Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 143
  2. Skills of the Dhamma Wheel
     … Then as you work with the breath, as you get more and more skilled at it, you can take the skills and turn around and start applying them to the mind, to the different events in the mind. You find that this framework will take you far. That’s why the Buddha said that the most important internal quality for awakening is appropriate attention … 
  3. It’s up to You
     … When the Buddha talks about the luminosity of the mind, that’s what he means, I think: the mind’s ability to observe itself and then to learn from its actions. Another view that the Buddha would argue with is the idea that whatever you experience in the present moment is totally random and has no real cause. Everything just happens spontaneously. If that … 
  4. What’s Important
     … There’s a desire in the mind for freedom. There’s a desire in the mind for integrity. There’s a desire in the mind to be honest, to be truthful. These desires exist, too. So, it’s not that we’re totally denying desire. We’re simply sorting our desires out and trying to give prominence to the ones that are most honorable … 
  5. The Brightness of Life
     … They may have pain in the fact that they’re inconstant and stressful and not-self, but that pain doesn’t have to weigh down the mind. It weighs the mind down only because we cling to these thing. The clinging is the real suffering. And when the Buddha gives us that analysis, it’s helpful, because he not only identifies suffering as clinging … 
  6. Think Like a Thief
     … The thing is the truth is there, to be seen at all times, if only you have the mind to observe it. So as I stayed with Ajaan Fuang, it wasn’t just a matter listening Dhamma talks. In fact, he gave very few Dhamma talks. You could probably count all the Dharma talks I heard from him during those ten years on the … 
  7. Circular Practice
     … people who actually have the right values, people who see the value of training the mind, the value of digging down into the mind and seeing why it’s still causing itself suffering. Even though everything we do is aimed at happiness, we still suffer. And if we don’t keep the question of suffering foremost in mind—and particularly the suffering the mind … 
  8. The Gift of Goodwill
     … They talk of the famous ajaans dying extremely peacefully, not burdening anyone else with their suffering because they’ve learned how not to suffer from whatever can happen to the body, whatever happens to the mind. So as you train the mind, it’s a very high-level expression of goodwill for all beings. Because the common pattern of the world is people suffer … 
  9. Get Real
     … Ajaan Suwat once noted that there’s a paradox in what we’re trying to develop as we get the mind to settle down. On the one hand, the texts talk about making the mind soft and malleable. On the other hand, they talk about making it strong — strong in the sense that you’re not going to get waylaid by other thoughts. You … 
  10. What You Sense Directly
     … Then perceptions are the images you hold in mind that help you stay with the breath—the markers of the mind, the signposts—or the way you visualize to yourself how the breath goes through the body. So the question is, are those two different types of fabrication—in terms of rebirth and in terms of the meditation—related or not? Scholars like to … 
  11. Growing Up Inside
     … an opportunity to get the mind really to settle down. And the fact that you’re getting the mind to be still makes it more sensitive to your actions and their results. All these factors work together to make this a growing up experience. So even though we don’t have rites of passage, we at least have time here at the monastery for … 
  12. Self-esteem
     … So when you see that happening in the mind, recognize it for what it is: a fetter. It ties you down, keeps you coming back. We don’t have to think about coming back through many lifetimes—even right here it just keeps you coming back to the same old mind-state that somehow tries to find some satisfaction out of making comparisons, hoping … 
  13. No One in Charge
    No One in Charge January 29, 2016 To maintain its health, the mind needs its own place to rest: not just resting in sleep, resting with alertness, awareness. That kind of place requires several skills. One is the skill of just being able to be quiet. Another is the skill of being able to cut away your interest in things outside. Some people find … 
  14. Relaxing into the Body
     … It’s the same with the body and the mind. You make your awareness more sensitive so that it can seep through the body. You can loosen up your perceptions of the solidity of the body so that awareness can seep in even deeper. The mind has a good solid place to stay, and the body has someone looking after it so that its … 
  15. Disenchantment & Dispassion
     … This becomes the mind’s basic default mode. So this is the aim of the Buddha’s teachings. In the final evening of his life, he talked about how people were paying homage to him in the wrong way. Actually, devas were paying homage with heavenly music, heavenly scents, etc., yet he said that that’s not genuine homage for the Tathagata. True homage … 
  16. A Better Place to Feed
     … After all, to make comments on the breath, you have to watch—“How is the breath going? How is the mind doing? Is it staying here or is it going to move someplace else? And is the breath comfortable? What would feel really good right now?” Try to breathe in a way that feels satisfying to the lungs, the heart, the different organs of … 
  17. Fighting Spirit
     … See if you can see the connection between something you’re thinking – or any movement in the mind at all – and the level of stress going up or down in the mind. That will give you a clue as to where you should turn your attention so that you can figure out which kind of thinking is helpful, which kind of thinking is not … 
  18. The Endurance of a Long-distance Runner
     … They’re there, but they don’t invade the mind. That’s the important thing. We endure them as they happen to us in the body, in our ears, but we don’t allow unskillful thoughts to develop around them in the mind. Here again, it’s a matter of what the Buddha calls the three kinds of fabrication. The first factor in dependent … 
  19. Reinvest Your Noble Treasures
     … Then, there are higher motivations: “Giving is good.” Or, “It’s not right that I have more than enough and other people don’t have enough.” Or because “It makes the mind serene.” You think less and less in terms of material rewards, but you still get rewards—you go to higher levels of heaven when you pass away. Even when giving is just … 
  20. The Gift of the Practice
     … And in the course of mastering these skills, you open up the mind into something really special—the deathless, total freedom. And it’s good not only for yourself. It’s good for everybody around you, everybody who has dealings with you once you’ve verified for yourself that it really exists. Because on the one hand, the skills you develop in the course … 
  21. Four Noble Truths to One
     … We don’t suffer from what’s coming into the mind. We suffer from what’s coming out of the mind. That’s what you have to abandon. But first you have to comprehend the suffering. As the Buddha says, aging, illness, and death are suffering. Not getting what you want; having to be with what you don’t like; having to be separated … 
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