Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 118
  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. Bewildered
     … In particular, we try to figure out how they invade the mind and remain there. When we know that, we can figure out what to do so that they don’t remain in the mind. To give some explanation as to why pain can be so bewildering, the Buddha points out that there are many places in dependent co-arising where pain can appear … 
  13. Right Learning
     … It can be just there in the back of the mind. You know that it’s there, you don’t deny that it’s there, you admit its presence, but then you learn to work around it. Learn to see which tendencies you have in the mind that are going to latch on to it, and just let them go, let them go, let … 
  14. Patience & Hope
     … And where do your actions come from? From the mind. So skill in your words and deeds has to come from skill in the mind—which is what meditation is all about. We’re developing the skills of mindfulness, alertness, and ardency; the skills of concentration and discernment, that will allow us not to be overcome by the results of past actions, and to … 
  15. Compunction
     … In this case, you train the mind to be with one object and you look after the conversation that’s going on in the mind. Whatever it’s saying that might pull you away from the breath, learn how to put that aside. Whatever complaints it has, this is where you can use the term, “I don’t care. I don’t care about … 
  16. Universal Truths
     … Because as you work with the breath, you begin to gain a sense of the power that the mind has on the sensation of the breath. You can play with the breath: Make it long, make it short, deep, shallow, heavy, light, fast or slow. You can check the impact on the body and the impact on the mind of those different ways of … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. The Pleasure of the Middle Way
     … It didn’t require that he take anything away from anyone else and it didn’t intoxicate the mind in the way sensory pleasures can. So he decided to explore further to see if that state of concentration could be the path. And the more he got to know the path, the more he realized that this was the solution to his problem. When … 
  19. Pulling Out of the Narratives
     … There are more possibilities in the mind than there are dreamt of in your narratives. So try to deconstruct the narratives, see what’s left, and then see what other narratives, other ways of understanding the mind, you could create that would be more useful and productive.
  20. Metta Metacognition
     … We’re not training only the mind to be smart and intelligent, we’re training the heart to be intelligent as well—in other words, to will things in a way that really is for your true happiness. If it’s just the mind, it’s pretty weak. But if you’ve got the mind working together with the heart, and you’ve got … 
  21. Protection for the Holidays
     … When a feeling comes up—say, of pleasure or displeasure—you have to ask yourself, “Is this the kind of pleasure that will be good for the mind, or is it going to be bad?” You could just say, “Well, this is the holiday season, so it’s time to go along with the pleasure.” But no. Some pleasures are bad for the mind … 
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