Search results for: "Mindfulness"

  1. Page 127
  2. The Safety of Dualities
     … That implies that our actions make a difference, and because our actions come from our intentions, and our intentions come from our minds, it’s worthwhile to train the mind. You want to get the mind really still so that you can see, when it moves, whether its movements are skillful or not. As you get deeper into the processes of the mind, you … 
  3. The Advantages of Many Selves
    We talk a lot about the committee of the mind, all the many different “you’s” inside there. When you realize you have to train them all, it gets kind of discouraging sometimes. There seem to be so many of them. But it’s good to see that they’re also our opportunity. If there were just one you, and the one you was … 
  4. The Intelligence of Restraint
     … And of course, with seclusion you try to limit the extent to which you’re bombarded by things outside, so that you can look into your own mind, have time to take the mind on its own terms. All four of these are guided by right view, because right view tells you what’s skillful, what’s not skillful, and it alerts you to … 
  5. Sensitive to the Body, Sensitive to the Mind
  6. One Thing Clear Through
     … In this case, the cure starts with training the mind. And the training is not just meditation. Every aspect of the path, starting with generosity as a foundation for the path, and then the training in what the Buddha calls heightened virtue, heightened mind, and heightened discernment: This is the way out. We’re training not just the mind but also the heart, which … 
  7. In the Context of the Deathless
     … What does the Buddha say? You try to get the mind in a state of concentration with a sense of ease and rapture or refreshment. In fact, the ease, pleasure, and refreshment are one of the main points of getting the mind into concentration. So the path may have its difficulties, but it has its rewards. And it doesn’t save its rewards for … 
  8. Counter-cultural Values
     … Finding a quiet place in the mind, having a place where you can rest and relax: Everybody can understand that there’s a place for that. When the mind is feeling really frazzled, it’s very easy to see that meditation is something you want to learn how to master, that concentration—getting the mind still, finding some seclusion where are you can let … 
  9. Customs of the Noble Ones
     … People don’t like being told that they have defilements in their minds. How they feel about it is their business, but you have to look at your own mind. Are the thoughts that you dwell on obscuring the mind, making it dark, making it hard to see things clearly? That’s one of the problems with the hindrances: They deceive you. When sensual … 
  10. The Origination of Suffering
     … In other words, any thought world that would arise in the mind right now that has nothing to do with the breath, nothing to do with the mind focused on the breath—you’ve got to let it go. This is going to be good practice, because when you die, that’s what’s going to happen. A thought world will appear, and at … 
  11. Putting out the Flame
     … This is why the Buddha says, when you’re meditating, that right concentration starts with right mindfulness—staying focused on the body in and of itself—ardent, alert, and mindful—putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. The same with feelings in and of themselves, mind states in and of themselves, and mental qualities in and of themselves. These things, in … 
  12. Refuge in the Dhamma
     … What qualities do you want to develop in the mind? Virtue, concentration, discernment, mindfulness, alertness, patience, endurance? This is where you develop another level of refuge, when you start to take the Dhamma inside and you turn yourself into a more reliable person. If you work on developing your mind through mindfulness, you find over time that it really does make a difference in … 
  13. The Duties of Compassion
     … Again and again, we hear about Theravada as being a small-minded practice where you’re only trying to look after yourself. And that the Buddha in teaching the four noble truths was talking to people who had limited hearts and limited minds, who couldn’t comprehend the idea of everybody’s being happy. But that’s really a misrepresentation. The Buddha’s idea … 
  14. Guarded
     … You only have to look in your own mind: You have all kinds of attitudes in your own mind—good, bad, indifferent. Everybody else is the same way. We try to feed off the goodness of other people, and when they don’t have goodness to offer, we find ourselves feeding off their bad qualities—which, of course, make us sick. This means we … 
  15. Duties
     … We want to get the mind to settle down, because when the mind is settled down, it’s a lot stronger and a lot clearer. It can see things a lot more clearly and understand what it’s doing inside that’s creating suffering for itself. After all, that’s the message of the four noble truths: There may be pains caused by the … 
  16. Focusing on the Breath to Learn about the Mind
  17. A Slave to the Dhamma
     … the perfections of endurance, tolerance, truthfulness, in the sense of making up your mind you’re going to do something good and you stick with it all the way through, no matter how hard it gets. Persistence, determination: all the Capricorn virtues. It’s important to realize that this is a part of training the mind. If training the mind were simply a matter … 
  18. Cheerfully Ardent
     … In the same way, we want peace of mind, but peace of mind doesn’t happen just by doing peace of mind. We have to create the causes, and focus our desires on the causes. Now, whether peace of mind comes quickly or not will depend partly on what we’re doing and partly not. That’s where it’s frustrating. The mind is … 
  19. The Intelligent Heart
     … You train your desire to be just right, focused in the right place, with the right amount of strength—alert, ardent, mindful. These establishings of mindfulness that we use as the basis of our concentration are establishings for the heart and the mind together. Remember to think of that combination primarily in terms of the heart. On the nights you come up here and … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. Work & Play
     … If it’s just in, out, in, out, in, out, the mind is just going to go out wandering away, out of sheer boredom. Then the concentration becomes an exercise in sheer will power: How long can you force the mind to stay here in spite of its impulses to wander away? But if you can see that by staying with the breath, working … 
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