Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 157
  2. Culture Shock
     … In this way it wrecks the world, and also wrecks the mind. So we have to find something that will put the mind in a state where it doesn’t need to desire anything anymore. Part of this quest means learning to temper your desires, but it also means refocusing them. Instead of having scattered desires for all things in all different directions, you … 
  3. Close to What You Know
     … What are you doing with the breath? What are you doing with the mind? What assumptions are you using about the breath and the mind? And what results do you get? Sometimes you find yourself creating a sense of self around the breath. As you get more and more used to the breath energy in the body, you develop a set series of ways … 
  4. The Graduated Discourse
     … The fact that the mind is feeding on sensuality: He wants you to see that you’re feeding on something that’s really lower than you deserve. You should aim higher. Then he talks about renunciation. Renunciation doesn’t mean just giving up. It means looking for pleasure in things that are not sensual. This, of course, would be the pleasure of right concentration … 
  5. Nurturing Patient Endurance
     … The more you can get interested in the breath, the less you’ll be worried about the things that are weighing down the mind in other areas. So talk to yourself about the breath. Some people find that that spot where they’re very sensitive to the breath is right around the area of the heart, the area of the sternum. How do you … 
  6. Perceptions for Training the Mind
     … There are other times, though, when the mind really does want to think about that distracting thought. The thought has some allure, so you try to think about it in ways that destroy the allure. The image the Buddha gives is a young man or a young woman, fond of ornament, looking in a mirror and seeing the carcass of a dead snake or … 
  7. The Story behind Impatience
     … You’ve learned something about the mind right there. The act of bringing it back strengthens your original intention, strengthens your resolve, and the fact that you’re able to catch the mind as it’s wandering off strengthens your mindfulness and alertness. So whether things are progressing at the rate you’d like to see in your ideal narrative, that’s not the … 
  8. A Sense of Yourself
     … Things that come into the mind go out the mouth right away. You’ve got to work on that filter. There’s a passage where the Buddha says, “We’re born with an ax in our mouths, the tongue.” We can use it to harm other people and we can use it to harm ourselves if we’re not careful. At the same time … 
  9. In the Elephant’s Footprint
     … When you come back from that, it cuts through some fetters of the mind, some of the fetters that tie you to the process of samsara. One of those fetters is self-identity views, in other words, viewing that you either are your aggregates or you own the aggregates, or the aggregates are in you or you’re in the aggregates. The mind doesn … 
  10. Generosity & Virtue as Skills
     … You want the mind to settle down. How do you get it to settle down? You just keep it with the breath. So keep coming back to the breath. As soon as you find that you’ve wandered off, come back, come back, come back. And any chattering voices in the mind that speak in tones of discouragement or boredom or whatever, you’ve … 
  11. Right Effort
     … There are four areas that you have to attend to, each with its own duty, and they all depend on having a good sense of which qualities in the mind are skillful and which qualities are not. The Pali word here, kusala, is sometimes translated as “wholesome”—i.e. wholesome qualities vs. unwholesome qualities—but that misses an important aspect of the practice. We … 
  12. Producing Experience
     … And even when the mind seems to be simply spinning its wheels, it’s not just idly spinning its wheels. It’s creating new states of being, new possibilities — some of which are good, some of which are not so good. You have to keep that principle always in mind as you’re meditating. You’re not simply here innocently watching what’s going … 
  13. Cutting Edge Perceptions
     … When you’re trying to keep the precepts and you’re feeling very strongly tempted to break a precept, there’ll be that voice in the mind that says, “You’re going to give in a little way down the line, so why not just give in right now?” And you’ve got to say, “No. I’m responsible for right now. I’m … 
  14. The Sublime Attitudes
     … For mindfulness to be effective in training the mind, it always has to be paired with alertness. And both of them have to play a role in larger clusters as well. They’re part of the five strengths, the seven factors of Awakening, and the noble eightfold path. The reason the Buddha teaches skillful qualities in clusters is because unskillful qualities come in clusters … 
  15. Everyday Feeding Habits
     … There’s that passage in Luang Pu Dune where he says that when the mind goes sending out for things or rushing out toward things, that’s the cause of suffering. How are you going to know when the mind is rushing out unless you’ve got a good, solid reference point inside so that you can sense its movements? Otherwise, everything is all … 
  16. Your World to Practice In
     … So, having some nourishment like this every day should be part of your regimen to refresh the body, refresh the mind, and to get you back in touch with your awareness right here in the present moment. And to gain some seclusion. That’s one of the five factors that the Buddha describes as creating a good environment for your practice: finding some seclusion … 
  17. Radical Questioning
     … Learn how to question the assumptions, especially the assumptions where the mind says, “Well, of course it’s this,” or, “of course it’s that.” You have to ask yourself: Is that really the case? Some of this requires not simply watching things coming and going, but also actively analyzing them. After all, analysis of qualities, dhammavicaya, is an important factor in the path … 
  18. Bowing & Chanting
     … But the news you get from the Dhamma—the news that the mind can be trained, the news that the mind can find freedom through dispassion: Think about that. That’s something that’s always true, always worth knowing. So, as you chant and memorize the chants, they become a part of you. You’re chanting something that expresses good values—good values that … 
  19. The Five Aggregates
     … So as you sit here with your eyes closed, what have you got? You’ve got the body sitting here breathing and you’ve got the mind thinking and aware. So you bring them together. There are all kinds of things you could do with this body sitting here breathing and with the mind thinking and aware. You could think about the past, you … 
  20. Insight Is a Judgment Call
     … There’s a part of the brain that keeps saying, “Is this worth it, the energy that goes here? Or would the energy go better there?” That’s a basic function of the mind. The problem is that it often malfunctions, based either on our own past experiences or on our own lack of clarity as to what the results of our actions will … 
  21. A Sense of Adventure
     … Part of the mind says, “Well, I’d like to have it done fast so I can go off and do something else.” But there also has to be another part of the mind that says, “If you try to speed it up, you could ruin it. So keep doing what you’re doing.” Even though the results don’t appear as quickly as … 
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