Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 117
  2. Views, Virtue, & Mindfulness
     … Also, remember that the suffering that weighs down on the mind comes from within the mind itself. If there’s going to be a solution, it has to come from within the mind as well. That’s all part of right view. In other words, your actions are what make all the difference, so the solution is going to have to come from your … 
  3. The Not-Self Discourse
     … Then you evaluate how well the mind is staying with the breath. Ajaan Lee makes a comparison, that alertness is like a pulley. You pull a rope in one direction, then you pull the rope in the other direction. You look at the object of your mindfulness, and then you turn around and look at the mind watching the object of the mindfulness. Keep … 
  4. The Context for No Context
     … But getting the mind outside of that context requires a certain kind of context as well. When the Buddha talks about the ability to put the mind in this position where you’re seeing things arising and passing away, it requires a whole series of aids in the practice, many of which are not just meditation techniques. They go back through the way you … 
  5. The Politics of Arising & Passing Away
     … What is it in the mind that gives rise to these things to begin with? You’re not simply a passive observer watching a TV show, faced with only one choice: the choice of getting involved in the show or not. You’re actually the producer of the show. There’s something going on in the mind that keeps churning these things out. You … 
  6. Guarding the Truth
     … When the concentration provides a sense of well-being, you’re not so hungry to go after whatever the mind tells you. When it’s still and clear, you can see clearly exactly what the mind is doing. Then you’re in a position to see how you’re filtering things, where the filter is clogged, what you have to do to clean it … 
  7. Right Resolve in Real Life
     … Noble right resolve basically is the first jhana, when you’ve succeeded at clearing out of the mind things like sensuality, ill will, and harmfulness. The concentration also helps with your right resolve, because a lot of these resolves are not easy to stick with. We can think in the abstract that, yes, it would be a good thing to have the mind free … 
  8. An Ennobling Pleasure
     … As you’re getting more and more sensitive to the breath, you’re developing the mind’s powers to be more and more sensitive to its own movements, which is where the real issues are. How the mind creates a sense of becoming this or being that, taking on a sense of identity, assembling a sense of the world, what we mean by the … 
  9. Breath Meditation: The Fourth Tetrad
     … When a hindrance comes up, the Buddha says in the section dealing with the mind that you should try to gladden the mind, steady the mind, and release the mind. In gladdening the mind, what kind of obstruction is getting in the way of your feeling glad about the fact you’re here? Is doubt getting in the way? Is restlessness-and-anxiety getting … 
  10. A Good Foundation
     … This is why the Buddha discovered that an important part of the path is the sense of pleasure, refreshment, that comes from getting the mind in good concentration. It’s also why he has so many different techniques for getting the mind into concentration. Breath is number one. As Ajaan Lee says, it’s your home base. All other meditation methods are foraging places … 
  11. Tuning Your Lute
     … But here in the West, our big problem is the mind.” Well, the big problem is the mind’s obsession with the body. That’s something everybody, West and East, has to deal with. There are times when you say, “I want a higher level of concentration, like the concentration that comes with the breath.” But if your mind’s not capable of doing … 
  12. A Clear Agenda
     … If they come up in the mind, you put them aside. I’ve been reading different books on mindfulness and one of the strangest things I’ve found was in one book where the author said that the Buddha tells you never to interfere with anything that’s happening in the mind. But that right there conflicts with the basic formula: putting aside greed … 
  13. A Noble Path
     … It’s a good image for the mind as it settles down. It’s only when the mind gets really quiet and in place that you can see its subtle movements. You can see what they’re made of, where they go. This is one of the reasons why we practice concentration and try to get really good at it: so that we can … 
  14. Stick with It
     … One of the tendencies of the mind is that when it knows certain things are going to come up that it doesn’t want you to see, it diverts your attention someplace else. You’ve got to learn how to resist that, to see right through whatever the diversion is. You begin to see things in the mind that you don’t want to … 
  15. The Thinking Cure
     … In a similar vein, meditation is learning how to watch our thoughts, to be very clear about how the mind thinks. Learn how to bring up its assumptions—the unexpressed assumptions or the ones just barely expressed—so that you can see them in the light of day. Then you can see what kinds of thinking you really do believe in, what kinds of … 
  16. Don’t Be a Traitor to Yourself
     … So it’s good to think about these things as you’re getting the mind to settle down. It helps develop a sense of samvega. Ajaan Lee has a long, long description of the various topics you can contemplate to get the mind to settle down, and in each case they’re aimed at developing samvega. He lists the breath as the last one … 
  17. The Joy of Renunciation
     … One, you give more space to the mind to actually get into concentration. And two, you give yourself more motivation to get into concentration. If you can’t find immediate pleasures through the senses in these ways, you turn your desire for pleasure, your desire for happiness, into the concentration itself. So you develop the space. You develop the right attitudes. You develop the … 
  18. Strengthening Conviction
    Strengthening Conviction January 1, 2012 Meditating, strengthening the mind, is very similar to strengthening the body. You have some strength to begin with, and you use that strength to develop further strength. In Thai, the word for exercising is awk kamlang, which means to put forth energy. And in putting it forth, you gain something in return. So as you meditate, you have to … 
  19. Test Everything
     … But you have to remember that the mind is a complex thing. You go back to square one because there’s some unfinished business back there. And there’s another kind of patience, the patience that, when the mind does get into concentration, and you say, “Okay, what’s next, what’s the next step?” the patience requires that you stay with that state … 
  20. Refuge
     … We’re looking for a long-term happiness, and we’re willing to invest time and energy, put up with a little pain in the legs, a little bit of frustration in seeing the mind’s not settling down quite like we want it to. But if we stick with it, we find that the habits of the mind can change, and there really … 
  21. Stupid about Pleasure
     … The tendency in the mind is to keep trying to gather more and more: adding new pleasures to the stock of old pleasures we want to keep in store. You can see this even among some of the least advanced of the noble ones: the stream-enterers. The Buddha had to counsel them to be heedful. That was his last instruction. Of all the … 
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