Search results for: "Mindfulness"
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- Equanimity & Action… How are you perceiving things right now? What’s the story you put around things? What are the images you have in your mind? What happens if you change those images? The image of where you think you are in your body, your image of what the breath is doing: What happens if you change them? Object: breath. Sometimes the mind doesn’t want …
- Examine Your Happiness… Lots of other terms he defines very precisely, but some of the really basic terms—mind/citta, happiness/sukha, and stress/dukkha—never get defined. The teaching is basically about training the mind to end stress and find true happiness, but of these terms, only “training” is defined. In the case of happiness and stress, he gives examples but he doesn’t provide a …
- Determined on Goodwill… The Buddha said that goodwill is a form of mindfulness on which you should be determined. It’s one of the last lines in the Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta—etaṁ satiṁ adhiṭṭheyya. Goodwill needs to be a form of mindfulness because it doesn’t come to us all the time. You have to keep remembering that you need to have goodwill for everybody, even the …
- Karma & Not-self… When you focus in one way, what results? You focus in another way, what results? Learn to be sensitive to the movements of your mind, and the sensations they create. That way, you become more and more skilled as a meditator. One of the things you begin to notice as you meditate is that thoughts come up in the mind totally unintended. It’s …
- Truth Without Air Quotes… This is the way the mind works. These are the processes that lead to suffering. If you want an end to suffering, this is what you’ve got to do. It’s interesting that with dependent co-arising, in later centuries, the question arose: Is dependent co-arising happening in the context of the world at large or inside the mind? There was a …
- Becoming… Equanimity and mindfulness: That’s it, that’s the unfabricated.” But that’s not the case at all. Equanimity and mindfulness, when they’re pure, constitute the fourth jhana, not the unfabricated. There’s an element of fabrication in mindfulness; there’s even an element of fabrication in equanimity. But unless you learn consciously how to fabricate mindfulness and equanimity for long periods of …
- Fear & Insecurity… So we train the mind. As we sit here and meditate, it’s probably the best way, the most direct way to train the mind. But all the aspects of the path, all the aspects of the practice, are training the mind to fear the right thing: to fear making unskillful choices—choices that are harmful for yourself, harmful for others, based on unskillful …
- Limitations… Again, think of the committee of the mind. You don’t have to identify with every voice that comes up in the mind. You don’t have to identify with every feeling that goes through the body. Ajaan Lee’s picture of what’s going on inside you is even more radical than the image of the committee of the mind. He says that …
- Possessed by Emotions… But you can basically say, “No, this my place, this is my body, this is my mind. I don’t need these things.” And so the skill to keep from being possessed is to be very mindful, very alert, to fully inhabit your body, fully inhabit your mind, right here in the present moment. Remember the Buddha’s teaching on fabrication: bodily fabrication, the …
- From Inconstancy to Dispassion… You use all your mindfulness, as he says, to put it out. It’s interesting he uses the word mindfulness here. Obviously it doesn’t mean just accepting things as they are, or watching them come and go without reacting. You use your mindfulness—i.e., your ability to remember that something unskillful is coming in the mind, and you don’t want it …
- Put the Other Person’s Heart in Yours… The biggest danger that faces you in the world is that you might do something unskillful under the influence of ill will, because that then becomes your own kamma and it becomes a habit in the mind. It bends the mind, as the Buddha said. When your mind is bent in that direction again and again and again, your views are going to be …
- What’s Real… The Dhammapada begins with two verses that start, “The mind is the forerunner of all things that are experienced.” That’s a very anti-materialist statement right there. The mind is not just on the receiving end. It’s not just what they call an epiphenomenon of physical things. The mind is the major force in shaping your experience. This is why we have …
- Fear & Anger… Lots of different emotions, lots of different ideas, can come washing through the mind, and if you don’t have someplace outside of the mind where you can take your stance, you get washed away. Greed comes in. Anger comes in. Fear comes in. And they can be overwhelming if you don’t have a place to stand outside of them. So we focus …
- Equanimity & More… So as protection for the mind, we have to develop equanimity. What’s interesting is that the statement for developing equanimity, reflecting on the principle of karma, has more than one use in the Canon. There’s another place where the Buddha says, when you reflect on that statement, it gives rise to the path. It’s in a sutta where he starts out …
- A Conglomeration of Germs… The problem is in the mind: in the intentions that drive the perceptions. We use the body as a tool to understand the mind, to train the mind. So, you look after it as you would look after any tool. But at the same time, you have to realize that, as with any tool, you can use it well or you can use it …
- Equanimity as a Skill… Focus on your own mind. But remind yourself that you’re doing this in a way that doesn’t benefit only you. You’re getting your mind under control, and you can develop qualities of discernment, mindfulness, and alertness to learn how to put aside your greed, aversion, and delusion. When you can do that, you benefit and the people around you will benefit …
- Clinging, Addictions, Obsessions… This is a big addiction, because the addictive mind set, the obsessive mind set, just says, “Well, I’m going to go for my pleasure right now, and who cares about the future because the future is uncertain, but this hit or this type of behavior seems to be pretty certain.” That, too, is a kind of view. And your sense of who you …
- The Politics of Arising & Passing Away… What is it in the mind that gives rise to these things to begin with? You’re not simply a passive observer watching a TV show, faced with only one choice: the choice of getting involved in the show or not. You’re actually the producer of the show. There’s something going on in the mind that keeps churning these things out. You …
- Goodwill in Action… The second kind of shedding is shedding old grudges, shedding all the baggage in your mind. If you really have goodwill for yourself, you can sort through your mind in the same way you’d sort through an old attic. Finding all this old stuff, part of you has nostalgic attachment and the other part of you realizes that you’re cluttering up the …
- Up for the Challenge… This helps to counteract the mind’s tendency to worry about this, worry about that, be restless, fidgeting around. These are the five factors of concentration, the factors that go into getting your mind to settle down: singleness of preoccupation, directed thought, evaluation, rapture, pleasure. They’re your weapons against the hindrances. They also speak to that part of the mind that wants some …
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