Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. Look after Your Mind with Ease
    Look after Your Mind with Ease December 14, 2016 “May you look after yourself with ease.” That’s the message of the chant we recite every night, every morning. It’s an expression of goodwill. “Looking after yourself” refers both to your physical and to your mental well-being. Physically, may you be healthy. Or if your health is bad, may it be the … 
  3. Learning & Respect
     … There’s so much going on in the mind that’s subterranean. When we talk about the subconscious, it’s not like a basement, a different place in the mind. Subconscious things are actions in the mind that come very quickly. We’re barely aware of them, but they’re there and they leave their traces. The Buddha points out that there are intentions … 
  4. At Normalcy
     … From this perspective, the idea of a mind free from its moods sounds like freedom, not dullness: the freedom of a mind that doesn’t have to be under the sway of its very undependable moods all the time. In the Thai tradition, they talk about a mind without moods as a mind at normalcy. This may sound strange to begin with, because for … 
  5. A Mind Without Inertia
    A Mind Without Inertia February 13, 2010 The texts tell us that when the Buddha was newly awakened, he surveyed the world. On the one hand, he saw how everyone was aflame with passion, aversion, and delusion, burning from these things, and he felt compassion. But then he reflected on the Dhamma he had discovered. He was struck by how much it went against … 
  6. Present Kamma
     … coming in, going out, soothing the body, soothing the mind. This way, you get a lot more use out of the pleasure. At the same time, you’re not overcome by it. So we practice concentration to develop those two skills, being able to not let the mind be overcome by pleasure and not be overcome by pain. Have a mind that’s unlimited … 
  7. Something Good to Cling to
    The mind has a habit, which is that it likes to cling. That’s how we’re born in the first place. Your mind couldn’t stay in the old body, and so it just hung on to its craving to find a new one. Depending on your karma, you had different options. For one reason or another, you chose this body. That’s … 
  8. The Mind’s Song
    The Mind’s Song May, 2003 Ajaan Lee used to say that there are two steps to getting started in the meditation. One is to get your body into position: right leg on top of the left leg, or left on top of the right, depending on what you find more comfortable; your back straight; facing forward; your eyes closed; your hands in your … 
  9. Full, Focused Attention
     … That’s one of the functions of mindfulness. You keep something in mind and then you use what you’re keeping in mind to judge what’s actually happening right here. If you find that you’re sticking with the breath as you intended, that’s fine. If not, you make adjustments. That’s how mindfulness and right effort come together. It’s that … 
  10. Suffering Is a Feeding Addiction
     … As for right mindfulness, there’s a lot of misunderstanding about mindfulness. Many people think it means just being aware of things or being non-reactive, being accepting of whatever comes up. The Buddha never defines it that way. For him, mindfulness is a faculty of the memory. It’s your ability to keep things in mind and apply them to what you’re … 
  11. Commit & Reflect
     … The first is mindfulness. The way the Buddha teaches mindfulness is not that you just keep things in mind, although that is an important part of it. You keep in mind the fact that you want to work on developing skillful qualities and abandoning unskillful ones. You have to keep in mind what you remember of how you’ve successfully dealt with these things … 
  12. Conditions for Concentration
     … You get to work directly on your mind. The Buddha talks about qualities you can develop. You can be mindful and when you look in your mind, you can see, “Oh yeah, there’s mindfulness.” You can be alert. “Yeah, there’s alertness.” You can be ardent. “Yes, I’m trying hard.” Okay, you’ve got what you need. So you work on maintaining … 
  13. Magha Puja
     … And the most skillful thing you can resolve on, that you can aim for, is bringing the mind to concentration, like we’re doing right now. It’s based on the resolve to bring the mind above sensual passion. This is why it’s also called the heightened mind. All too often, our mind is a slave to sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations … 
  14. Desert Island Meditation
     … So make sure the mind is well stocked, and that you’ve been training good voices in the mind, so that when things get down, you can lift your spirits. As the Buddha says, “Know how to gladden the mind when it needs gladdening, how to steady the mind when it needs steadying, how to liberate the mind when it needs liberating.” These are … 
  15. Calm
    Calm January 13, 2019 As we meditate, we try to bring the mind to a state of calm. But you notice, if you look at the Buddha’s explanations for the factors for awakening, there are times when calm is appropriate and times when it’s not. The fact that there are times when it’s not doesn’t mean that you’re not … 
  16. The Triple Training
     … If you see any tendency inside the mind to want to break the precept, you have to fight it. This is where the ardency of right effort comes in. So you’re developing the qualities of right mindfulness and right effort that will lead the mind into concentration. As you’re sitting here meditating, you need mindfulness to keep the breath in mind. You … 
  17. Mindfulness: The Whole Formula
    There’s a long sutta on the topic of mindfulness called the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta. Many people assume that, because it’s so long, it’s a full description of mindfulness practice. The Buddha starts out with a statement of the full formula—what it means to establish mindfulness: You focus on the body in and of itself, ardent, alert, mindful, putting aside greed and … 
  18. The Skill of Restraint
     … These three aspects of sensory input are what the mind is feeding on all the time. The basic skill in learning new ways to cook this food is to focus on the breath and get the mind centered inside. You’re actually changing the level of the mind when it’s inside the body in this way. Instead of being on the sensual level … 
  19. A Safe Harbor
     … Mindfulness means keeping something in mind. In this case, we’re keeping the breath in mind, keeping in the body in and of itself in mind—“in and of itself” in the sense that we’re not concerned about how the body looks to other people or how strong it is, whether we like our bodies or not. Just the body as it simply … 
  20. Healing Skills
    When you sit down to meditate, you want to get the body into position and your mind into position. For the body, place your hands in your lap, your right hand on top of your left. Straighten your spine so that it’s comfortably straight. You don’t have to be ramrod straight like a soldier, but straight enough so that you’re not … 
  21. Cleanliness is Next to Mindfulness
    Cleanliness is Next to Mindfulness February 10, 2006 There’s a famous poem in Thailand about the amorous adventures of two men trying to outdo each other in terms of the number of women they can sleep with. It’s pretty light entertainment, but one of its most interesting passages is when one of the men is entering the apartments of a woman he … 
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