Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 160
  2. Mindfulness Immersed in the Body
     … That’s the mind’s relationship to sensuality. It keeps gnawing, gnawing, gnawing on sensual thoughts but doesn’t get any substance out of it, any real nourishment. As Ajaan Lee says, all of the flavor is in the dog’s own saliva. In other words, the flavor lies in what you put into it. And is it worth putting anything into it? The … 
  3. Pay Attention to Some Things
     … When we hear about the aggregates, we tend to zone out because they sound kind of abstract, but he’s basically talking about things you do with your mind, activities of the mind. You feel feelings, you perceive perceptions, you put thoughts together, you’re conscious of things, and all this is based on your sense of the body. We hold on to these … 
  4. Brahmaviharas at the Breath
     … Part of the mind may say, “It’ll be good for them, teach them a lesson,” but how many people really respond well to suffering, to pain? The usual reaction is to find a scapegoat outside. That doesn’t help. What you want is for them to understand the causes for true happiness and be willing and able to act on them. No matter … 
  5. Guided Meditation
     … And what have you got? You’ve got the body sitting here breathing, and you’ve got the mind here thinking and aware. So you bring all those things together. You think about the breath. The way you keep the breath in mind, that’s mindfulness. Then you’re alert to how the breath is going, knowing when it comes in, knowing when it … 
  6. A Private Matter
     … So that takes you away from your direct experience, away from this very private matter of why the mind is causing itself suffering, how your intentions are causing suffering. So instead, try to approach the meditation from a standpoint that’s more familiar: How do you feel right now? Which ways of thinking about the breath, which ways of letting the body breathe, lead … 
  7. Respecting Death
     … So try to bring all your skills, all the skillful qualities of the mind, to bear. The Buddha said that skillful qualities are all rooted in heedfulness: the realization that there are dangers in life—aging, illness, and death being the big dangers—but we can prepare for them. If we couldn’t prepare for them, if we were totally left adrift, there would … 
  8. The Missing Truth
    The Buddha says that when we experience pain, stress, suffering, the mind has two reactions. One is bewilderment. We don’t understand how the suffering has come. The second is a search: “Is there anyone out there who knows a way or two to put an end to the suffering?” This means that we’re looking for three kinds of truth. We’re looking … 
  9. Karma as an Island
     … You establish an intention in the mind that you want the mind to settle down, and you don’t want to forget that intention. Otherwise, it doesn’t bear fruit. This is one of the reasons why we sometimes use a meditation word with the breath: bud—in, dho—out. Buddho means awake. It’s the quality we’re trying to develop here. But … 
  10. Delight in the Dhamma
     … The fourth one is to delight in seclusion—finding a space for the mind where you can put down your burdens, where you don’t have to deal with all the issues of other people, and you can focus on your own issues. Even if there are a lot of issues in the mind, the fact that you can focus on them and you … 
  11. True for What Purpose?
     … You want to focus on your own body as you feel it from within, to get the mind to settle down. This means you have to be selective in what you focus on, and also in what you say to yourself about it. You could be commenting on how your mind is not settling down, and how you’re a miserable meditator. Or you … 
  12. To Depend on Yourself
     … In other words, when you see that the mind is going in a particular direction, ask yourself: Is this really worth following? Because you do have that choice. Like right now, as you’re meditating: You can stay with the breath. If something comes up and you decide to take a little break from the breath and follow this other thing, or just cut … 
  13. Empathetic Joy Is Ennobling
     … Ask yourself, what do you get out of ill will? And there will be a part of the mind that likes to feed on ill will, likes to feed on anger, likes to get worked up, resentful. But you have to ask yourself: What kind of food is that? What kind of nourishment is that for the mind? It’s like food that tastes … 
  14. You Can’t Eat the Buddha
     … These are qualities we all have to some extent, but we’ve got to learn how to strengthen them, and they in turn make the mind stronger. So our food here isn’t bread and wine. Our food is concentration. The Buddha compared the different levels of concentration to different types of food. The first jhana, he said, is like grass and water. As … 
  15. You Can Do Better
     … The word “origination” doesn’t mean just cause; it means a cause coming from within the mind. That’s to be abandoned. Here again, it’s desire and passion, in other words, craving: craving for sensuality—your fascination with sensual thoughts, sensual fantasies; craving for becoming—wanting to take on an identity in a world of experience so that you can get something you … 
  16. Quality
     … You’ve got the mind that’s both thinking and aware. That’s what you know. Anything that goes out beyond that, you don’t know for sure. So stick with just what you know. Bring all these things together: body, breath, thinking, awareness. As for anything else, just keep reminding yourself, “I don’t know that. I don’t know that.” What’s … 
  17. Focal Points
     … For the time being, use this as a technique for seeing what works and what doesn’t work in getting the mind into concentration. This is where playing with assumptions becomes not just a game, but something of value. You actually get beneficial results out of it. We’re not just playing little mental exercises for the fun of it. It can be fun … 
  18. Not Crushed by the World
     … Of course, you’re sitting here with other people, but there’s still seclusion inside the mind. That’s what you want to focus on. And that’s something you can maintain even when there are a lot of other people around—if you’re determined and if you’re skilled. So let’s work on that skill. There’s music off in the … 
  19. Raise Your Standards
     … We’re doing that so that the mind can have a good place to settle down and see its actions more clearly—in particular, to see where we’re creating unnecessary stress and suffering so that we can put a stop to it. One of the ways of doing that is to remember that we’re motivated by the desire not to harm anybody … 
  20. Brahmaviharas & the Breath
     … getting the mind to settle down and develop a sense of ease with the breath, comfort with the breath, and then learning what to do with that comfort. First, you adjust the rhythm of the breathing. You focus on one spot in the body to see how the breath feels at that spot and then you breathe in a way that gives rise to … 
  21. The Four Noble Truths from Within
     … So we bring awareness to the breath, to the way the mind relates to the breath. Then we have perceptions and feelings. Those are the factors that fabricate the mind. What kind of perceptions are we going to bring to this process of being right here so that we can create feelings of well-being that can sustain us? These are all things you … 
  22. Load next page...