Search results for: "The Mind"

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  2. Only One Person
     … This is why the Buddha said, to act for your own benefit, you should observe the precepts, be generous, and train the mind. To act for the benefit of others, get them to be generous, to observe the precepts, and to train the mind. In other words, you’re giving them the dignity of being responsible people, paying attention to the fact that they … 
  3. Impatience
     … Whereas, when you read the passages where the Buddha talks about right effort, it’s more a question of what works in getting skillful states to arise in the mind, what works in getting unskillful states to go away. Sometimes that does require stressing and straining and squeezing, and other times it requires just looking on. So the important element in right effort is … 
  4. An Admirable Friend — In Memory of Luang Loong
     … As you stick with the breath, you’re developing good qualities in the mind. It’s called *bhavana *in Pali: developing mindfulness, concentration, discernment, persistence. Underlying all this is the conviction that this is really useful, this is really a worthwhile project: training the mind, realizing that the mind is the major factor in life, shaping your happiness and sorrow, your pleasure and pain … 
  5. Right View from Right Effort
     … What it takes is putting in your own efforts to cut through all the unskillful things in the mind. In the course of that, you learn an awful lot about cause and effect in the mind. And it’s through understanding cause and effect that you really break through to something beyond cause and effect. The Buddha’s short answer, when he was asked … 
  6. Truth with Boundaries
     … But why not? The whole point of getting the mind into concentration is that it’s a transparent state where it can observe itself very clearly. If you couldn’t observe yourself while you were in concentration, what good would it be for gaining insight into the mind? How would you even know that the first jhana had directed thought and evaluation, pleasure, rapture … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. Nimble with Your Questions
     … Is the mind sitting in the body? Is the body sitting in the mind? These are some of the questions he would bring. The purpose was to dig up a lot of unspoken assumptions and at least see how they were skewing his perception of things. And those were just a few example questions that he would offer. He encouraged people to ask their … 
  9. Ask the Right Questions
     … So you want to focus on the actions of the mind—this is why we get the mind really quiet: not to find out who we are, but to see exactly what actions are happening in the mind, which ones are causing stress, and which ones are helping put an end to it. When we focus on the actions, we’re not saying there … 
  10. Enlightenment is Not a Hot Dog
     … This is how the meditation develops in a formal sense—in other words, you have a more pleasant experience sitting here; the mind settles down, gets more quiet—and in terms of what you bring to your life. The sensitivity you develop here is something you should apply to noticing what the mind is doing as other things that come up in your life … 
  11. The World of the Body
     … You want to find out why the mind creates unnecessary suffering and you want to put an end to it. That’s a worthwhile goal, because as you understand that problem in the mind, you begin to understand and solve a lot of other problems as well. So we’ve got this body that we have to care for that will eventually leave us … 
  12. In Training
     … When the Buddha teaches his impersonal teachings—where he doesn’t talk about a person doing x in a particular place, but about different events in the mind influencing other events in the mind—it’s basically to help you step back from them and say, “Okay, I thought I was doing this, and as long as I felt that it was me doing … 
  13. So Little Time
     … As he said, the mind flows out. There’s the source of the mind, like the source of a river. Things keep flowing out, flowing out. And that’s the problem. It’s not that things outside are coming in to cause problems. The problem is in the way we flow out toward things. And it’s not going to stop unless we learn … 
  14. Determined to be Happy
     … In other words, focus on the causes—what’s going to help you stay here—and keep reminding yourself, “Come back, come back,” when the mind wanders off. When you focus on the causes, the results will come. If you sit here simply hoping for the results but without doing the causes, without wanting the causes, it’s not going to happen. Everything is … 
  15. Control
     … Fortunately, the mind doesn’t have to be that way. You can train it. We’re trying to take advantage of that fact. As the body starts disobeying us, and we find that things outside are not going the way we want them to, our sole recourse is to the mind. And it’s fortunate that we can train it. One of the very … 
  16. Desire
     … Then you start applying the same principle to the mind. This is why we meditate. Right effort is the first factor of the path that deals with meditation. It’s a factor of desire: It’s about generating desire to let go of unskillful states that have arisen, to prevent unskillful states that haven’t arisen from coming into being, generating desire to give … 
  17. Purity of Heart
     … And if you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust—and what kind of life is that? This is why we owe it to ourselves and to the people around us, the beings around us, to strengthen the mind even beyond the food of concentration, to the point where it doesn’t need to feed anymore. We strengthen the mind in our conviction … 
  18. Self-starting
     … They’re not in the mind at the moment, but you know that they could arise, so you do what you can to prevent them. This is an aspect of practice that many people overlook. You’re looking basically at the present, but also into the future, knowing that things may be okay right now, but the mind’s going to be tempted down … 
  19. Goodwill Plus
    When we think thoughts of goodwill, it’s important that we make it a comfortable place for the mind to stay. Some people have difficulty with that; other people have no difficulty at all. It depends on your attitude toward happiness. If you’ve come with the idea that happiness is something selfish, that you shouldn’t be happy when other people are out … 
  20. A Safe Space Inside
     … It’s in this way the mind gets into concentration. It’s protected by virtue and it’s protected by right view. So when thoughts come up in the mind that would pull you away from the concentration, you’ve got the right view to say, “No, not right now. I have to work on something really important here in getting the mind as … 
  21. Appropriate Attention Always
     … There’s something else going on in the mind. That’s the way the mind paints pictures about the relationship. Often it’s not so much focused on the object itself, but on you in your fantasies. But you have to ask: Are the fantasies worth it? What do you get out of them? Ajaan Lee’s image is of a dog gnawing on … 
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