Search results for: "Mindfulness"

  1. Page 134
  2. A Noble Path
     … But as the Buddha pointed out, when you’re really developing mindfulness, developing concentration, you realize that you cannot harm anybody if you want to develop these qualities of mind. He even observes that if you’re stingy, you can’t develop these qualities of mind. If you go around harming people, you’ve got to deal either with denial or with remorse, and … 
  3. Sensitive to Fabrication
     … How are you going to see the steps? By making the mind really, really quiet; giving it one thing to think about. Only when you focus on one intention, and make up your mind that you’re going to stay with that one intention, do you see the other little intentions that want to push you away. Otherwise, we’re like a boat with … 
  4. Developing the Path
     … For discernment to become a faculty—in other words, a dominant factor in your mind—you have to actually develop conviction, persistence—which includes developing virtue—and then mindfulness and concentration. In other words, all the factors of the path have to be developed for right view to really become strong, to have a good solid foundation. Not only do you have to do … 
  5. Focal Points
     … Another old retired woman who was quite psychic—she could actually check out other people’s minds—told me that by the time her own mind had settled down to the point where she could read other people’s minds, the schoolteacher had already put her mind firmly into concentration and could just stay there for the entire session. As the schoolteacher told me … 
  6. Relationships
     … When you’ve got a clear conscious like this, it’s easy for the mind to settle down. And it’s the same with the connection between concentration and discernment: Once the mind is still, it makes sense that you see things a lot more clearly—when there’s a sense of well-being that comes from within, when you can be on friendly … 
  7. The Evening News
     … Then you see how those things together with the perceptions that go with them—the perception of the breath, the perception of the feelings, the perception of the body—have an impact on the mind. They fabricate the mind. Then you allow that impact to calm down. With the mind, you want to get sensitive to what state of mind you’ve got here … 
  8. A Tradition of Ingenuity
     … You leave your mind open to new ideas coming in. Where they come from doesn’t really matter. The question is, are they appropriate? So it’s good to leave your mind open for new possibilities, because after all, we suffer because of our limited range of what we think is possible. We have to open our minds and say, “Yes, true happiness is … 
  9. Persuasion
     … It’s thinking about your emotions—What makes you want to do something? After all, the mind is really good at persuading itself to do things that it likes to do but it knows will yield bad results. It’ll try its best to ignore those long-term results, saying they don’t matter; or that your actions don’t matter anyhow; there’s … 
  10. Visakha Puja
     … That’s how he did it, by looking at his actions—not only his external actions but also the actions in the mind—seeing what was skillful, what was unskillful, seeing where his actions were causing harm, even subtle harm in the mind, even a subtle sense of stress, disturbance, a weight in the mind. He saw that as a problem and resolved to … 
  11. Suppressed Emotions
     … You want to be very clear about what’s going on in the mind, but at the same time you want to learn how to use the mind wisely, to approach your emotions wisely. When fear, greed, anger, or delusion come up in the mind, it’s not necessarily helpful to express them outside because sometimes that makes it difficult to observe what’s … 
  12. Effective Self-Discipline
     … It’s important to have the desire to get the mind to be peaceful, to get the mind to understand itself. If you didn’t have that desire, you wouldn’t be here. You’d off some place else, down at the beach, looking for happiness. So sometimes it’s useful to remind yourself of why you’re meditating, of what you want out … 
  13. Wilderness Lessons
     … One that the Buddha noted was that when you go into the forest and hold the perception of wilderness in your mind, your mind is very different from when it has the perception of being in society. He contrasts the “village” perception and “human being” perception with the “wilderness” perception. The village and human being perceptions carry with them all the affairs of the … 
  14. Respect Your Center
     … But you don’t want to treat your own mind with disrespect, which is why you want to maintain this center with an attitude of respect. This is one of the reasons why we have this culture of respect here at the monastery. You’re learning something really important. These are life-and-death matters: your ability to take care of your own mind … 
  15. The Bowl of Oil
     … So the issue is having a positive attitude toward all the activity and, at the same time, internally having the ability to keep your mind at equilibrium—to have your inner gyroscope keeping you on course. This is a matter of right view and right effort. If you see any negative mind states coming up in you, it’s your responsibility to take care … 
  16. The Reasonable Path
     … That’s a state in which the mind can really see itself in action. The whole point is seeing how intentions of the mind shape things, and to see precisely where those intentions cause stress, and where that stress is unnecessary. That requires a great deal of balance, a great deal of skill. It’s an art. The whole path is an art. And … 
  17. Skillful Attachments
    The mind has a very deeply ingrained habit, which is to latch on to things, and for the most part it latches on to the wrong things—things that cause it pain, things that cause it distress. And because you can’t teach the mind just to drop everything all at once, the basic strategy of the path is to give you better things … 
  18. Brahmaviharas on the Path
     … There’s suffering that comes from thoughts of ill will, suffering that comes from harmfulness, and we want to develop qualities of mind that don’t allow these things to take over. The brahmaviharas are precisely those qualities. Goodwill counteracts ill will. Compassion counteracts harmfulness. And there’s a passage where the Buddha says that passion is overcome in equanimity. If your mind is … 
  19. Clearing Your Space
     … And the same with the mind: Sometimes really persistent thoughts keep coming back again and again and again. You try to think about the drawbacks of those kinds of thoughts, and they still come back again. This is where you have to think about the committee of the mind: There will be some members who just keep talking, and they’re not going to … 
  20. Acceptance
     … And the mind moves from one to another. When you sit down to meditate, part of the mind is with the program and part of the mind is not, which can be the cause for a lot of frustration. But you can learn how to use these many selves to your advantage. Remember, each of your selves is the result of an activity aimed … 
  21. Your Desire to Practice
     … There are large parts of your mind that you’ve been blocking out for various reasons, and there are other parts of the mind that don’t want to open them up. But when you can be all-around aware of the body, you become all-around aware of the mind. Areas that used to be subconscious or buried under many layers of denial … 
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