Search results for: "Mindfulness"

  1. Page 138
  2. An Auspicious Birth
     … I’ve heard many people start out with the duty of comprehending suffering and it gets them strung out because the mind isn’t strong enough to keep looking at suffering and stress all day long. It needs the strength that comes from all the factors of the path, everything from right view down to right mindfulness and right concentration. So you try to … 
  3. A Multilingual Mind
    A Multilingual Mind April 2, 2005 One of the things you notice in meditation as you start looking at your thoughts, looking at your feelings, looking at sensory input, is that the solidity of your world starts dissolving away — both your sense of the world outside and your sense of yourself inside. And in some cases, just that much feels liberating — free from the … 
  4. Separate
     … When there are no regrets, your mind is more independent. There’s nothing that the world outside can grab hold of to make you suffer. So, in independence there’s freedom, and then, in that freedom, you’re free from fear. When you’re free from fear, there are no handles that anybody can get on your mind. In that way, the mind has … 
  5. Here to Learn
     … how to bring the mind to stillness, how to keep the mind mindful and alert. But sometimes it goes faster than we want; sometimes it goes slower than we want. It doesn’t fit in with our preconceived notions. The problem is often that instead of changing our notions as a result of what we learn, we simply judge what we like and don … 
  6. The Buddha’s Standards or Yours?
     … It’s not that you’re going to do jhana and suddenly say, “Well, I’m going to do some directed thought and some evaluation.” The mind’s doing these things all the time. And then, of course, you’re breathing all the time, and the mind’s dealing with feelings and perceptions all the time. But the Buddha’s highlighting the fact that … 
  7. Looking for Trouble
     … If you’re determined to protect it, you start noticing the ways the mind flows out. As Ajaan Lee said, this is the real meaning of asava, which is a very mysterious term in the texts—translated as outflows, influxes, effluents, or fermentations. It comes down to this sense of how the mind flows out your eyes, your ears, your nose, your tongue, your … 
  8. Relaxing into the Body
     … Here, all you have to do is hold the perception, the mental image, in mind. You don’t have to force anything. Just hold the image in mind that the energy can flow. That helps in allowing it to flow. As you breathe in, think of it going down: down the arms, down the legs, out the hands, out the feet. If you have … 
  9. Consciousness, Name, & Form
    When you’re establishing mindfulness on the body, the Buddha says to do two things: (1) Focus on the body in and of itself and (2) put aside greed and distress with reference to the world. The body in and of itself means not the body in the world; just the body as you have it right here. The body in the world would … 
  10. The Lessons of Good Kamma
     … Then you develop an expansive mind: a mind of unlimited goodwill, unlimited compassion, unlimited empathetic joy, unlimited equanimity. A mind trained not to be overcome by pleasure or by pain. A mind developed in virtue and discernment. These qualities expand your mind, so that what comes in from the past doesn’t have to make you suffer. What the Buddha does emphasize when he … 
  11. No Who or Where
     … ardent, alert, and mindful—mindful to keep in mind just the different categories of events that are happening: breath coming in, breath going out… xx This is why the Buddha puts so much emphasis on the processes of the mind, because he wants you to get really interested in these processes. How is it that the mind puts things together inside? Is it primarily … 
  12. Protection in all Directions
     … There are certain actions in the mind that lead to suffering; there are certain actions in the mind that lead away from suffering. As you start out with these basic principles of what’s skillful, you find that in order to really strengthen your actions—especially skillful mental acts, but also your skillful bodily acts and your skillful verbal acts—you need to have … 
  13. Licking Yourself Clean
     … One of the reasons we recite those chants on goodwill, compassion, appreciation, and equanimity is to create a sense of wellbeing in the mind. Thoughts of goodwill are good thoughts to think. They feel good. They put the mind at ease. You don’t have to struggle with anybody. You don’t have to settle any old scores. It feels good to be thinking … 
  14. Intense Stillness
    Ajaan Lee says that the breath is like a mirror for the mind. If the mirror is distorted, you’re going to get distorted images of the mind. If the mirror is concave, your image will be shorter than you really are. If it’s convex, it’ll be longer. What you want is a mirror that’s nice and flat. The problem is … 
  15. Quick on the Draw
     … As soon as you see a thought appearing in the mind that’s going to take off in that direction—and you know the direction it’s going to take you, it’s not like you haven’t had an experience with these things—you have to recognize the part of the mind that wants to go along with an unskillful thought as something … 
  16. Right View
     … Of course, you’ve got to have a lot of mindfulness and alertness to discern the bear’s motives when he’s chewing on you. That’s why the Buddha has us practice mindfulness and alertness as we meditate, not so much in case we’re attacked by bears, but because there are a lot of issues in the world in which the issue … 
  17. Pain Is a Noble Truth
     … As it turns out, that’s the kind of pain that weighs the mind down. Without the clinging and craving, the pains in the body have no impact on the mind at all. They’re just there, a part of nature, but the mind doesn’t suffer. To see the distinction between those two kinds of suffering, you really do have to probe into … 
  18. Goodwill for the Real World
     … There are dangers in your own mind. The reason we try to develop skillful qualities in the mind is because we see that we have to prepare for these dangers. Now, it’s true that some of the Buddhist teachings sound like they’re not designed for the real world. One of them is “goodwill for all beings.” A lot of beings are really … 
  19. Metta
     … For the meditation to go well, you’ve got to get the mind to settle down. If you’re thinking about how you might harm somebody, or you’re living with the results of having harmed somebody, it’s very difficult to get the mind to be still. You start thinking about unskillful things you’ve done. There may be unskillful things where you … 
  20. The Spider on the Web
     … One of the reasons we get the mind really, really still—as still as we can get it—and then try to keep it there, is so that we can see the process by which the mind will slip away from its stillness, by which a distracting thought will arise. A lot of times there will be thoughts you say are perfectly innocent. As … 
  21. The Art of Right Speech
     … We’re not just memorizing words or ideas; we’re learning how to deal skillfully with issues in the mind. And the first principle in that skill, he would say, is how we relate to the breath, because there are many layers in the mind. Some are more conscious than others, and one of the ways we get in touch with some of the … 
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