Search results for: "Mindfulness"

  1. Page 149
  2. In Tune
     … But the way we work together, the way we meditate, the way we try to bring the body and mind in tune: It’s all the same principle. There is a joy that comes from harmony. That joy brings the mind peace: brings peace to your mind and peace to the minds of others. So try to develop this quality of being in tune … 
  3. Your Highest Aspiration
     … So we develop concentration to be able to look at the mind in this way because the duty with regard to stress is to comprehend it. It takes a lot of mental strength to look at the stress and suffering that are oppressing the mind. And concentration provides that strength. We bring the mind to a state of oneness, a state of unification, with … 
  4. Appropriate Attention
    The nature of the mind is that it doesn’t sit around just doing nothing. It’s not simply a passive receiver of outside stimuli. It’s out there looking for things. It’s constantly active because it knows there are dangers all around. And so the question always in the back of the mind is, “What next? What next? What do I do … 
  5. A Boxing Lesson
     … It talks about how there are different ways that people can criticize you, sometimes with a mind of goodwill, sometimes with a mind of ill will, with what’s true or what’s false, what’s helpful and what’s not helpful. That’s the way of human speech. So on the one hand, you have to have some equanimity toward what they’re … 
  6. The Kamma of Concentration
     … The important thing is that you learn how to keep that questioning attitude in mind: Where is there still disturbance? And look for it not so much in things outside but in the actions of the mind. You see this especially clearly when you’re working with pain. The real disturbance there is not the pain. It’s the mind’s commentary, or the … 
  7. The Raft
     … all the different fabrications in the body and mind. You’ve got the breath. That’s a part of the body, part of “form.” Then there are feelings: the feelings of pleasure you try to create by the way that you look at the breath. There are perceptions—saññā—the images you have in the mind about how the breath comes into the body … 
  8. What You’re Choosing to Do Right Now
     … But as we get the mind more calm, get the mind to settle down, we can begin to sense these movements in the mind. We use the Buddha’s vocabulary to sort out what’s what. What’s going on in there? The fact that we’re making choices right now is what allows us to practice. It’s what allows us to find … 
  9. The Brightness of Life
     … Life has suffering in it, but the problem isn’t life, the problem is the activities of the mind. Knowing that fact gives you focus. This is why we focus on the breath as we meditate, because the breath is very close to the mind. As you get to know your breath better, you get to know your mind better, in a way that … 
  10. A Wealthy Memory
     … What would Ajaan Suwat say? What would Ajaan Fuang say? What would the Buddha say? Try to keep them in mind. If you forget them, it’s as if you’re cutting yourself off at the root. You’re drifting, and you’ll go back to the old voices in your mind, the people you knew when you were younger, the things that came … 
  11. Trading Up
     … Then you’re ready to work on the mind. In other words, you’ve got to clear away a lot of the underbrush, clear away a lot of the junk in your life if you want to have some space for the mind to develop. The path factors dealing with concentration start with right effort. Here again there’s a trade. You work on … 
  12. The Treasure of Equanimity
     … However true that might be, it is noticeable that as you get older, your mind tends to scatter in lots of different directions. But you can learn how to gain some control over it before you get old. The mind has this tendency, exacerbated now by the Internet, where you can surf all day – follow one topic as it leads into another into another … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. Not What You Are, What You Do
     … So instead of being a process of lobotomizing the mind so that you don’t think, meditation is actually training in learning how to think in more skillful ways, how to act in more skillful ways — with knowledge, with an understanding of actions and their results. In particular, it’s training in learning how to distinguish the types of activities in the mind that … 
  15. Heedfulness
     … So it’s better to be open with yourself that there are skillful and unskillful urges in the mind, and you want to know how to sort them out. A large part of discernment is just this: sorting out what’s skillful in the mind, what’s unskillful, and then doing what you can to give rise to the skillful and to abandon the … 
  16. Samvega for Samsara
    Our minds like to wander around, so when it comes time to settle down and be still, we have to give them some good reasons not to wander, to want to stay here. One of the best ways of doing that is by developing a strong sense of saṃvega for the various places they could wander to. You see this in Ajaan Lee’s … 
  17. Family Ties
     … And it’s why he extolled seclusion, because the real problem, of course, is within each human mind. The reason we can’t get along is because we can’t get along well with our own minds. We’re all sloshing around in our greed, aversion, and delusion. And there’s nothing you can really do about other people’s greed, aversion, and delusion … 
  18. The Pain of Conviction
     … You’d think that the mind would immediately want to incline to a state like this and do everything it could to protect it and maintain it. But the mind has lots of other agendas as well. So expect that there are going to be some fallow times. You sit down to meditate and the breath just doesn’t seem to get comfortable, doesn … 
  19. In Line with the Dhamma
     … The mind is used to lying to itself. This is why it’s so easy for advertisers to lie to us. They’ve learned all the tricks that the mind plays on itself and they use them to make us happy to be lied to. If we really looked at our lives, we’d find it really discouraging. We’ve spent so much effort … 
  20. Modest in Manner, but Not in Goals
     … Focus on your breath and keep watch over the mind to make sure that it stays with the breath. It’s almost as if you have two minds here: the one focused on the breath, and the other focused on the relationship between the two. You want to keep them together. Adjust the breath so that it feels good. If any thoughts come up … 
  21. Skilled in Leaving Concentration
     … You begin to gain a sense of your stillness of mind. And you may also begin to sense that the way your mind settles down will really vary from time to time; that you don’t have just one spot where you tend to go, but you have a couple of spots that are your home bases. The next step, of course, is to … 
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