Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. Goodwill for All Beings
     … And kept his mind on the path. Even as you’re falling asleep, you can think goodwill for all beings. You don’t want let your mind wander off into areas where it shouldn’t go. Of course if this wish, goodwill for all beings, just stops there at the wish, it becomes an empty thought. It begins to dry out. You have to … 
  3. The Truth of Perceptions
     … What happens if you put aside this perception of the mind being one? The mind goes to a perception of nothingness. This takes you as far as perception can go, but you’ve learned an important lesson: Perceptions are a sketch. They focus on different aspects of reality. And some are true, some are false. But you can have lots of different true perceptions … 
  4. We’re All Learning the Ropes
     … Well, it’s the same with the mind. As long as the mind is starving, feeling irritated and unhappy, all it can think about is immediate results, a desire for an immediate hit. To counteract this tendency, we feed the mind with concentration, we feed the mind with comfortable breath sensations, work those sensations through the body so that we can feel bathed in … 
  5. Healing Awareness
     … Get on good terms with it, and it’ll teach the mind a lot of things it needs to know—because the breath, as Ajaan Lee said in one of his Dhamma talks, is a mirror for the mind. It responds very quickly to what the mind is doing. So it’s a good topic for becoming sensitive to what your awareness is like … 
  6. Listening to the Body
     … Your mind goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth: You don’t know how many times the mind has walked over to Palomar and back before you’ve even taken a step. In this way, it wears itself out. The right way is that the body takes one step and the mind takes one step with it. Then the body takes … 
  7. Customs of the Noble Ones
     … Specifically, this refers to skillful and unskillful qualities in the mind. This is one area where you don’t rest content. When you see that there’s something in your mind is causing suffering, you want to find a way to let go of the cause and to develop the factors that help you overcome that suffering. You want to find a way to … 
  8. Can All Beings Be Happy?
     … So you’re developing this wealth of the mind. And even further, when you train the mind so that it’s not overcome by pleasure, not overcome by pain; as you’re able to maintain your mindfulness, alertness and maintain your steadiness even when there’s pain in the body, even when there’s pleasure in the body, pain in the mind, pleasure in … 
  9. Limitless Compassion, Limited Resources
     … We’re here because there are a whole range of virtues and good qualities we need to develop in the mind: both in the way we deal with other people and in the way we deal with the mind itself. And a large part of the skill we have to develop in the practice lies in learning how to balance these things out.
  10. Virtuous Beginnings
     … You begin to see exactly where the things are that set the mind off. You gain insight into the mind. Because after all, the eye is not the problem, the ear is not the problem. It’s what the mind does with the information that gets fed into it. You start asking yourself, “Why does the mind have to take things which are perfectly … 
  11. The Value of Refuge
     … In addition to “refuge,” it also means something you keep in mind. You want to keep in mind the qualities of the Buddha, what he represented: true goodness, true happiness; wisdom, compassion, purity. Notice that happiness lies in the list. This is not the sort of teaching that says you have to sacrifice yourself for other people’s happiness. You want to find happiness … 
  12. Fear
     … This is why you need to develop your powers of mindfulness, the next strength. It’s what we’re working on right now as we meditate: being mindful of the breath, keeping it in mind; being alert to the breath, watching what’s happening, making whatever adjustments are needed so that the mind can settle down. That gives rise to the next strength, which … 
  13. The Kindness of Body Contemplation
     … It’s just focusing on how the mind relates to the body and it puts the mind in a position where it really can be with the body just in and of itself. That way you begin to see other things in and of themselves as well: your feelings, your perceptions, thought fabrications, states of your mind, any qualities that would pull you away … 
  14. Inner Baggage
    If you could take a picture of most people’s minds, you’d find them loaded down with all kinds of baggage. There’s a Pali word, upadhi, which on an everyday level means your belongings, the things that a person would carry around, especially a wandering person like a nomad—all the belongings they have to haul along with them in order to … 
  15. You Can’t Clone Awakening
     … Sitting here with the breath, all of a sudden you find yourself off on an island in the Atlantic someplace, or sorting through the mind’s old movies. And you wonder how you got there. Well, the mind does have this tendency to cover things up, especially when you’ve made up your mind to do one thing and then another part of the … 
  16. Looking After Yourself
     … Even if there is a teacher around, sometimes you don’t listen to him because the mind has a mind of its own. I remember once when I was up in Northeastern Thailand, I met a monk who said he’d been to see Ajaan Maha Boowa. He had told Ajaan Maha Boowa that he knew his own personality traits and he knew he … 
  17. Becoming Capable of Happiness
     … For one, it feels good in the mind to give. That’s when the happiness that comes from generosity begins to get internalized. From there, the motivations go higher and higher until finally giving is just a natural ornament for the mind. The precepts are a skill as well: They provide training in mindfulness, alertness, ardency, and all the other qualities you’re going … 
  18. In Touch with Your Fabrications
     … They function as the actions in the mind, actions in the body, that are putting things together to create feelings, to create states of becoming. As you learn how to do this with knowledge as you’re getting the mind into concentration, then you can apply that knowledge to other areas of life. And the mind will be a lot healthier and happier as … 
  19. Indulge in the Pleasure of Jhana
     … But how do you adjust it in a way that makes it better, so that the mind can permeate into the breath, the breath can permeate into the mind, so that there’s no sense of a boundary between the two of them? In other words, your body is willing to have you be aware of it and it’s not going to freeze … 
  20. Unattractiveness
     … Ask yourself, what else do you have beside the body? Of course, what you’ve got is the mind. That’s what we’re focused on as we meditate. You realize you want to be able to put the mind in good shape before it has to leave the body. Or even before then: You want the mind to be in good shape as … 
  21. Acceptance
     … This way, you’re developing a lot of good qualities in mind all at once: To begin with, there’s mindfulness, i.e., keeping the breath in mind. And then alertness: watching what’s actually happening, what you’re doing and the results of what you’re doing. You’re also showing goodwill for yourself, because the way you breathe has an immediate effect … 
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