Search results for: "Mindfulness"

  1. Page 144
  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. Concentration Work
     … In doing this work, you exercise your faculties of mindfulness, alertness, and discernment. There’s a tendency in some circles to encourage students talented in concentration to direct their energies in the direction of concentration. If they’re more talented in the area of analyzing the mind, they’re encouraged in the direction of discernment. Ajaan Fuang, though, would turn tables on people. If … 
  8. In Memory of King Rama IX
     … And notice that when something unskillful has come up in the mind, you do your best to, at the very least, keep it in bounds. You may not be able to get rid of it, but at least don’t let it show, and don’t let it take over your thoughts. If something in the mind says, “Okay, this is worthy of anger … 
  9. Guardian Meditations
     … Only when you’re really sensitive can you have those “Aha” moments that really go deep into the mind, open things up, change your perspective on everything. This is why the eightfold path is not only composed of right view, but also other factors that help to increase your ability to know, to learn, to be aware of the mind, and to help you … 
  10. Metta Math
     … But goodwill raises the level of the mind. It’s not innate. You start out having goodwill for some people. The normal human attitude is that you have goodwill for some but not for everyone. But with the sublime attitudes, the brahmaviharas, you’re trying to raise the level of your mind to a brahma level. It’s the brahmas who have goodwill for … 
  11. Seclusion
     … There’s what the Buddha calls our asavas, these things that flow out of the mind. The mind has a tendency to go flowing out the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body. Think of it as your brain is going out the eyes, the ears, the nose. It’s a pretty disgusting image, but that’s what the mind does. It … 
  12. Brahmaviharas at the Breath
     … But as you meditate, this is where you move from beginner’s mind to expert’s mind. In beginner’s mind there are a lot of potentials, but a lot of them are unrealized, and you’re totally unaware of them. Someone who’s truly expert has learned how to find those potentials and explore them, to develop a sense of which potential you … 
  13. Thinking About Your Fears
     … This is why it’s good to be able to get the mind into a state where you can focus on the sense of space, realizing that the mind can be perfectly content, perfectly happy, without any reference to the body at all. Space, consciousness, nothingness: These are states of concentration you can work on and dwell in. As you get the mind to … 
  14. Together but Separate
    It’s one of the ironies of the practice that in the practice of right mindfulness and right concentration, we’re trying to create a sense of oneness, bringing things together, whereas the function of right view is to see things as separate. But there’s a natural progression, and it’s not really a paradox at all. Just think about how you ordinarily … 
  15. A Thorough Cleaning
     … And in getting down to the details, you’re going to be cleaning out a lot of misunderstandings in your own mind, a lot of bad attitudes, a lot of the crud that develops in the mind as you go through the day. Think of this as doing a detailed cleaning, a thorough cleaning. The same with your breath: You get one spot in … 
  16. Two Types of Dukkha
     … This is why we sit and meditate, closing our eyes to the world, so that we can see what the mind is doing right now that’s adding unnecessary suffering, adding unnecessary stress to what we’re experiencing. We try to bring our attention as much as we can into the present moment so that we can watch the workings of the mind. Otherwise … 
  17. A Pleasure Without Stories
     … It requires that you invest your activity, your intelligence, your ingenuity in getting the mind quiet with the breath. Just sitting here observing things coming and going, coming and going, arising and passing away: That’s going to do it. It’s not going to do it because you watch things arise and pass away, and then part of the mind says, “Okay, where … 
  18. Something New
     … You couldn’t change your mind, or if there was a change in your mind, it would have nothing to do with what you were doing, because both the change in your mind and what you’re doing externally would be already determined from the past. That, the Buddha taught, was a pernicious doctrine. It was so bad that even though he wasn’t … 
  19. Worldly Dhammas
     … Try to tune your mind in to that attitude. As the Buddha says, make your mind in tune with the breath. Make your mind in tune with fire, water, earth. You can also make it in tune with space, or with the simple knowing quality in the mind. If you can maintain this type of perception, it really frees you from a lot of … 
  20. The World of the Body
     … In other words, you’re the one who makes up your mind where you want to go, how you want to go about it. Once you’ve made up your mind, you’ve got to stick with it. Otherwise, you develop something and then you drop it for a while, and then you develop some more and then you drop it for a while … 
  21. The Door of the Cage (2)
     … And they might be reading your mind right now. What would they be thinking? “Here’s someone who started out well, but now has gone astray.” Thinking about that should give rise to a sense of shame, a healthy sense of shame. These beings have your well-being in mind and they’re disappointed. Now, those two reflections depend ultimately, though, on the Dhamma … 
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