Search results for: "Mindfulness"
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- Producing Experience… And even when the mind seems to be simply spinning its wheels, it’s not just idly spinning its wheels. It’s creating new states of being, new possibilities — some of which are good, some of which are not so good. You have to keep that principle always in mind as you’re meditating. You’re not simply here innocently watching what’s going …
- The End of Uncertainty… So always keep this principle in mind as thoughts come in and out of your mind. You may have heard that the Buddha taught, say, that there is no self. To what extent is the non-self teaching skillful? Where is it not skillful? Those are the questions he would have you look at, not the question of whether there is or is not …
- To the Far Shore… Say, mindfulness arises. You want to make it right mindfulness, so you develop it in that direction. Then you want to make it stronger, which means it’s something you develop. When sensual desire comes up, it’s something that causes suffering, so that’s something you want to abandon. This gives you the framework for knowing what to do with whatever comes up …
- Admirable Friendship… When things are not going well, you don’t say that it’s because of this thing out there or that person out there. “It’s because of something happening in the mind. There’s something I’m not doing quite right.” This is how the Buddha himself gained awakening. He looked at the state of his mind and said, “Something’s not right …
- Self-starting… This is why we train the mind. Actions come from the mind and, fortunately, the mind can be trained. It’s not stuck in either an innate bad nature or an innate good nature. It’s got a changeable nature that can be molded, directed to freedom from good or bad natures. We don’t usually think about being trapped in a good nature …
- Getting Connected Inside… As you get to know the body in different ways, you begin to realize how much the mind has closed off certain ideas or certain of its own activities, so that some parts of the mind’s activities are hidden from other parts of the mind. But as you begin to open things up in the body, you begin to open things up in …
- Abusing Pleasure & Pain… It may seem strange to say that we’re ordinarily passionate for our pains, but we do allow the mind to get colored by them, as pain in the body becomes anguish in the mind. If something has the mind upset, causing it anguish, that’s a kind of passion, a kind of coloring of the mind. And it’s not necessary. So we …
- The Buddha’s Shoulds… This why Ajaan Lee, when he’s talking about mindfulness and the different qualities that work with mindfulness, says that ardency is the wisdom factor as you develop mindfulness in order to bring about concentration, realizing that the teachings are there to be followed. The shoulds are to be taken seriously because they give serious benefits.
- 1. The Entertaining Breath… This is what the mind likes to do. It like to see relationships. It likes to figure things out. So give it something good to figure out. What’s the best way to breathe right now?—best being defined as what’s most nourishing for the body, feels most comfortable for the mind. Comfortable here can mean either relaxed or energized. What would you …
- Wise About Pleasure… It’s a common practice among the forest monks that when you get stale in your meditation, go out into the wilds, get out into nature, walk around, open up your mind, air out your mind. But what qualifies as innocent pleasures for any particular person is really going to vary. Not only with the individual, but also with time. So you have to …
- The Not-Self Discourse… Then you evaluate how well the mind is staying with the breath. Ajaan Lee makes a comparison, that alertness is like a pulley. You pull a rope in one direction, then you pull the rope in the other direction. You look at the object of your mindfulness, and then you turn around and look at the mind watching the object of the mindfulness. Keep …
- The Buddha’s Cure… Then you can use that knowledge to sort things out in your own mind as to what you really want out of life, what really is consistent with long-term welfare and happiness. Now, we do this based on symptom management because the mind finds it a lot easier for the different members of the committee to talk reasonably when you feel well inside …
- Recollection of the Buddha… right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. And they interpenetrate. Right effort becomes ardency when you practice mindfulness. The establishings of mindfulness are the topics of concentration. The fourth jhana is where mindfulness becomes pure. So they’re very closely connected. When you’re doing concentration, it’s important that you work on all three. Now, one of the important elements of right effort …
- Maybe the Buddha Knew Something… There’s a part of the mind that really thrives on restraint. You find that as you look for purer and purer comforts in terms of things to look at and things to listen to. You turn more and more to the mind: the qualities you can develop in the mind that give a sense of well-being when things outside are not quite …
- Study & Practice… But it really does help to have a very precise vocabulary to make distinctions and to open your mind to possibilities. That’s one of the reasons why we study as part of the practice: to have a set of concepts, a set of ideas, so that we can make distinctions when things happen in the mind. That’s what the four noble truths …
- Whole-Hearted Concentration… singleness of mind. It’s worth exploring the levels of meaning of that term. There’s the singleness: Eka means one. Agga is a controversial term. Some people translate it as “point,” to convey the idea that your awareness should be reduced to one point, like the point of a pencil. But in Pali it doesn’t mean point. It means the summit of …
- The Karma of Meditation… As he says, you hardly feel it at all when the results of old karma come, because the mind is in a different state. The other way of preparing the mind to deal with anything bad coming in from the past is to try to train the mind so that it’s not overcome by pleasure or by pain. In other words, you can …
- The Economy of Goodness… It soothes the body and it can also soothe the mind. When the mind is here with a sense of well-being, then when any thoughts come up that would lead to anything unskillful, you see them clearly as they arise. And you see them for what they are: something you don’t want to get involved in because you’re feeding the mind …
- Respect for Concentration… But remember that the ideal is that we’re practicing all the factors of the path here—including right speech, right action, right livelihood, mindfulness, effort—so that they can help the concentration along. Because when the mind is concentrated, you’re taking all the elements of your experience that ordinarily cause suffering and you turn them into a path. The breath here: We …
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