Search results for: "The Mind"

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  2. Enlarged Awareness
     … That’s because the breath get too subtle to notice, and the mind will latch onto whatever else comes its way. So as the breath gets comfortable, think “whole body,” from the top of your head down to the bottom of your feet. Now this may mean going sweeping your attention up-and-down, up-and-down, up-and-down for a while. Or … 
  3. Determined Goodwill
    Determined Goodwill August 20, 2021 The Buddha speaks of goodwill as a form of mindfulness—something you have to keep in mind—which means that it’s not an innate quality of the mind. If it were innate, you wouldn’t have to be mindful. It would just be there, constantly expressing itself. But the fact is that the mind has both goodwill and … 
  4. The Middle Way
     … We give rise to a sense of well-being through letting the mind settle down with comfortable breathing. It starts out with right effort, which carries over from right resolve. Anything unskillful coming up in the mind, you’re going to let it go. As for skillful things that are not there yet, you try to give rise to them and then to develop … 
  5. Strong Against Anger & Fear
     … So you have to learn to see through the way the mind talks to itself about how anger is good; it gets things done; you’ll show your power… Whatever the allure may be, whatever the rationale may be, you’re going to see through it. The same goes for fear. There are lot of things to be feared. The world is topsy-turvy … 
  6. Getting Back on Your Feet
     … Some sights and smells and sounds are actually helpful, soothing to the mind when it’s been frazzled by things. The sound of the crickets, the sound of the hummingbirds, the sounds of nature: Those are relaxing. They’re actually healing. The sight of the huge thunderclouds off to the east this evening: Those kinds of things give respite for the mind. But there … 
  7. Dimensions of Right Effort
     … The path is a series of qualities you foster in the mind and then you follow them to see where they take you as you foster them. And just as a road to the ocean doesn’t look like the ocean, the path doesn’t look like the goal. The path is something you have to fabricate, something you have to put together. The … 
  8. The Buddha Teaches a Yakkha
     … We should realize there are qualities we can develop that can make at least our immediate environment a good place to be, by the way we develop these strengths within ourselves, so that our life together becomes conducive to the good things of the mind—the mind’s genuine goodness, its genuine happiness: genuine in the sense that it’s really lasting, and goes … 
  9. The Will to Awaken
     … It really is restful to the mind. It really gives peace to the mind. There’s a famous story about the monk, a former king, sitting in the forest exclaiming, “What bliss! What bliss!” And it turns out he’s not pining after the joys he felt when he was a king before he became a monk. He’s exclaiming over how blissful he … 
  10. The Truth of Transcendence
     … This is why we develop all the different factors of the path, why we’re sitting here concentrating right now, trying to be mindful, trying to get the mind centered: so it can find a pleasure that lies above the sensual pleasure. As the Buddha said, it’s only if you find this pleasure that comes from stillness that the mind can get a … 
  11. Help Others, Help Yourself
     … You learn how to see when something unskillful comes up in the mind. What pulls you to it? If you’re really alert, you’re going to see. Most of us don’t know we have something whispering in our ears. We’re really good at forgetting what just got whispered in our ears, the ears of the mind. Then we just go with … 
  12. A Promise to Yourself
     … You don’t just sit here letting the mind decide whether it’s going to settle down on its own or not. You have to induce it. You have to direct it. Make up your mind that you’re going to stay here and watch over it. “Putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world”: Anything that comes in to pull you … 
  13. Stay Centered
     … As the mind moves from one thing to another, it’ll drop into a moment of what Ajaan Lee calls “passing out,” and it’ll then focus on something else, have another thought. In that moment of passing out, a lot of machinations are going on. You want to be able to see through that. One of the worst things, of course, is what … 
  14. Helping Yourself by Helping Others
     … You’re getting the mind to settle in, you’re giving it the opportunity to be sensitive to what’s going on in the body, what’s going on in the mind, and then learn how to develop some skill. If you can appreciate your skill—when you develop just the right touch as you adjust the breath, and you learn how to enjoy … 
  15. Relating to Results
     … Because where does the meditation lead? It leads right here, deeper and deeper into the mind. And whatever issues the mind throws up at you in the course of the practice, those are the grist for the mill. So learn how to ferret out which lessons need to be learned, which ones can be put aside as totally irrelevant. And you’ll find that … 
  16. Free Sources of Energy
     … But if you see them as opportunities, as opportunities to develop something good in the mind, then that changes the equation. The things that used to wear you down suddenly can become energizing. So allow yourself to think in terms of developing merit. You’re developing the perfections. And although there may be the groups of people who criticize the attitude of building up … 
  17. Renunciation
     … Then, on the transcendent level, right resolve is, essentially, the thinking and evaluating that bring the mind to jhāna: good, strong states of concentration. That’s your food inside. Some of the passages talk about feeding on rapture as food for the mind. There’s another sutta that compares the different factors of the path to different parts of a fortress, and the jhanas … 
  18. Respect for Concentration
     … Again it was just this little area right here, where the mind is right at the breath. He learned to be very observant here. And part of that was learning to stay with it. When the Buddha talks about concentration, it’s always a matter getting the mind to settle down and allowing it to indulge in whatever sense of ease is there without … 
  19. Dhamma Opportunism
     … And if, given your situation, you can look to see where the opportunities are for developing the mind, developing the heart in the practice, then the situation becomes an opportunity. We see a lot of opportunism around us, and it’s very disheartening. People who’ve had long-term political agendas are now advancing them. That’s sad, to see this is what human … 
  20. Heedfulness Is Auspicious
     … Which is why he said in that verse that stands in the beginning of the Dhammapada: *The mind is the forerunner of all things. *Everything you’re going to experience comes out of the mind. So if you’re really heedful, you’re going to focus on the training of the mind to develop these skills. Then as aging, illness and death come, you … 
  21. The Thinking Heart
     … You’re actually trying to comprehend, when there’s suffering in the mind, what’s actually going on. In developing the fourth noble truth, again, you don’t develop the words. You develop the qualities in the mind that are called for by the path. But eventually, as you develop the path and perform all the other duties appropriate to the truths, you find … 
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