Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. Meaning & Happiness
     … So it’s good to keep alive in your mind the fact that there have been real people who were able to find real happiness, true happiness, through developing qualities of their minds: qualities like generosity, virtue, renunciation. As we’re sitting here right here, right now, that’s a type of renunciation: Renouncing our fascination with sensual pleasures and looking for something deeper … 
  3. Older than the Cosmos
     … And how do we know that they’re not worth laying claim to? Because they come out of the mind. You can see the process by which they all happen, and it starts in the mind. The Buddha calls craving the guide to becoming. He also calls it the seamstress, what stitches things together. It thinks, “This together with that and that together with … 
  4. Determined to Practice
     … In the same way, our minds are stuck on things because we cling to them. It’s not that the things themselves have an adhesive; our mind is covered with adhesive. When we learn how to peel that away, the suffering ends. We do that by developing the qualities of the path—virtue, concentration, and discernment. You read about the precepts and ask yourself … 
  5. To Understand the Path
     … One of the definitions of noble right concentration is any singleness of mind that’s endowed all the seven other factors of the path, everything from right view through right effort and right mindfulness. If you were to compare concentration with a seat, it’s like one of those ergonomic seats they sell that are made to sit in while you work, the ones … 
  6. Technique & Attitude
     … How you keep the breath in mind. And how you’re alert to the breath. There are specific steps, specific techniques that you want to master, because it is a skill. And having a specific technique like this gives you a way of measuring the currents of the mind against each other. It gives you a firm point of reference. Once you know that … 
  7. Refuge for All Beings
     … Here the wealth stands for the expansive mind. You can develop an expansive mind and you don’t have to suffer the results of your past actions nearly as much as you would without that expansive mind. Of course, together with the expansive mind, there’s the training in virtue and discernment, and learning how not to be overcome by pleasure or by pain … 
  8. All-around Knowing
     … The reason the mind slips off to the past or the future is because it gets very small. It’s as if the route to the past and the future is a little tube, and you usually make the mind small enough to fit down the tube. But here you’ve got the mind enlarged. It won’t fit. Another image is that when … 
  9. Question Your Perceptions
     … Take, for instance, the question of your mind right now. What direction is your mind facing? Because our eyes face forward, we have the idea that our minds are also facing forward. But when you close your eyes, there’s no need to think that the mind is facing any direction at all. We know we have a body. But you could also perceive … 
  10. Planting a Tree
    Training the mind is like growing a tree. You’re responsible for the water and the fertilizer, but the growing is something that the tree does. If you try to speed it up by pulling on the tree, what usually happens is that you pull it out of the ground. Its roots get disconnected. The tree dies. You have to focus on your duty … 
  11. The Riddle of Freedom
     … the ability to direct your mind in the right direction. As the Buddha said in the Mangala Sutta, “Having a self that is rightly directed is a great blessing.” So you learn how to direct your actions in the appropriate way. And you get more and more skills in dealing with the different temptations that come up. You hear the mind say, “Well, I … 
  12. Firm in Your Intent
     … Then there’s mindfulness: You keep one topic in mind. It could be the breath right now, which is how mindfulness shades directly into concentration. And then concentration leads to discernment. Here again, the concentration has to be there in the discernment. You’re trying to look to see what the mind is doing that’s causing suffering, which is why you have to … 
  13. The Equanimity of a Winner
     … You’re mindful. Mindfulness doesn’t just mean accepting what comes up. It means keeping things in mind, remembering to be alert and ardent in putting aside whatever’s unskillful and developing what’s skillful. Concentration builds on that. In other words, when your efforts at being mindful get successful, the mind can finally settle down. When it settles down fully, it reaches a … 
  14. Self-Doubt
     … A voice comes up in the mind: “Maybe you don’t have it within you to do this.” That’s a voice you cannot listen to., because the meditation is a necessary skill. There are a lot of skills in the world where you realize you don’t have a talent for it, and it’s not all that necessary, so you can let … 
  15. Painful Feelings, Hurtful Words
     … If you can’t depend on things outside, at the very least learn how to depend your own mind. Move into whatever part of the body is pleasant at the moment, and let the pain have the other part. You focus on what you’ve got that’s good here. Then if part of the mind complains “Why is that pain still there?”, remember … 
  16. Memory & Motivation
     … That’s why mindfulness is so important and why it’s so important that mindfulness is a faculty of memory. You’re not sitting here trying to remember these things all the time, but if something comes up in the meditation that you’re not sure about to do, you might think back: What have you done in the past that worked? What have … 
  17. Don’t Get Discouraged
     … So if you find the mind wandering off from the breath, just keep bringing it back. It wanders off again, bring it back again. Do your best not to get discouraged. Remember, you’ve been training the mind to wander for who-knows-how-many lifetimes. That’s what the word samsara means: It’s the wandering-on. We tend to think of samsara … 
  18. A Diffuse Light
     … You energize with analysis, which builds on mindfulness, followed by effort and rapture. Then you calm things down with calm, concentration, and equanimity. It’s that active analysis of qualities that helps you see fabrication, while the more passive ones help you to calm fabrication down. You see the body and the mind working together in this way for the sake of a very … 
  19. Fear & Conviction
     … You need to train the mind. You don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, but you do know that, whatever happens, you’re going to need more mindfulness, you’re going to need more alertness, more discernment, more concentration. You’re going to need to have a safe place inside. This is why we meditate. So if you find your … 
  20. Imagining Freedom
     … You’ve got lots of time to look at your own mind, to train your own mind. And it’s made possible by the rules. And as we meditate, we’re going to have to deal with pain. But you learn how to sit with the pain. It’s inevitable. Even when your posture is perfect, there are going to come times when there … 
  21. The Buddha’s Questions
     … Is there anything in my mind that would cause me to do something unskillful? Is there any unfinished business in the mind?” And if there is unfinished business, he says to try to straighten out the mind quickly, with the same sense of urgency you’d feel if your head were on fire. Then ask yourself the same question at sunset: “I might die … 
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