Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. Right Inner Speech
     … One of the advantages of getting the mind still like this is that it helps you to see, it helps you to pull yourself out of those mental conversations that go on in the mind all the time, between all the different factions in there. If you’re in the thick of it, it’s hard to gain perspective. But when you step out … 
  3. The Need for a Purpose
     … We have a purpose in mind. This is the nature of our mind. It’s purposeful. When it has no purpose, it’s miserable. This is why depression comes when people feel that no matter what efforts they make, they’re accomplishing nothing. All the avenues for happiness are closed off; there’s nothing they can do. That’s when they get depressed. The … 
  4. A Friend to the World, A Friend to Yourself
     … And you always keep that in mind. That’s mindfulness. The more consistently mindful you are, the stronger your concentration. The more nourishment you get, the more strength you get from the concentration. That’s what enables you to develop your good potentials as much as you can. So we have within us the ability to create as much goodness as possible, goodness enough … 
  5. A Rite of Passage
     … giving the mind a place where it can set itself apart, not only from people outside—that’s called physical seclusion—but also from the people inside our minds. That’s called mental seclusion. We have all these different voices in our mind that we’ve picked up from other people—our parents, our teachers, our friends, our enemies, the media—and it’s … 
  6. Protection, Inside & Out
     … Watch the mind to see how the mind is going. And then you’re ardent, trying to get rid of unskillful qualities and develop skillful ones. That ardency is based on a quality called appropriate attention. That, too, is one of your inner refuges. It’s what lies at the beginning of right view. That’s something you have to remember as well. Appropriate … 
  7. A Good Independent Self
     … When you do that, it lifts the level of your mind. Remember the image of the salt crystal. If your mind is expansive, then whatever painful results you’re experiencing from past kamma will be greatly reduced. Just as when you throw a salt crystal into a large river of water: Even though you’ve put some salt in the water, there’s so … 
  8. In Line with the Dhamma
     … What would your life be like if you did nothing but right speech, right action, and held to right livelihood? What would your mind be like if you really did engage in right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration? It’s a good path. It would make a good you and create a good world around you. Maybe not the world you see in your … 
  9. Nimble with Your Questions
     … Is the mind sitting in the body? Is the body sitting in the mind? These are some of the questions he would bring. The purpose was to dig up a lot of unspoken assumptions and at least see how they were skewing his perception of things. And those were just a few example questions that he would offer. He encouraged people to ask their … 
  10. Life in the Context of the Practice
     … You want to find ways to bring the peace and calm of a centered mind into your work and into your family life. But the problem with that question is that sometimes the peace and calm are made to serve the purposes of your work and your family life, and the context then gets very small and confined: trying to keep the mind still … 
  11. A Sense of Yourself
     … How are you in the way you act and speak? What are the aspects of speech that you need to work on? This is directly related to the meditation, because the way you talk to others is the way you talk to your mind, the way you talk to your own mind is the way you talk to others. The influence goes back and … 
  12. All Dhamma, All the Time
     … Listen with your eyes, listen with your ears, and your nose, and your tongue, and your body, and your mind, to what’s happening in terms of cause and effect. And remember to develop mindfulness. Mindfulness is not just being aware of what’s happening and saying, “Oh, that’s interesting,” and letting it pass, pass, pass. It means remembering: remembering what’s skillful … 
  13. A Meritorious Heart
     … And as you develop that larger sense of goodwill, the Buddha says you develop an unlimited mind. That unlimited mind, he said, is like a large river. If you threw a huge lump of salt into the large river, you could still drink the water because the river is so much larger. Very different from putting that same lump of salt into a little … 
  14. Alone Together
     … After all, when we meditate, we’re trying to make the mind consistent. As Ajaan Lee points out, we’re taking something that’s stressful—the way we breathe, the way we experience the body—and making it easeful; we’re taking something inconstant—the way the mind moves around—and we learn how to give it some constancy; we’re taking something that … 
  15. Bare vs. Appropriate Attention
     … For example, as we’re staying here with the breath, we’re trying to develop as much concentration, as much mindfulness as possible. In other words, we’re developing the path. If you’re going to look at stress and pain with any equanimity, with any steadiness, the mind has to have a strong sense of a good solid foundation, a strong sense of … 
  16. A Friend When You’re on Your Own
    One of the paradoxes in the Buddha’s teachings about training the mind is that on the one hand he talks a lot about solitude, going off alone into the wilderness. But on the other hand, he also talks about the importance of admirable friends, as in that passage we chanted just now about associating with wise people and staying away from fools. After … 
  17. The Wheel of Dhamma
     … This is why we practice concentration, to give the mind that place to stay, a more secure foundation. In other words, when pain comes up, either a physical pain or mental pain, you don’t just go jumping right into it. Try to find the part the body and the part of the mind that’s not totally overwhelmed. At the very least, remind … 
  18. Dichotomies
     … What’s skillful, what’s unskillful? What’s dark in the mind, what’s bright in the mind? Because those pairs really do make a difference. There was a famous translator one time who translated that passage and then wrote a footnote saying he didn’t understand how this was the proper description for discernment. I guess he was assuming that discernment had to … 
  19. Equanimity in Action, Equanimity at Rest
    Equanimity—the ability to keep the mind on an even keel in the face of pleasant and unpleasant things, to accept what has to be accepted—is an attitude we’re supposed to develop immeasurably: in other words, for all beings without exceptions. But it has a different meaning based pm whether we’re talking about equanimity in action or equanimity at rest. At … 
  20. If These Walls Could Talk
     … If things aren’t good enough in the mind, what can you do to make them better? Because you do have that power. Now, all of this assumes that other principle: practicing the Dhamma in line with the Dhamma. The Buddha talks about the fact that we’re training the mind in virtue, concentration, discernment, or what he calls heightened virtue, heightened mind, heightened … 
  21. Grounded in the Elements
    When I first translated Ajaan Lee’s Keeping the Breath in Mind, I added a little introduction in which I talked about the properties or the elements—the six properties of earth, water, wind, fire, space, and consciousness. I explained to Ajaan Fuang why I did that—that these concepts would be very foreign to Westerners. He gave me a quizzical look, “Why would … 
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