Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. Happy for People You Don’t Like
     … So if you combine the practice of the brahmaviharas with the factor for awakening called the “analysis of qualities”—it’s the discernment faculty in the factors for awakening—you go beyond simply trying to create a happy state of mind. You start reflecting on the nature of happiness. That’s when the practice begins to lead beyond something ordinary. It inclines the mind … 
  3. Heedfulness for the Holidays
     … Then there’s mindfulness, which the Buddha compares to a gatekeeper who knows whom to let in and whom to not. In your case, you’re mindful to do what’s skillful and to avoid what’s not skillful. You keep that in mind. Hold that value, hold that standard in mind, so that when people do things that are threatening, you know that … 
  4. Willing to Question Yourself
     … Where is your state of mind right now? How do you measure up against the Buddha’s descriptions, say, of right concentration, right mindfulness, right effort? That’s what the word “comparing” means there. As you compare your mind with the Dhamma, you see that you’re lacking here and you’re lacking there. You don’t take that as a reason to get … 
  5. Many Desires, Many Selves
    As we practice, we try to focus our desires on one thing—the ending of suffering—but the nature of the mind is that it desires tend to head off in lots of different directions, like the man who jumped on a horse and rode off in four directions all at once. Our desires to pull us here, pull us there, and we try … 
  6. A Gift of Well-Being
     … If you have a sense of well-being right here, the part of the mind that feels dissatisfied and is down on you then wants to spread a little of that dissatisfaction around to other people, too. “As long as we’re feeling miserable, let’s let other people feel miserable, too”: That kind of mind state gets undercut when you’re feeling refreshed … 
  7. Fighting Spirit
     … If you hold that perception in mind, what does it do to the breathing? Hakuin, the old Zen master, talked about getting Zen sickness, which was basically a strong headache when he was meditating. To cure it, he would hold in mind a perception to counteract it, which was to think of a big ball of butter on top of his head melting and … 
  8. The Gift of Speech
    As Ajaan Fuang once said, an important part of training your mind lies in training your mouth. What you say has a very strong connection with what’s going on in your mind. And the training of the mind is very close to the training of the mouth. Look at the factors in the noble eightfold path: Right after right resolve, which is the … 
  9. Dispassion
     … See renunciation as a true way of finding peace in the mind. And in renouncing, we don’t give up our feeding just by starving. We give up feeding because we find something in the mind that doesn’t need to feed. This is one of the reasons why awakening happens in stages. You gain your first taste of the deathless with your first … 
  10. Ask the Right Questions
     … So you want to focus on the actions of the mind—this is why we get the mind really quiet: not to find out who we are, but to see exactly what actions are happening in the mind, which ones are causing stress, and which ones are helping put an end to it. When we focus on the actions, we’re not saying there … 
  11. Believing & Knowing
     … In the same way, the good results that we get from the practice developing the precepts, developing mindfulness and alertness, overcoming the hindrances, getting the mind in states of concentration, are like the footprints. They don’t prove that the Buddha was awakened, but they give us encouragement. We see the good results that come when we train the mind, and that strengthens our … 
  12. The Skills of a Hunter
     … And stick with it, because it’s the only way you’re going to get to know your mind. Don’t think that when the hunters are sitting there they’re not thinking about anything at all, or that they have no desires. We all have a desire here as we practice to get to know the mind so that we can learn how … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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