Search results for: "The Mind"

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  2. Patience & Urgency
     … Because the practice isn’t a mechanical process where you simply force on the mind through the meat grinder and you come out with nibbana as the product. The technique is here to develop your powers of perception, to develop your powers of concentration, so that you can use your discernment to figure things out more clearly for yourself. If you rush through things … 
  3. Against Your Type
     … We don’t have a full range of skills for dealing effectively with greed, anger, and delusion; for dealing effectively with difficult people; for dealing effectively with friendly people; for dealing effectively with the mind when it’s down; for dealing effectively with the mind when it’s up. Instead of simply acting out of force of habit, or deciding to change your habits … 
  4. Mindfulness + Discernment = Intelligence
     … Just thinking about getting the mind concentrated is very wearisome.” If that’s how you think, you’re never going to get the mind concentrated. The duty with regard to concentration is to give rise to it and develop it. In terms of self or not-self, in the Canon there’s a case where a monk decides that if the five aggregates are … 
  5. Sensitive to Fabrication
     … Otherwise, if there are little impulses here and there, little knots of energy that get tied up, the mind tends to run with those and go off someplace else because it doesn’t like being here. And that can be for any number of reasons. One is simple boredom. You don’t see anything happening right here and you want to make up a … 
  6. Always Willing to Learn
     … And the causes here are going to be causes coming from the mind. That’s why the Buddha has a special term for them: “origination.” You’re not just looking at things arising and passing away. You’re looking at things as they’re caused from something going on in the mind. But you constantly have to put aside those other questions — about me … 
  7. Therapeutic Seclusion
     … It’s something in the mind that’s looking for that kind of thing. It wants lust. Why? See also how it passes away—because it’s not there all the time. You learn a lot by seeing the mind state when, say, there’s no lust or no anger, when things are calm. The lust or anger has gone away, as if it … 
  8. Dissolving Distress
    In the Buddha’s description of right mindfulness, he’s telling us how to get the mind into right concentration. The formula is this: You remain focused on the body in and of itself, ardent, alert, and mindful, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. That covers two activities. Keeping focused on, say, the breath, in and of itself: That’s … 
  9. A Heart & Mind of Goodwill
     … If there are gaps in your attention, your breath goes back to its old ways in the gaps, which may or may not be okay for the breath and the body, but it’s certainly not good for the mind, these gaps. They’re a direct experience of ignorance. You’re suddenly off someplace else, not paying attention to what you’re doing. The … 
  10. Three Types of Equanimity
     … His sense of equanimity was more a matter of keeping the mind on an even keel in the midst of the ups and downs of life—and it’s important to note that when the Buddha taught equanimity he didn’t teach it as a single member of a list. It was always part of a list that had other members, other qualities, and … 
  11. Indecision
     … If you have those qualities in the mind, they’ll lead you to act in ways that are unskillful. Delusion, particularly, will make it difficult to see what’s skillful or not. You harm others by trying to incite passion, aversion, and delusion in them. So, again, if you look at a particular occupation, a particular way of life, does it depend on inciting … 
  12. Right View
     … If you want to get beyond eating, you’ve got to fine some way of developing the mind. That’s kind of desire is helpful, because it points you to what needs to be done, to get the mind in a position where it doesn’t need to feed. Then you can be content. Then there’s the issue of conceit. Ananda says, you … 
  13. A Skillful Heart
     … As Ajaan Chah said, when you look steadily at the mind, one of the first things you’re going to see is its tendency to lie to itself. When the mind can lie to itself, then it can talk itself into doing all kinds of unskillful things. In the same way, as when we see other people lying shamelessly we have a sense that … 
  14. Firm in Your Intent
     … The real danger is what comes out of the mind. So if we don’t want to suffer from the dangers of the world, we have to look inside, because that’s where they come from. Our greed, aversion, and delusion give rise to all the circumstances that cause us to keep coming back like this. We feel a hunger; we feel a lack … 
  15. Dedicating Merit
     … It was being there when I was still receptive—and being around the ajaans and other people practicing meditation—that I began to realize that there’s more to the mind than Western materialistic ideas can account for. And one of the things about the mind is the notion of the current of the mind. The mind is constantly sending out currents. When the … 
  16. Painful Feelings, Hurtful Words
     … Then if part of the mind complains “Why is that pain still there?”, remember, pain is normal. We come into the world with pain. We go out with pain. And so in the meantime, we’re trying to clear a little space here so that we have some well-being, so that the mind can settle down and look at itself and figure out … 
  17. Think
     … The basic instructions were just to get the mind to settle down, or in Thai, to bring the mind down: hai cit long. So he forced it down, down, down, and it got very heavy and unpleasant. So he figured, “This must not be right. Turn it around. How about bringing it up, up, up, up, up?” So he brought it up, way up … 
  18. The Language of the Heart (1)
     … In other words, when mindfulness is really established and solid, you’re going to get the mind into jhana. Mindfulness gives you a frame of reference to look at what’s happening in the mind, to recognize certain states of mind as either skillful or unskillful. And when you know what the state of mind is, then you know—if you’ve read anything … 
  19. Physical Pains & Painful Words
     … You’ve also got feelings, you’ve got the mind, and you’ve got mental qualities. All four frames of reference are right here. The question as to which one you’re going to pay attention to most depends on the issues that come up. In the beginning, you do want to focus on the breath and get used to being with the breath … 
  20. Take Responsibility for Yourself
     … That way, you get the mind into deeper and deeper levels of concentration as you get more and more sensitive to what at first seemed undisturbed but after a while you begin to realize still has a disturbance in it. So you’re taking responsibility for the mind in trying to be more and more skillful. Go beyond just good intentions. Make them skillful … 
  21. Big Things in Little Things
     … You want your tools to be precise, so that when the mind moves, you know what it’s doing. The reason we fight one another over things, the reason we call disease a self, is because the mind doesn’t know what it’s doing. It thinks it’s gaining an advantage, but it’s not seeing things clearly. So this is the first … 
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