re separate, they don’t have to weigh the mind down. So remember, you want to maintain that original intention—not that the pain go away, but simply that it not invade the mind and remain. You’re here to find perceptions that calm the effect of the pain on the mind; ways of talking to yourself, questions that you want … 
  14. Inner Wealth Management
     … Because after all, it’s the same mind. The mind that’s going around looking after the monastery is the same mind that’s looking after the breath and the mind. If you develop good habits in one area, they’re going to spread to the other. This may be part of what Luang Pu Dune meant when he said, “The practice of Dhamma … 
  15. The Sport of Wise People
     … And the mind can be that way, too. If you’ve got a particular idea about the meditation in mind and you just hold, hold, hold to it and don’t have any opportunities for changing things a little bit, it gets stuffy. So think of things that will gladden the mind, things that will bring some novelty to your meditation, and that way … 
  16. The Choice Not to Suffer
     … And as long as he had the mindfulness—i.e. the ability to remember this and keep it in mind—he had the choice. When he forgot that, we’d help him remember again. This is why mindfulness is such an important part of the meditation—to remind us that we have the choice, and to remind us that if we don’t have … 
  17. Metta Can Hurt
    To get the mind to stay in concentration, you need an object that you like, and this will be a very personal, individual matter. Some people like the breath. Some people find that the mind can settle down really well when thinking of the different parts of the body. Some like to repeat a word like buddho or dhammo or sangho, and some like … 
  18. Working Through the Breath
     … One is that you want a place for the mind to stay as it goes through aging, illness, and death. And, of course when you die, the breath won’t be there to focus on after death. So they say, “Why don’t you focus directly on the mind?” Part of the reason is because it’s hard to focus directly on the mind … 
  19. If at First You Don’t Succeed
     … Normally, when you hear about breath meditation, it’s just “in, out, in, out, in, out,” and the mind decides, “Well, I’m out of here.” But here you’re trying to make it interesting. Being with the breath allows you to learn how your body relates to the mind, how the mind has an impact on the body, how the way you breathe … 
  20. Ending Suffering
     … Always keep in mind the possibility that you can change—and it can go either way. But if you make up your mind you’re going to be more skillful in your actions, then the changes head you in the right direction. That desire for true happiness is what underlies all of this and makes all the difference. Keep that possibility in mind. And … 
  21. Skillful in Everything
     … When you develop these qualities, you find not only that the things that you create are nicer but you’ve also got a nicer mind, a better mind, a mind better suited for meditation. This is why the great ajaans always paid so much attention to the little things around them. All the time I spent with Ajaan Fuang, things had to be put … 
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