Search results for: "Mindfulness"
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- Dhamma Is a Quality of the Heart… Here we are, training the mind to find true happiness, but happiness is not a word that he defined. Mind is not a word that he defined, probably because as you go through the practice, your appreciation of happiness is going to change. Your appreciation of the mind is going to change. So it’s good not to have them nailed down too tightly …
- The Gift of the Practice… There’s a good reason why it’s called practicing meditation, because it takes many, many hours of practice to learn how to do it right so that you can perform the meditation in the course of your daily life, to live with a mind that’s centered, mindful, alert, wise, compassionate—all those good things. In fact, learning to live skillfully with a …
- Dedicating Merit… It was being there when I was still receptive—and being around the ajaans and other people practicing meditation—that I began to realize that there’s more to the mind than Western materialistic ideas can account for. And one of the things about the mind is the notion of the current of the mind. The mind is constantly sending out currents. When the …
- Duties… There’s an interesting sutta where a deva comes to see the Buddha and talks about how the mind is trembling, the mind is fearful and anxious because of its duties: duties that have already arisen and duties that have yet to arise. We don’t usually think of devas as having duties. They’re supposed to be up there in heaven just having …
- The Karma of Pleasure… But the only way to find that is, first, to develop this ability to create a sense of ease and well-being within the body through the breath, a sense of ease and well-being that come from secluding the mind from unskillful states, getting the mind concentrated, and really seeing the karma of pleasure. This is what you’ve got to do in …
- The Water in Your Cup… This way you get to see things you didn’t see before inside, both in the body and in the mind. Because as the mind begins to gather around the breath like this, and you give it one thing to stick with, you begin to see other movements in the mind: other intentions that may come up, other thoughts referring to the past, referring …
- Right Speech, Inside & Out… You want to get used to saying No to your idle chatter outside because otherwise internal idle chatter is going to fill your mind. The same mind with which you were sitting and talking with other people this morning at breakfast is now the mind sitting here meditating. And you have the same habits. So as you guard your speech, ask yourself, “Is this …
- Two Roads to the Grand Canyon… Or if the idea that you’ve reached a certain attainment comes into the mind, notice how the mind reacts to that idea. If you can see any defilement in your reaction, you’ve come out ahead; you’ve learned an important lesson about the mind. So when you think about the path to the goal, think about those two roads to the Grand …
- There Is This… This is what concentration is for, to get the mind resilient. We practice it day-in day-out, day-in day-out, so that it becomes more and more the mind’s natural way of being, so that it doesn’t jump to conclusions. It watches—for the sake of understanding, and then for going beyond. I had a student talk to me recently …
- A Matter of Life & Death… your ability to depend on your own mind, to depend on the qualities you’re developing. We talk about taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, but ultimately this is what it means: taking their qualities and developing them in your mind so that you can depend on them, so that you can have them at hand wherever you go. When …
- On Your Own… Instead, the Buddha reminds you that there are people in the world who can read minds, there are devas who can read minds, and they might be reading yours. What would they think? “See, look at this person who said that he or she was going to practice the Dhamma. Look what they’re doing, look at what they’re thinking, look at what …
- Little Things… At the same time, when you’re attentive to little things, you’re beginning to plant your own seeds in the mind as well, different kinds of seeds: seeds of stronger mindfulness, stronger alertness, stronger willpower, determination. All the perfections needed for Awakening start with the little things, and they keep growing in little steps, little steps, through your being very, very attentive, very …
- Wisdom for Dummies… How can people stop suffering? By developing the path, which is primarily composed of good qualities of mind. So you realize the mind has to be trained. That’s another basic principle of wisdom: that true happiness comes from training the mind, because the mind is what makes the choices. That’s why we meditate. And that’s why meditation requires that we focus …
- Reflections on Kamma… That’s mindfulness. So all these teachings that we associate with the Buddha about the qualities of mind we want to develop, the principle of action, the importance of action, and also the qualities of mind we need specifically to develop as we meditate and develop mindfuless: They all come from this instruction. You see that the Buddha’s packing a lot into his …
- Faith in the Practice… that the issue is not the body; it’s the mind. You can say that ahead of time, but what makes a difference is when your actually see the movement of the mind: What is the movement of the mind that wants to go to lust, say, or to pride around the body? That first little thought that sets you off say in a …
- Here to Learn… So, in dealing with other people, it’s possible to have purest mind and you can still make mistakes, but if you have the right attitude, you learn from them. Of course, a pure mind will learn from them. Our* *minds are not fully pure yet, but if you have the attitude, “I’m here to learn,” that will see you through a lot …
- Circumspection… After all, the mind is a complex thing. The needs of the mind in training are complex. And this is not a onefold path. Even with the practice of exercising your discernment, as the Buddha says in his comments about the factors for awakening, the analysis of qualities which is the discernment faculty: Sometimes if you use that too much, it gets the mind …
- First Principles… All phenomena have the mind as their forerunner. We tend to regard the elements in the body or the material side of the body as something that’s already there, and then the mind moves in afterwards, deals with it afterwards. But if you learn to be more consciously proactive in how you approach your body, you begin to realize that the mind has …
- Relate Everything to the Breath… You’re trying to take this as a frame of reference, a satipatthana, an establishing of mindfulness. Mindfulness doesn’t get established if it keeps jumping around. So while you’re with the breath, you will be aware of feelings but you want to relate the feelings to the breath. To be aware of mind states, you want to relate the mind states to …
- Can Do… It’s basically saying that you can get the mind into concentration and you can induce these things, you can follow these steps. What it means in practice is getting the mind still and then posing these questions. Say there’s a pain in the body, and it’s a sharp pain. It’s not the ordinary pains of just sitting and meditating. It …
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