Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. Into the Light of Consciousness
     … That’s why the Buddha never says that it’s happening just in your mind or in the world outside, because it’s happening in both. That connects to the second point, which is that both levels are connected. What you do here in your mind is going to play out in the world. So it’s important that you get your mind trained … 
  3. Two Kinds of Middle
     … Like the rhetorical question Ajaan Chah asked, “What is the mind?” His answer: “The mind isn’t ‘is’ anything.” The answer’s not grammatical, but the fact that it’s not grammatical means you have to stop and think. What does it mean? “The mind isn’t ‘is’ anything.” Or another way of translating it: “The mind isn’t a what.” Teachers answer in … 
  4. Love for the Dhamma
     … The real problems lie in the mind, which is why we sit here focusing the mind on the breath as a way of bringing the mind into the present moment, where we can watch it. We turn our gaze inward, instead of outward. What do you see when you look outward? You see aging, illness, and death. You see other people’s issues: their … 
  5. Appreciating Merit
    The mind is not a blank slate. It’s not even a slate with writing all over it. It’s not even a full teacup. It’s more active. It feeds. It goes out looking for things and tries to ingest them. It shapes its experience—which is why you can’t simply give it a meditation technique regardless of its background, regardless of … 
  6. The Taste vs. the Reality
     … We’re here to train the mind, and part of training the mind involves doing things over and over and over again: pulling the mind away from distraction over and over again, keeping the mind with its object over and over again, taking a skill that you develop while you’re meditating and learning to apply it in daily life over and over again … 
  7. The World of Conviction
     … This requires that we straighten out a lot of things inside our minds, because we have many different identities. A lot them would rather not be bothered. They’d be perfectly content to live an ordinary life. But then there’s that part of the mind that would like to be free and feels so stifled by conventional society, conventional values. There’s a … 
  8. Genuine Satisfaction
     … All these things feed into the brain first and then feed into the mind. And they shape the mind, as the Buddha said, with feelings and perceptions. Feeling and perceptions are the things that shape our mind. It’s how you manage a feeling of hunger that’s going to determine what you see. How you identify the hunger, how you label the hunger … 
  9. Evaluation
     … So, as you’re meditating, remember that your ability to evaluate how things are going, even though it may seem like a disturbance in the mind as you’re trying to get it to settle down, is a necessary part of getting it to settle down: to get things adjusted so that the mind is snug with the body, the mind is snug with … 
  10. Own Your Actions
     … And for the Buddha, it’s always in the back of the mind. When he gave his list of important teachings, the Wings to Awakening, almost all of them are actions of one kind or another. Attitudes. It wasn’t a matter of believing in the Buddhist cosmology—that wasn’t one of the essential teachings. The essential teachings were qualities of mind that … 
  11. Wearing the Breath
     … Think of the first three frames of reference for establishing mindfulness: body, feelings, and mind. As you meditate, you’re trying to get them to fill one another. The mind fills the body, a feeling of ease fills the body—and the breath filling the body is the glue that makes that happen. So, instead of watching the breath, think of yourself being bathed … 
  12. The Stages of Meditation
     … When the body in the present is more comfortable, the mind feels more inclined to stay here. So the benefits are not only physical. They’re also mental: a sense of ease, a sense of wellbeing. Your mind grows more and more still, at the same time it’s more alert and more aware. Our usual tendency when things get comfortable in the body … 
  13. Pleasures & Pains on the Middle Way
     … At the same time, it doesn’t intoxicate the mind; it doesn’t befuddle or cloud the mind. It actually makes the mind a lot clearer. So that’s the physical pleasure of the breath. Then there’s the mental pleasure of working with the breath energies in the body and seeing that you can make changes in how the body feels from within … 
  14. The Light of the World
     … You’re making your mind a much larger mind, a mind like a Brahma. Which may not be the ultimate, but it’s much better than the normal human mind. As you’re able to develop that expansive state, you may begin to notice exactly what is limiting about even that. It’s something fabricated, so there is some inconstancy there. There is some … 
  15. Unparadoxical Happiness
     … It’s the happiness, the pleasure and ease, that comes when the mind is concentrated, when it’s focused on one thing and can stay there. As the Buddha said, there is no happiness other than peace. Whatever happiness we get from things outside comes because the mind is able to rest with them for a moment. But what always happens is it gets … 
  16. Mature Strategies
     … Try to maintain your mindfulness and your alertness so that the mind doesn’t start drifting off. That’s one of our problems: We get a little bit of pleasure, a little bit of comfort, and we let go, wallowing in the pleasure, forgetting where we are, forgetting what we’re doing. As a result, the pleasure goes away because the causes for keeping … 
  17. In a World of Crooked Wheels
     … Those two qualities—virtue and views made straight—the Buddha said, are also your foundation for mindfulness. It’s based on those two that you can develop right mindfulness, and right mindfulness, of course, is how you get the mind into right concentration. It’s through right concentration that your views, which have been made straight—in other words, you hold to right views … 
  18. Strong Against Anger & Fear
     … So when the body is not yours, when it’s not dependable, you’ve really got to depend on the mind. Make your mind a dependable mind. That way, you’ve a lot less to fear out of the world. After all, the body can go at any time. There may be a little clot developing someplace. It starts moving around and gets lodged … 
  19. A Path of Aggregates
     … Then from the spine, of course, it goes down the legs—whatever perception you find helps the mind to settle down with a sense of well-being. Fabrication here, in the beginning, is how you talk to yourself. Talk to yourself about the breath. If the mind is wandering away, you remind yourself, “Hey, come back!” That’s directed thought. Keep the mind coming … 
  20. The Positive Side of Heedfulness
     … You’ve got the same mind, the same qualities of mind, that you want to develop, simply in different circumstances. When you’re at work, you have opportunities to develop all the perfections. That’s practice as well. You can focus on developing powers of patience and endurance, or you can focus on your discernment—because work does require discernment. We had a question … 
  21. Lessons from the Breath
     … If you don’t get along, the mind isn’t going to settle down, and you’re not going to get much concentration. There will be very little peace of mind. When you’ve learned your lessons here, you can take those lessons and apply them outside as well. To get along with other people, you’ve got to listen to them, be sensitive … 
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