Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 153
  2. The Power of Intention
     … So you have to keep looking back into the mind: your mind as you experience it from within, your body as you experience it from within. That’s where the suffering is felt, but that’s where it’s going to be cured. So, instead of being just on the receiving end of things, we’re very much on the generating end. The Thai … 
  3. The Chattering Mind
     … But then you look at your inner chatter as you’re trying to get the mind to settle down, and then there’s the big question, “Who’s in control?” If you’re not in control of your chatter, what’s happening? Who’s talking to whom? What we’re trying to do as we meditate is to get some more control — skillful control … 
  4. Acceptance
     … So as you develop this energy in the mind right here, you’re not the only one who’s going to benefit. People around you benefit as well. So you take what you’ve got and you make the best use of it. That’s a basic principle in the practice. All the good qualities in the mind that the Buddha talks about developing … 
  5. Nibbana Is Better than You Think
     … Look for your pleasure there, because this kind of pleasure doesn’t corrode the qualities of the mind. Then, from there, the Buddha would teach the four noble truths. Given your new perspective, you see that it’d be a good thing if the mind could find a happiness that doesn’t involve harming anyone at all, a happiness that has no drawbacks. That … 
  6. Thinking About Your Fears
     … This is why it’s good to be able to get the mind into a state where you can focus on the sense of space, realizing that the mind can be perfectly content, perfectly happy, without any reference to the body at all. Space, consciousness, nothingness: These are states of concentration you can work on and dwell in. As you get the mind to … 
  7. Actor & Experiencer
     … The same with good qualities in the mind: Your sensitivity may not be what it could be, your understanding of the process of meditation may not be what it could be, but you take what you’ve got and you apply it. And you learn from applying it. As you do this, you begin to see that there are two sides to the mind … 
  8. Working with Fabrication
     … These are the things you say to yourself—all the different voices in the mind. Pick up a topic, and then make a comment on it. Directed thought is picking up the topic. Evaluation is the comment, which can either be a statement or a question. Finally, there’s mental fabrication: feelings and perceptions. Feelings are feeling tones of pleasure, pain, or neither pleasure … 
  9. Get Attached to Jhana
     … And there’s the part of the mind that says, “Well, let’s get through the whole hour and then we’ll go on to something else.” Don’t listen to that part of the mind. Say, “Let’s inhabit this hour. Let’s inhabit this moment,” and allow our awareness to settle back into the body and get a sense of what’s … 
  10. Undomesticated Happiness
     … He questions Rāhula about the five senses, and then applies the same questionnaire to the mind. This is where it really hits close to home. We tend to assume that our thoughts and our awareness are ours more than anything else. They’re what we really are. So we need to get deeper in the mind. Take the approach that we use to the … 
  11. A Multilingual Mind
     … So the Buddha is trying to get you to pull the mind down to that pre-verbal level as much as you can. That becomes your basis for looking at things, for mastering the processes of breathing, thinking, and perceiving, so that you can put these processes to the ideal purpose, which is finally to go beyond all of them. So try to get … 
  12. Let Go Like a Millionaire
     … There are certain things you’ve got to work on, certain things you have to bring into being, to give you something good to hold on to as you start learning how to let go of other things that are really weighing down the mind. If you look at the duties of the four noble truths, the first three all revolve around dispassion. You … 
  13. Discernment Is in the Details
    When you focus on the breath, there are quite a few activities going on in the mind. But the two most important in getting you to be with the breath and stay with the breath are directed thought and evaluation. Directed thought is when you keep reminding yourself to keep coming back to the breath: “Breath, breath”—this is what you’re going to … 
  14. Joy in Effort
     … Actual insight comes not by pummeling the mind with a technique but from posing the right questions in the mind. “What are these assumptions I’m carrying around here? How could I do this more efficiently? What am I doing that I’m not noticing? How can I learn how to notice it? How can I catch the mind as it’s about to … 
  15. The Need for Right View
     … The interaction of a lot of different mental events in the mind goes into a decision to do something. That creates the kamma. And it’s going to have results. So you want to be very clear on what’s happening in the present moment that shapes your intentions, and how you can learn to create the conditions that will make your intentions more … 
  16. Why We Bow Down
     … Your choices do make a difference, and they’re going to depend on the quality of the mind. The Buddha was very upfront about the fact that he couldn’t prove these things logically. You’re not going to know them until you’ve actually taken them as working hypotheses and put them into practice. But making that test requires conviction, because the path … 
  17. Facing Danger & Hardship
     … Remember that your primary duty is to maintain the state of your mind, because even if you have to die, the state of the mind is the one thing you’ve got that doesn’t have to be lost when you die. Now, if you let your state of mind get ruined by how you die, you’ve lost everything. You’ve lost your … 
  18. Mind the Gap
     … Suddenly, all their supports are taken away, and all they have is the mind clinging to its craving. And craving can be blind. The Buddha’s image is of a fire that spreads. Fires are blind—they just go where the wind pushes them. If you’re lucky, then you’ve got some merit that you’ve made. As the Buddha said, the good … 
  19. Something to Stand On
     … It also provides a mirror for the mind. When you get sensitive to the breath, you begin to realize that when there’s an unskillful thought and it starts flitting through the mind, there’s going to be a pattern of something—tension or something like that—that’ll pass through different parts of the body. Can you sense that? Can you see the … 
  20. Goodwill & Kamma
     … Of all the possible things we could be doing right now, we’re choosing to develop good qualities in the mind, skillful qualities in the mind: mindfulness, alertness, ardency, concentration, discernment. The simple choice to do this is good kamma, and as you maintain the choice, maintain that intention, that’s good kamma as well. The Buddha talks about two kinds of good kamma … 
  21. The Path Is in the Details
     … The present moment in the mind is always made up of particular things: particular thoughts, particular experiences, and especially particular intentions. Those are the crucial things. So it’s important, as you meditate, as you get to know your mind, to look for the particulars. The path comes down to something very basic: being honest about your intentions. Often this is difficult, but it … 
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