Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 152
  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. Four Determinations
     … One, you’re looking for the cause—not simply for the fact that it arises, but, what’s causing it to arise? What arises together with it? And two, nine times out of ten when the Buddha talks about origination, he’s talking about causes coming from within the mind. What inside the mind is sparking this? How long does it last? Because that … 
  8. From Anxiety to Confidence
     … But if we build treasures into the mind, nobody else can take them away. We’re the only ones who can destroy them. And we have no good reason to do that. We may get discouraged that we don’t have as much time to do this as we’d like, but remember that the Buddha said one day practicing the Dhamma is worth … 
  9. Heart & Mind
    We’re here training the mind because it’s the most important thing in our lives. The mind is what shapes our actions, and our actions shape our experience. It’s important, though, to know that the word “mind” in Pali, citta, corresponds to what we would call both mind and heart in English. In other words, we’re dealing both with thoughts and … 
  10. The Big Picture
     … When aging comes, when illness comes, when death comes, you’ve got to be able to keep your mind focused, to get some control over your thoughts so that they don’t run wild, and use the power of the mind to help. Sometimes the power of the mind can actually help cure an illness. Even if it doesn’t cure the illness, you … 
  11. The Lessons of Good Kamma
     … That internal dialogue where you can talk yourself into doing the right thing in these cases is a good exercise for the mind, because after all, as you get the mind into meditation, you’re going to have to be giving up a lot of other things that, again, are within your rights to hold onto. You have the perfect right to sit here … 
  12. Self-Knowledge
     … We don’t like the idea that the mind has defilements. We’d like to hear that the mind is naturally pure, the mind is naturally awakened, and that it’s simply all that horrible social conditioning that makes us unhappy. If we could get away from our social conditioning, everything would be fine. That’s partly true, partly not. One of the important … 
  13. You Contain Multitudes
     … Well, the mind is not much different from that. We tend to think of ourselves as having one mind, one self, but there are lots of minds in there, lots of states of becoming. It’s not always clear who’s in charge. What we’re doing as we meditate is trying to put the mind concerned about your true well-being, your long … 
  14. Whole-Hearted Concentration
     … Gather the mind around the breath. If you’re going to be thinking, think about the breath. If you’re going to be asking questions or exploring, ask questions about and explore the breath. You do this singly in the sense that this is the one topic you’re going to focus your mental activities on. If you really want to know this, give … 
  15. The Joy of the Battle
     … As the Buddha said, every skillful intention that comes into the mind, every intention to abandon something unskillful, or to develop something skillful: That initial intention right there is good karma. And to whatever extent you’re able to carry through with it, that’s more good karma. So even at times when it seems like you can’t get a handle on something … 
  16. Lift Up Your Heart
     … You’re trying to settle down, but the mind just refuses to settle down. You may have a tendency to get down on yourself at times like that, precisely when you actually need to do the opposite thing, which is to lift up your spirits. There are some standard recollections that the Buddha recommends for this purpose. Three are meant to give you a … 
  17. The Wisdom of Ardency
     … You’re alert to what the breath is doing, and you’re also alert to what the mind is doing as it tries to stay focused on the breath. The ardency here is to keep at this. If you find yourself wandering off, you come right back to the breath. Mindful means keeping something in mind. In this case, you keep in mind the … 
  18. Conviction & Truth
     … This is one of the reasons why we practice meditation, so that we can make our judgment more reliable, make our gaze steadier, and our sense of what’s really a defilement in the mind a lot more subtle than it’s been in the past. This is how we prove ourselves. Remember, too, that the path is what you might call a truth … 
  19. Factors for Stream Entry
     … So you use your understanding of right view and you apply it to the mind, trying to develop concentration, mindfulness, and all the other factors you need so that you can really see into the mind clearly. You use your right view to look at all other views that would pull you away, and you learn how to take them apart. Anything that would … 
  20. Seven Facets of Discernment
     … There are ways to focus the mind even as the body is dying so the mind doesn’t have to suffer. We’re told some of these skills as we read about how to meditate, but we have to learn the rest of them from observing our own minds as they relate to the breath, as they relate to distraction. As they relate to … 
  21. Meaning & Purpose
     … Someone showed me a video the other day, where some Abhidhamma expert was talking about how people who try to get the mind to be concentrated are suffering from greed, which is an unskillful state. When the mind gets still and is not analyzing dhammas, it’s suffering from delusion, which is another unskillful state. But: If you can’t have any desire in … 
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