Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. In Search of What is Skillful
     … How do you get the mind into concentration? You do it by practicing right mindfulness*—establishing* mindfulness. There’s a passage where the Buddha pretty much equates his description of establishing mindfulness with the first jhana. He describes the basic formula for right mindfulness, and then once the mind is settled in, he says to stay focused on, say, the body in and of … 
  3. Adjusting the Flame
    The Buddha compares getting the mind in concentration to lighting a fire. You want the fire to burn just right. Remember the ordinary mind is like a blazing fire. The mind in concentration is like a well-adjusted one. So calm things down. Adjust the flame. Remember the verb we’re using here, jhāyati, is used with a steady flame, not one that’s … 
  4. Intelligent Restraint
     … Keep drumming that into your mind, because all the other forms of restraint are based on that. Goodwill is both restraint and a form of mindfulness. In fact, all the practices of mindfulness are a form of restraint. You don’t let the mind go wandering off into thoughts of sensuality, into what the Buddha calls Mara’s territory. You look at just what … 
  5. Blessings
     … mindfulness, i.e., keeping something in mind; alertness, watching what you’re doing; and ardency, trying to do it well. You’re keeping the breath in mind. You’re watching the mind and the breath at the same time to make sure they stay together. And if the mind slips off, immediately come back. As soon as you realize you’ve lost the breath … 
  6. Finding Balance
    One of the reasons we meditate is to give a sense of peace and ease for the mind. The mind that’s been carrying its burdens gets to let them down for a while. But meditation at the same time is work. Otherwise, we’re falling asleep here. You’re trying to bring the mind to stillness, but it has to be an alert … 
  7. The Buddha’s Vipassana
     … Those three components of concentration—body, feelings, mind—are also the first three frames of reference in right mindfulness. They’re precisely the things that need to come together for the mind to get into a good, strong state of concentration. Your awareness of the mind fills the body; a sense of ease, pleasure, or equanimity fills the body. Those are the main elements … 
  8. Good Fences
    Last night, I talked about goodwill as a fence—a fence around your mind, a fence around your actions. This is in line with the Buddha’s teaching that goodwill is a form of restraint. That’s not how we usually think of it. We think of it as a freeing of the mind’s innate nature, but that’s assuming that its innate … 
  9. The Uses of the Breath
     … But to get to that point, the mind has to be strong. This is why you can’t do just insight practice. You’ve got to have the mind feeding off the breath, feeding off its concentration, feeding off its mindfulness and discernment so that you can have the strength then to step back from things. Otherwise, if the mind is starved, it’s … 
  10. Messaging Your Mind
     … The mind’s quiet and still like this, breath energy filling the body very still, the mind, your awareness filling the body. In cases like this, with the activity in the body becoming so quiet, then whatever is going on in the mind becomes a lot clearer. This then becomes your laboratory for watching the mind, because after all, the big problem in life … 
  11. Protection for the Holidays
     … You make the Dhamma your refuge, you make yourself your refuge, by practicing the four establishings of mindfulness. When you think of practicing mindfulness, think about that passage with the acrobats. If you practice and devote yourself to the practice of mindfulness, you’re protecting yourself and you’re protecting others. The protection there comes from the fact that mindfulness reminds you how to … 
  12. Attahi Attano Natho
    The nature of the mind is that he likes to feed on things. It feeds on pleasures from outside, on the support we get from other people. But it can also feed on its own inner qualities—if you develop them. If there’s nothing much there, there’s not much to feed on. And if there’s nothing much inside to feed on … 
  13. Engaging the Whole Mind
     … To be persistent, you have to apply mindfulness and alertness as well. In other words, you have to keep what you’re doing here in mind, keep the breath in mind, and be alert to how the breath is going, and alert to the mind when it wanders off. Persistence means that you stick with it continually. It’s not something you do for … 
  14. Elephant Training
     … Then when issues come up in the mind, we can talk about the mind without having to talk about what religion we’re coming from,” he said. “That way, we can understand each other. We talk about what we have in common.” So focus on the breath. Why focus on the breath? It’s a way of training the mind, because a mind, like … 
  15. Your Hair Is on Fire
     … That right there teaches you something important about mindfulness and alertness. You’re not just here to watch things come and go, and to accept what’s coming and going. You try to be alert to notice what’s going on in the mind so that you can do something about it. Mindfulness reminds you that this should be your top priority, reminds you … 
  16. New Feeding Habits for the Mind
    New Feeding Habits for the Mind August, 2001 The juxtaposition of those two chants just now—the one that says, “subject to aging, subject to illness, subject to death, subject to separation,” and the other that starts out, “May I be happy, may all living beings be happy”: That’s the human predicament. We’re sitting here in this body that’s going to … 
  17. Addictive Thinking
     … And if you haven’t developed that resolve yet, this is where the Buddha has you develop a sense of conviction in the importance of training the mind, in the importance of your actions. Those two things are connected because your actions come out of your mind. The decisions you make depend on the state of mind you’re in. If the mind is … 
  18. Balanced Meditation
    There are two ways of calming the mind down. One is through giving it something tranquil to think about or to focus on. The other is through some new insights. Something that’s been bothering you, something that’s been eating away at your awareness because you don’t understand it, suddenly becomes clear. That brings calm to the mind as well. So both … 
  19. Learning from Desire
     … You need to employ these things in order to get the mind into concentration. And as you employ them, you get to know them well. I’ve known people who say, “Well, if you try to get the mind into concentration, or you want to get the mind into concentration, then it’s desire and clinging and craving; and there’s going to be … 
  20. Interested in the Breath
     … By staying with the breath, you get the mind in the present moment. You get it sensitive to all the relationships between the body and mind. Then as you develop an awareness of the breath energy in different parts of the body, you arrive at an all-around awareness that enables you to see what’s going on in the mind—in the corners … 
  21. Normalcy
    When the mind is really released, its release is said to be unprovoked. In other words, it’s not dependent on conditions. There was a theory in the time of the Buddha about how physical events happened. There were different elements or properties, dhatu, and they either existed in a calm state or a provoked one. When they were provoked, they would act up … 
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