Search results for: "Mindfulness"

  1. Page 153
  2. Shoot Your Pains with Wisdom
     … For example, you can try holding in mind the perception that your body is like a big sponge, and the breath is coming in and out every pore of the skin. Think of the breath as an energy field that fills the body, and see what that does to the way you actually breathe. This way you begin to see how your perceptions shape … 
  3. Respect for the Triple Training
     … So, respect the fact that you’re living with people who are trying to get their minds under control, and you want to help. Then there’s respect for discernment. This is directly related. When you see that a certain type of behavior muddies the mind, you have to realize: How are you going to gain any discernment when you behave that way and … 
  4. Explore & Experiment
     … nourishment for the mind. So, explore this sense of the body as you feel it from within. At the same time, you’re beginning to explore the acts of the mind as they relate to how you feel the body from within. So you get both *nāma *and rūpa, both name and form. It’s through exploring these things that the Dhamma becomes yours … 
  5. What Are You Bringing?
     … And we live with minds that are affected by greed, anger, and delusion, so they color our perceptions of what’s going to work and what’s not going to work. So it’s good that there has been someone who went through all the effort to find a way of training the mind so that it’s not colored by those things. That … 
  6. Four Roles to Play
    You’re here to learn how your mind functions. And it’s important that you understand that it’s functioning all the time. When the Buddha lays out the principles in dependent co-arising, right next to ignorance is a factor he calls fabrication. It’s the activity in the mind, the intentional activity. One of those activities is directed thought and evaluation. In … 
  7. Desire
     … He tells you when there’s a perception in mind that allows for stillness, you try to settle the mind and make it stable, make it confident in that perception. The more solidly you can develop concentration, the easier it is to let go of other things. If the concentration is still wobbly, you’re half holding on to the concentration, and half holding … 
  8. The Good Side of Kamma
     … As you stay with the breath, you’re learning to be more mindful, more alert, and to put more effort into being skillful about what you’re doing. You begin to see the results of skillful choices right here and now. Pay attention to the breath, stick with it, learning how to focus on it in a way that doesn’t put too much … 
  9. Stress
     … This is reflected in one of the suttas where the Buddha talks about getting the mind into deeper and deeper stages of concentration by looking for the disturbance that’s there in whatever concentration you’ve got. You work with the breath, think about the breath, adjust the breath. Once you’ve got something good, you try to maintain it. Once you’ve maintained … 
  10. To Keep You Going
     … Take joy in the skill, realizing that this is how you can keep your own best interests in mind. You’re alert to the dangers out there. You’re alert to the dangers in your own mind. We’ve all got dangerous minds. But you realize that you’re on the path that takes you beyond them. Whether the results come quickly or slowly … 
  11. Karma & Gratitude
     … So you take your mind around the world, you take your mind around the huge span of time, and then you zero in on the present moment, because the present moment is the way out. This is the same pattern that the Buddha followed on the night of his awakening. The first knowledge was about time: how far it goes back, and all the … 
  12. Focus on One Thing
     … But if you don’t settle down at all, all you see is yourself wandering around, reacting to this place, reacting to that place, and you don’t have that much time to really see the mind on its own terms. When the mind is settled in, you can see it clearly. So for three months out of a year, the monks are supposed … 
  13. Good Fences All Around You
     … That way, they can’t infiltrate your mind. Now, you do have a gate. You have mindfulness at the gate as the gatekeeper because there are times when your thoughts do have to go out and come back in. You have to bring in things in of the world and send your thoughts and other actions outside. But you want mindfulness right there at … 
  14. The Airplane Mechanic
     … If the mind wanders off, you want to be quick to bring it back because the skill we’re working on right here right now—although it does require patiently watching the mind; watching the thoughts that come into the mind—the first order of business is to be able to pull out of those thoughts whenever you have to, because to watch the … 
  15. In the Eyes of the Wise
     … There’s even that reflection he gives when your mind is beginning to wander off in ways that it shouldn’t. He says to remind yourself that there are people in the world, or devas in the world, who can read minds. What if they’re reading your mind right now? What would they think? And it’s not as far-fetched as it … 
  16. Life’s First Question
     … How can I do it differently? How can I talk myself out of doing it?” Then you learn how to apply that same principle to your mind in the practice of concentration: look at what you’re doing, what’s getting results and what’s not getting results. Even the teaching on emptiness is simply a question of how you focus the mind in … 
  17. Noble Priorities
     … So always try to keep that in mind. The issue of what suffering is and how you’re causing it and how you can put an end to it should have top priority. You want to look into your mind and see how your mind is processing things, because that’s what the four noble truths are all about. Sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile … 
  18. Expanded Possibilities
     … What can a human being do? Then, in the course of mastering the skills, in the course of training the mind, he looked at what you can learn about the mind, and what you can come to know. He found that there’s something deathless that can be attained through human effort. He looked back and realized that if you identify yourself or define … 
  19. Turning Anxiety into Heedfulness
     … Don’t let them get your mind. Have the confidence that you can keep the mind separate. As for times when anxiety does come up, remember that whatever happens in the world, you’re going to need mindfulness, alertness, concentration, and discernment to deal with the unexpected. So instead of laying out all kinds of scenarios about what you’ll do if this happens … 
  20. On Idle Chatter
     … That’s a bad habit to develop if you’re trying to become a meditator, both in terms of trying to get the mind into concentration and just learning how to watch your own mind. If you’re used to just talking all day, then when the time comes to sit and meditate, the mind says, “Hey, I’ve been churning out thoughts all … 
  21. After-work Meditation
    After-work Meditation October 22, 2011 I once had a student in Singapore who told me that at the end of the day, when he came home from work, he’d sit down and dump out all the garbage in his mind. At work, he felt like a garbage pail. At the end of the day, after all kinds of people had been throwing … 
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