Search results for: "Mindfulness"

  1. Page 146
  2. The Wisdom of Merit
     … When you do this, you develop mindfulness and alertness. Mindfulness is keeping your promise to yourself in mind. Alertness is actually looking at what you’re doing. These are good qualities to bring to the meditation, things you want to hold onto as you develop concentration. And you realize that in developing concentration, just the fact that you hold onto your object doesn’t … 
  3. Three Intoxications
     … You realize that your mind is the main agent shaping your life, so you want to catch it if it’s doing something unskillful. And you have to remind yourself how important it is that you do this. As the Buddha said, all skillful qualities in the mind, all skillful qualities in the heart, are rooted in heedfulness: the realization that there are dangers … 
  4. The Fourth Tetrad
     … You have to see the fact that whatever you like has its origination in the mind. Maybe there are defilements you don’t like—or you tell yourself you don’t like them—but they have their origination in the mind. You can’t go around blaming other people or other things outside. You have to see that the origination is in here, and … 
  5. Self-Control
     … This is one of the reasons why we practice concentration, to make the mind strong. And we develop discernment to figure out what our real battles are. You’re sitting here with the breath, and nothing outside is happening at all, but you find the mind wandering out of control. If that’s the way your mind is, how can you trust it not … 
  6. Practice in Dying Skillfully
     … There’ll be distraction and pain—the same problems we deal with as we’re meditating, sitting here trying to get the mind with the breath. First you find yourself fighting off distractions and if you don’t get the distractions out of the way in time, then the pain comes, especially if you sit for long periods of time or if you’re … 
  7. A Mind Larger than the World
     … But if you can maintain goodwill in situations where you’re totally overpowered, that means your mind is larger than the situation. That’s a lot of what Dhamma practice in daily life is: making your mind larger than the situation; thinking about what would be for the true happiness of everybody all around. That’s the first aspect of a good determination: discernment … 
  8. Wise about Happiness
    When Ajaan Lee analyses the qualities that you bring into mindfulness practice—and by extension to concentration practice—he singles out ardency as the wisdom factor. Which is interesting. It’s the factor that has to do with effort, the effort you put into being mindful, into gaining concentration, trying to see into your defilements. Ardency is what does this. And ardency is wisdom … 
  9. The Wheel of Dhamma
     … You hear descriptions of the awakened mind and you think, “Okay, it’s equanimous and patient. I’ll will be equanimous and patient, and not try to strive, not to strive for anything, because the awakened mind doesn’t strive.” But the reason the awakened mind doesn’t strive is because it’s already arrived at where it wants to go. As long as … 
  10. Equanimity & Karma
     … But, as he explains, those extra arrows are the ones that actually weigh down the mind. That first arrow doesn’t have to weigh down the mind at all. So try to develop the right qualities of mind, which he enumerates as: one, the ability to develop unlimited goodwill and equanimity; two, working on your virtue so that you don’t have to criticize … 
  11. Feelings of Unworthiness
     … Your mind can change very fast. As the Buddha said, nothing can change as quickly as the mind. There’s no analogy that he could give for how quick the mind is to change its course. Now, that can be a negative thing, but it can also be a positive thing, as when you have a good change of heart. You realize that your … 
  12. In Debt to Generosity
     … That’s one thing to keep in mind. Another thing to keep in mind is the comment that Ven. Maha Kassapa made once. He was looking back on his life as a monk. He had become an arahant seven days after his ordination and, as he said, “For seven days I ate food and I was a debtor to the countryside. But from that … 
  13. Stick with It
     … One of the tendencies of the mind is that when it knows certain things are going to come up that it doesn’t want you to see, it diverts your attention someplace else. You’ve got to learn how to resist that, to see right through whatever the diversion is. You begin to see things in the mind that you don’t want to … 
  14. The Buddha’s Narrative
     … After many false starts through several years, he finally found true happiness through training his mind in the path we’re practicing right now: developing mindfulness, alertness, concentration, ardency, and all the skillful qualities of the mind. He was able to bring his mind to good solid concentration. Then he started asking questions: Was this his only life or were there other lives? In … 
  15. True Friends
     … As for the other voices in your mind that would suggest you go away, regard them not as your thoughts, just as committee members in your mind. We’ve picked up all kinds of voices inside our heads. Some from people we know—members of our family, teachers—others from the internet and other media, people we don’t know at all. You meet … 
  16. Lessons for New Monks
     … It also means that you’re fencing the mind in: Instead of looking for your pleasures in the senses, you’re going to learn how to look for your pleasure inside because an important principle in restraint of the senses is that you keep mindfulness established in the body—which could include being mindful of the breath—and you’re going to look for … 
  17. Self-Healing
     … Learn to picture those to your mind and see what picture is most conducive to breathing easily, breathing well, with a feeling that it’s good to be here just doing nothing but breathing—and protecting the mind from anything else that would come in and interfere. We focus on these activities because, as the Buddha said, this is how we put together our … 
  18. Disenchantment
    Try to find a sense of nourishment in the breath, because the mind needs nourishment. If it doesn’t find its food here, it’s going to go looking someplace else. As long as we’re beings, we need to feed. The Buddha pointed out that that’s the thing we all have in common: All beings depend on nutriment. As long as we … 
  19. Overcoming Complacency
     … Your “I” right now is the meditator, the person trying to be mindful. Okay, that’s a much more skillful “I,” or a much more skillful sense of self, than a lot of other things you could be doing right now. So hang on to it while it’s skillful. Try to get one with the sense of mindfulness, one with the sense of … 
  20. To Look after Yourself with Ease
     … If you can take care of the state of your mind, then that’s a huge burden off of other people. This is one of the reasons why we develop our powers of mindfulness, our powers of concentration, our powers of discernment: so that we have the skills within us to provide a sense of well-being inside, to stay alert inside, and make … 
  21. Contentment
     … Change your mind. Change your attitudes. Develop the skills inside that make it satisfying to change your mind, to change your attitudes. That’s where we should focus our attention. That’s the culture of the noble ones. Just as Ajaan Mun faced a lot of pressure to make his practice more like standard Thai or Laotian practice, we get a lot of pressure … 
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