Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. A Valuable Gift
     … If you’re sitting here with your mind all over the place, it’s not much of a gift. Try to make your mind one, here with the breath. Whatever way of getting the mind to settle down works for you, that’s what you pursue. There’s no one right way of getting the mind into concentration. Each person’s mind is going … 
  3. Toward Release
    Toward Release April 9, 2019 Practicing mindfulness means keeping something in mind. Practicing right mindfulness means keeping in mind two activities that we’ll be doing here as we meditate. One is being with the breath. The Buddha calls this keeping track of the body in and of itself. In other words, you don’t think about your body in the context of the … 
  4. The Self-correcting Mind
     … After all, the mind has to be its own teacher. You learn from external teachers, but external teachers can’t keep looking at your mind all the time. Even if they could read minds, it’s asking too much of them to be reading your mind 24/7. You’ve got to learn how to read your own mind 24/7, to gain an … 
  5. Maintenance Work
     … That’s because the mind isn’t used to staying in position, just as the body isn’t used to staying in position. But the mind tends to move a lot faster and to be a lot more fickle than the body, which is why we have to work extra hard at that really hard aspect of the training: keeping the mind in one … 
  6. The Alternative of Concentration
     … It’s more a quality of the mind: the mindfulness that’s immersed in the body, the mindfulness that saturates the body, the awareness and alertness that saturate the body. That creates that sense of a field. Even though this isn’t the ultimate goal of the practice, it’s a good skill to master. It’s the path that we follow that gets … 
  7. The Need for Stillness
     … The path, he says, is having the mind watch the mind, having the mind see the mind. The end of suffering is what results from that. So it’s the movement that makes us suffer, and just having the mind stay still right at the mind: That’s the path. Where’s the discernment in that stillness? It’s in seeing the motions and … 
  8. Common Sense
     … He watched what he was doing in his mind, and he saw which mind-states gave rise to suffering and which ones put an end to suffering. That’s how he arrived at the four noble truths, and that’s how he arrived at true awakening: simply noticing that thoughts and feelings have an effect on the mind, and that some thoughts and some … 
  9. Sucked into the Tube
    One of the most important skills you can develop as a meditator is catching the mind in the act. To begin with, this means catching it in the act of wandering off. You make up your mind you’re going to stay with the breath. You stay for a couple breaths and all of a sudden you find yourself someplace else. So you come … 
  10. Judging Your Meditation
     … He wanted you to put the mind in a place where it can look at itself. And the breath is a good place to do that, because the breath is very intimate with the mind. Of the different processes in your body, the one that’s closest to the functioning of the mind is the breath. Greed arises in the mind, anger, or fear … 
  11. Where the Brightness Is
    The mind, the Buddha once said, is bright, but it’s darkened by passing defilements. If the mind were by nature dark, there’d be no way you could develop it, he said: no way you could develop it, no way you could train it. But it’s because it is bright, that’s why you can train it. The question is, where are … 
  12. Getting the Most Out of Now
     … In that way, the mind will be more inclined to want to come back. So that’s the main instruction, just stay right here. And you notice that you have to develop certain qualities of mind like mindfulness, the ability to keep something in mind; alertness, your ability to watch what you’re doing along with the results that you’re getting from your … 
  13. Gladden, Steady, Release
    There are three things you want to check for if you want the mind to settle down: First, does the mind need to be gladdened? Is there something you have to do in order to lift its spirits, so that you’re feeling no regrets about the past, no worries about the future, so that you can feel good about being right here? The … 
  14. Right Livelihood
     … You support the mind. The mind does have its own belongings, all the karma it creates. Those are the belongings of the mind. That’s what supports the mind. And just as your physical belongings can either weigh you down or support you, in the same way your actions weigh you down or support you. When you think about the fact that your livelihood … 
  15. Mindfulness as a Goad
    To get the mind into concentration, we have to develop our mindfulness. Sometimes you hear mindfulness being defined as simply being aware of whatever is happening, but that’s not the Buddha’s definition. His definition was that it’s a faculty of the memory, your ability to call things to mind and keep them in mind. For instance, when you’re working with … 
  16. Mindfulness of Death & the Deathless
    The Buddha recommended practicing mindfulness of death because, as he said, it leads to the deathless. How does it do that? There are basically two things you have to keep in mind. That’s what the mindfulness part is. One is the fact that death could happen at any time. That’s to give rise to a sense of urgency, realizing there’s work … 
  17. When Things Seem Dark
    It’s good to think about the elements, the properties, to remind yourself that your mind can be like them as well. When the Buddha was giving his introductory instructions on meditation to Rahula, he told Rahula to make his mind like earth. Notice: That’s something you can do. It may not feel like that right away, but you can do it. People … 
  18. What to Keep in Mind
    Mindfulness means to keep something in mind. You develop it together with alertness—which is knowing what’s happening while it’s happening—and a quality called ardency. Ardency means that when unskillful thoughts come up in the mind, you try to get rid of them. When skillful thoughts are not yet there, you try to give rise to them. Once they’re there … 
  19. A Haven for Inner Wealth
     … right here, developing these good qualities in the mind, the food for the mind, i.e., your skillful intentions. That’s where time and energy invested pays off. This is the message we have to keep in mind, and we have to keep it in mind very firmly, because there are so many other messages out there. People want our money. People want our … 
  20. Rightly Directed
    Set your mind on the breath right now, and keep it right here. Try to make the breath steady, coming in steadily, going out steadily. And remind yourself that as you set the mind here, you’re both setting it in the right place and pointing it in the right direction. The Buddha calls this atta samma-panidhi, the self rightly directed. As the … 
  21. Using the Committee of the Mind
    The fact that the mind is like a committee can be a weakness or it can be a strength. It’s a weakness when you’re trying to get the mind to settle down. You have a clear idea of what you want to do but not everybody in the mind is on board. You realize that there’s some free time here, and … 
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