Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 147
  2. Breath Teaches the Bramaviharas
     … It has nothing of its own.” The thing is, what do you have that is of your own? Just the perfections you build into the mind, the noble treasures you build into the mind. That’s an area where you can exert some control, where you can make a change. And so you do your best to develop your perfections: generosity, virtue, renunciation, discernment … 
  3. Turning Anxiety into Heedfulness
     … We have these chants on how things are swept away, and how aging, illness, and death are normal, to remind ourselves that we really do need to train the mind. Because heedfulness is just that: a sense of the dangers, but taking whatever fear you might have about the dangers and directing it in the right way. It’s combined with confidence, that there … 
  4. Mature Strategies
     … Try to maintain your mindfulness and your alertness so that the mind doesn’t start drifting off. That’s one of our problems: We get a little bit of pleasure, a little bit of comfort, and we let go, wallowing in the pleasure, forgetting where we are, forgetting what we’re doing. As a result, the pleasure goes away because the causes for keeping … 
  5. Layers of Selves
     … There’ll be part of the mind that wants to keep going back to the pain, but you have to say, “Nope, nope, nope. We’re going to stay right here.” You can use a little bit of not-self thinking here. If there’s a pain in the leg, a pain in your hip, you can say, “That’s not me right now … 
  6. A Refuge from Modern Values
     … We were talking today about the concept of refuge as a home for the mind. It’s also your own internal wilderness. It’s good to have a wilderness home in the midst of the city, in the midst of all the frenzy of modern life—to have that place where you can step back even while you’re in the midst of people … 
  7. The Right Attitude to the Body
     … One way of disabusing the mind of the idea that it’s going to gain true happiness through sensuality is to ask yourself, “What is the sensual thinking you’re most attached to?” It’s your ideas about the body. So you have to frequently remind yourself of its drawbacks again and again and again because it goes so deep in the mind, this … 
  8. Learning Right Speech
    There’s a tendency to think of practicing the Dhamma as meaning what you do when you sit here with your eyes closed, trying to get the mind into concentration, trying to develop discernment. But we have to remember that the path to awakening is not a one-fold path or a two-fold path. It’s a noble eightfold path. And each of … 
  9. Goodness
     … But it all comes down to qualities of the mind. This leads right into the next strength, which is persistence. Once you see that the qualities of the mind are important, you have the desire to prevent unskillful ones from arising and to let go of unskillful ones that have arisen; to give rise to skillful qualities and to develop the ones that have … 
  10. The Three Perceptions & Their Opposites
     … As you try to get the mind to settle with the breath, there are a lot of things going on that you don’t control. But you’re going to try to work with the breath so that it does become more constant. The mind’s concentration becomes more constant. There’s a sense of ease in body and mind, and you gain some … 
  11. Harmony
     … That sense of joy then is more and more conducive to getting the mind to settle down with a sense of well-being, to get into good strong concentration—the kind of concentration where you can stay there in a stable way. We have to remember that harmony doesn’t just happen. Think about an orchestra practicing: They have to work, work, work to … 
  12. A Meditator is a Good Friend to Have
     … When they talk about things being unconscious or subconscious, it’s not that there’s a basement in the mind where whatever happens has to be unconscious and in the dark. It’s simply that we’re not paying attention. Thoughts go flitting through the mind and then leave an imprint on the body. Or events in the body can have an impact on … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. Judging Your Efforts
     … Just enter into the action, enter into the activity here of trying to mold the mind into concentration. This works on many levels. At the very beginning, just try to stay with the breath. You may have been with the breath many times in the past when it worked out well, but today it’s not working out so well. What do you do … 
  15. Eyes in the Back of Your Head
     … Still, the mind is a lot less burdened by it because you’re not trying to carry it. Sometimes that happens. We feel that if we don’t surround the pain with our commentary on it, it’s going to take off and spread everywhere. That fear is what makes us hold it. But, actually, the holding is a weight on the mind. Then … 
  16. Train Hopping
     … This is why we focus on the breath, to give you some place to stay inside this combination of body and mind that’s a little bit outside of the mind. That allows you to you to get some perspective on your thinking. Even though you may still be thinking about something—you are thinking about the breath—at least the thinking stays in … 
  17. A Culture of Self Reliance
     … You need to have a sense of self-reliance as you maintain these values, keeping in mind the fact that you’re doing it because the mind has its illnesses, the mind has its diseases, and you need to treat them. So you don’t make a show of your practice. It would be like making a show of the medicine you have to … 
  18. Paying Off Your Debts
     … realizing that whatever suffering there is in life comes from within, from your own actions, particularly from actions of the mind. But you have the freedom to change, the freedom to learn from your actions. There’s a passage where the Buddha says that the mind is luminous and it’s defiled by passing defilements. The common image is the sun, with clouds blocking … 
  19. Feeding on Ardency
     … This is why the mind is able to observe itself. A lot of times consciousness feeds on junk food. As we all know, the Buddha said it’s because of our feeding habits that we suffer. But you can’t just stop feeding—it’d be deadly. Think of the food of intention. One sure-fire way of putting someone into a deep depression … 
  20. Sensitive in Seven Ways
     … It’s in the actual quality of the mind. When the Buddha talks about being generous, when he talks about having goodwill, it’s not just in the words. You want to see what those words are for—the qualities inside your own mind that they’re pointing at. They’re giving you pointers in where and how you can develop yourself. Having a … 
  21. If These Walls Could Talk
     … If things aren’t good enough in the mind, what can you do to make them better? Because you do have that power. Now, all of this assumes that other principle: practicing the Dhamma in line with the Dhamma. The Buddha talks about the fact that we’re training the mind in virtue, concentration, discernment, or what he calls heightened virtue, heightened mind, heightened … 
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