Search results for: "The Mind"

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  2. To Have a Purpose
     … We want to develop good qualities of the mind. So we’ve come to meditate. And as we begin to see the results appearing, we can see the happiness that comes from having a purpose. Everything we do has a purpose of one kind or another. Every movement of the mind has its purpose. Even when we try to get the mind really, really … 
  3. Energy
     … You’ve got the mind focused on the breath, you’ve been able to let go of all your normal worries and concerns. And realize: This is much more pleasant now than it was before, but there’s still work to be done. You want to learn how to make that pleasure more reliable. Again, you realize the pleasure comes from the mind’s … 
  4. The Ennobling Path
     … Contemplate these things until the mind feels inspired. Once it gets lubricated, you can settle down with the breath again. And you find that the mind is willing to settle down and be still. So the practice of concentration is designed specifically to give you that sense of pleasure whenever you need it, because the work of insight is sometimes very difficult. The mind … 
  5. Self-Correct
    The Buddha’s instructions for getting the mind into concentration are found in his description of right mindfulness. You start by keeping the body in and of itself in focus. The “body in and of itself” means just taking the body in its own terms—your direct experience of the body right here, right now, without reference to how it looks to other people … 
  6. What Focus? What Breath?
     … In the course of figuring these things out, you learn an awful lot of important lessons both about the body and about the mind. In terms of the breath, you have look at what your preconceived notions are, what’s happening here as you breathe. When we say to breathe in with the whole body, often you find that there’s a subconscious idea … 
  7. Stepping Out of Truth Games
     … to get the mind stay here. The problem is that the mind has lots of other worlds at its disposal, because it has lots of other desires. This is the process the Buddha calls becoming, where, based on a particular desire, you take on a particular identity around that desire. And there’s a relevant world around that desire as well. They all go … 
  8. Squeezing Goodness Out of the Aggregates
     … This is how you get the mind into concentration. We try to get the breath so that it’s easeful. We try to get the mind so that it can stay constantly with the breath. And that requires a certain amount of control. Then Ajaan Lee goes on to say then the Buddha let go of both sides: both what was constant and inconstant … 
  9. What Are You Bringing?
     … If you’re here to squeeze or force as much concentration out of the mind as you can, that attitude starts affecting the way you breathe. Then the way you breathe gets uncomfortable, and it’s difficult to settle down. So ask yourself, “What are you bringing to the meditation?” It’s always good to stop and take stock, and try to bring the … 
  10. Expanding Your Awareness
     … When your awareness is all-around, you start seeing things in the mind you didn’t see before. You catch sight of the motions in the mind out of the corner of your eye that you’d miss if your awareness were too narrowly focused. So this practice of expanding your awareness and keeping it expanded is a really important part of the meditation … 
  11. The Challenge of Faith
     … To what extent do they place a burden on the mind? You can watch this, seeing the ups and downs of your concentration, the ups and downs of the level of stress in your concentration. That way you begin to detect very subtle movements of the mind that otherwise you wouldn’t have seen, and peel away any of the motions of the mind … 
  12. Skillful Selfing
    The Buddha’s instructions on right mindfulness are basically his directions for getting the mind into right concentration. You stay focused on the body in and of itself—and here, to do that, we’re going to take the breath as our object. You put aside greed and distress with reference to the world. In other words, anything that’s not related to the … 
  13. Emotion
     … And particularly awareness of what kind of breathing is easeful and what kind of breathing is stressful; what kind of breathing is good for the mind, good for the body; what kind of breathing is bad for the mind, bad for the body. Learn to get a sense of cause and effect as it surrounds the breath. This is one of the most important … 
  14. To Go Where You’ve Never Gone Before
     … There is that passage where the Buddha said the mind is luminous, and it’s darkened by visiting defilements. But he’s not saying that the mind is originally pure. This is a point that Ajaan Maha Boowa made. As he said, if the Buddha had said the mind is originally pure, you could argue with him: If it was originally pure then how … 
  15. Noble Wealth
     … You’re doing it because it develops good qualities in the mind. You develop the mindfulness that’s going to help you remember the lessons you’ve learned, and you develop the discernment to see things clearly—in particular, to see what you’re doing right now that’s shaping your experience. Because those instructions for breath meditation involve bodily fabrication, verbal fabrication, mental … 
  16. Mindfulness: The Whole Formula
     … When you’re ardent, if anything unskillful comes up in the mind, you try to get rid of it. As for skillful things that are not there yet, you try to give rise to them. And when they are there, you try to maintain them in such a way that you don’t allow new unskillful things to arise. So, there’s a lot … 
  17. Don’t Hang Around Your Corpse
     … This is where the contemplation turns into a focus on the mind. Why does the mind play these tricks on itself? Something that looks really attractive in one context becomes unattractive in another context, and then back to attractive again in still another. What’s going on? The mind wants this to be attractive. For what purpose? Keep digging into those questions and you … 
  18. Consistently on the Path
     … There may be people who say we can’t eat self-esteem, but even though it’s not sustenance for the body, it is sustenance for the mind. You’ve got to learn how to appreciate that sustenance. Otherwise, the mind is left hungry as the body gets to feed. You keep feeding the body, and feeding it, and feeding it, and finally it … 
  19. Fear of Concentration
    Some of the problems we have in getting the mind into concentration come simply from an inability or unwillingness to let our thoughts subside. We find our thoughts interesting. We find our inner mental chatter interesting. We’d be hard put to know what it would be like to have a mind where this chatter wasn’t going on all the time. So we … 
  20. A Warrior’s Strengths
     … You’re creating new ruts in the mind. Your old ruts are obviously unskillful, so let’s create some new ones. That’s going to take some time. Remember that the old ruts are also the product of conditions. They aren’t innate in the mind. You have the choice of creating new habits or falling with your old habits. If you don’t … 
  21. Meaningful Freedom
     … They’re defenseless, unprotected.” Urges come up in the mind, and they have no reason to think that they can say No to them. Yet so much of the practice is just that: Something comes into the mind, and you have the choice to say Yes or No. The point he’s making in all these instances is that the things you’re experiencing … 
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