Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 154
  2. Taking an Active Role
     … You’re less the victim of what’s coming up in the mind, less the victim of what’s coming up in the body, less the victim of what’s happening around you. So always keep this in mind. You have the choice: You can be aware of a tiny part of the body, or you can be aware of the whole body. You … 
  3. Crossing the River
     … The word they use in Pali for the object of the mind is support, arammana, and you find that some supports are more supportive than others, more reliable than others. When you’re meditating, you try to find a reliable support, something you can stick with for long periods of time, something you can get to know very well. That’s why we focus … 
  4. Not Resolved on Self
     … After all, often the skillful thing to do is to get the mind still, settled down, on familiar terms with your breath, on familiar terms with your body as you feel it from within. That’s a good place to be. Then you try to maintain that sense of center regardless of what’s going on around you. So you move the resolve from … 
  5. No Slivers in the Heart
     … We’ve got the mind. All the qualities that the Buddha said led to his own** **awakening—resolution, ardency, heedfulness—are qualities we have to some extent. And they’re all open to us to be developed. It’s like a vast empty continent with lots and lots and lots of land, enough land for everybody to develop what they want. And here’s … 
  6. Right View as Tool
     … In other words, wherever the mind is pained, wherever the mind is weighed down with stress, you turn to look to see: Where is the clinging? It’s something you’re doing. That’s something you want to comprehend, and to comprehend it you need to develop right concentration. Otherwise, the mind won’t be stable enough, strong enough to comprehend the suffering. The … 
  7. Is ‘I Am’ the Problem?
     … Especially with the concentration, as you begin to gain a sense of mastery over how you breathe, how you perceive the breath, how you can play with the breath energies in the body, how you can figure out how to get the mind to get more and more still as you peel away the various layers of concentration: There’s a real joy that … 
  8. Energy & Efficiency
     … At the very least you find this is a lot more efficient way of keeping the mind calm, keeping the mind still, clear, bright. It’s in this way that discernment is an issue of maximizing efficiency, husbanding your resources, learning what to let go of so you can hold onto what’s valuable. If you try to hold onto too many things at … 
  9. Giving & Taking Time
     … To see what’s going on in the mind, you have to watch it over long periods of time. And you have to give up a lot of your other interests to focus on this. Ours is a society that likes to have its cake and eat it too—and get a few extra pieces on the side. But the practice, the training of … 
  10. Levels of Truth
     … See which ones you can stay with most consistently that allow the mind to have a sense of real stability and clear focus. If some of the subtle levels are too vague for you, you’ll lose your focus, and you find the mind drifting off, so choose a level of breath energy that’s appropriate for you right now. As for the other … 
  11. To Practice Dying
     … A lot of images suddenly came up in the mind when I realized I couldn’t move. I was probably going to die from my own stupidity for not having checked the electricity. Then all of a sudden I remembered, “Hey, I’ve been meditating all this time. I’m going to have to learn how to use my meditation skills. This is what … 
  12. Ingenuity
     … Usually, whatever comes up in the course of your meditation, even if you don’t have devas or nagas coming and talking to you, there is a tendency to believe whatever comes up in the mind in meditation and then to want to run with it. You have to have a part of the mind that steps back, questions it. That’s when you … 
  13. Wise Endurance
     … The thoughts that come unbidden into the mind are all past kamma. But prior to that, you have the factor of fabrication, but also name-and-form—particularly intentions and “attentions,” acts of attention. Again, what are the intentions you have with regard to this situation you find so difficult? Can you change your intentions? If you’re dealing with pain in the body … 
  14. Becoming
     … We do this both so that we can get good at creating it and so that, in the course of creating it, we can put the mind in a good spot where it can watch things more carefully, more clearly. When the mind is comfortable in the present moment, at ease in the present moment, it can stay firmly in the present moment and … 
  15. Study & Practice
     … to have a set of concepts, a set of ideas, so that we can make distinctions when things happen in the mind. That’s what the four noble truths are all about. You have to learn to distinguish between stress and suffering on the one hand, and its cause on the other. Then there’s the path, which does involve some stress and suffering … 
  16. Over & Over Again
     … All you do is keep looking after the mind: tending to it, watering it, giving it fertilizer. If you treat it the right way, it’ll grow without your having to squeeze it or pull it to make it grow faster. You make it grow faster by tending to it properly. There may come a point where you’re adding too much water, too … 
  17. The Dhamma Bucket List
     … So ask yourself, “What qualities do I have in the mind that would make it difficult for me to go? Am I ready to go?” And the answer usually is “No. I’m not ready.” Okay what’s keeping you? What unfinished business do you have? Well, do that. What unskillful qualities of the mind might take over? Learn how to fight those unskillful … 
  18. Developing the Heart
     … So what we’re training here is not just the mind up in the brain, but also down into the heart. Now, the heart has two main functions: One is feeling emotions, and the other is willing actions. The two are very closely connected. With certain emotions, you don’t feel any energy to act at all. With others, you feel very strongly an … 
  19. Practicing for Dispassion
     … We do it all the time in the mind. The thing is, when we do it in the mind, it doesn’t stop there. It’s not just an act in the imagination. It can lead us to act and to being reborn on all kinds of different levels. Think about the knowledges the Buddha gained on the night of his awakening. The first … 
  20. Four Mountains Moving In
     … looking all around, so that in your efforts to prevent one danger, you don’t create others—the dangers here, of course, being the dangers in the mind. The world may be a dangerous place, but we’re even more dangerous people, and we can be dangerous to ourselves. If we let our greed, aversion, delusion, or fear take over, these four qualities—liking … 
  21. In Terms of the Four Noble Truths
     … You try to develop the factors of the path, in particular, Right View, Right Mindfulness, and Right Effort, to bring the mind to a state of Right Concentration so that you can comprehend stress. One way this works is when the mind is really concentrated and then you leave concentration, it’s useful to ask yourself, “Where is the stress coming in? As soon … 
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