Search results for: "Mindfulness"
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- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- Goodwill for Snakes… So it’s mindfulness, one, and then goodwill. That was the second part of his instruction: “Extend goodwill as much as you can to that being.” This way you protect yourself all around. The attitude that you’re radiating out is a good attitude. At the same time, you have your shield: the shield of heedfulness, the shield of mindfulness. This is useful for …
- After-work Meditation… A part of the mind has a tendency to believe in the negative things more than in the positive, so it feels fake to remind yourself of how much you really do want true happiness. But don’t you want to happiness? Can’t you allow yourself to think that thought? Part of the mind will say, “But look at all these horrible people …
- Give of Yourself… He would ask you, “How is your breath right now? How is your mind right now?” After all, that’s where the real problems are: not with the words, but with what your breath is doing, what your mind is doing. The Buddha himself would leave a lot of things blank. He mentions that there are two types of causes for suffering: those that …
- Keeping Your Head… They’re happy to move into your space and into your time and into your mind, to tell you what to think and what to do. You have to say, “No. I’ve got to set my own priorities. I can’t let my time be invaded like this. I can’t let my mind be invaded like this.” So you try to extend …
- A Refuge from Modern Values… The mind— through its greed, anger, and delusion—so quickly picks up the ideas out there that foster more greed, anger, and delusion. If our minds were truly pure, if you really did have that wonderful Buddha nature that deep down inside is so true and good, this wouldn’t happen. It would be incorruptible. But the mind is corrupted. It’s defiled. What …
- Verified Confidence… But as the Buddha himself said in many places in the Canon, the practice of the brahmaviharas, even though it leads to high levels of rebirth, doesn’t lead to dispassion unless you really look at the state of the mind that results from those brahmaviharas. After all, you can use the brahmaviharas to get the mind into good, strong concentration. There’s one …
- Responsibilities… At the beginning, it may seem like a lot, but then look at the way your mind actually functions as you go through the day: You’re taking on a responsibility, and yet your mind sometimes wanders here, wanders there in the course of your work. Well, tell yourself, “Those times when you’d ordinarily wander, why don’t you stay with your breath …
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