Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 160
  2. Contentment
     … As the Buddha once said, it’s one of the principles that determines when a particular practice or a particular attitude in the mind is or is not in line with the Dhamma: Does it lead to contentment, or does it lead to discontent? The Buddha himself said that discontent with regard to skillful qualities is an important principle. In fact, it was one … 
  3. True Protection for the World
     … We’re training the mind. When you understand that, the other answer is: How can you not sit here and train your mind given all the bad examples out there in the world, all the dangers out there in the world? Where else are you going to find the strength to maintain your virtue, to keep your goodness alive? The nourishment that keeps your … 
  4. Habits of Perception
     … When you go off to live by yourself, the habits of the mind start looming even larger. The less contact you have with people, the more likely your habits are to go out of bounds. You can get into some really weird feedback loops when you’re living alone. So the Buddha sets out maps, he sets out instructions, for how to cut through … 
  5. The End of the World
     … If we were just physical bodies, with the mind just an epiphenomenon of physical processes, it’d be pretty miserable. The mountains would come in, they’d crush us, and that’d be the end. But remember King Pasenadi’s reaction to the Buddha’s image. As the Buddha asked him, “If someone were to tell you that mountains were moving in from four … 
  6. The Shape of a Circle
     … If you can keep that thought in mind—that whatever arises in the mind, it’s going to pass away, and you can’t let yourself get totally sucked into it, just keep that thought in the back of your mind: That helps keep you from becoming totally wound up in your thought worlds and totally forgetting the practice. As long as you have … 
  7. Potentials for Good
     … And the complexity of karma is what gives us our hope, that even though some bad things may be coming up in the mind right now, there’s also a potential for goodness in their someplace. There are the seeds that have been planted someplace. So you want to look for those. Right now the body has a mixture of pleasant feelings and painful … 
  8. The Desire for Freedom
     … Are we ready for heightening our practice? If we find that the state of the mind is better, the mind is more calm, it sees things more clearly, then we should keep up that practice. Don’t say, “Well, I’ll come back to it again next year,” because we don’t know if there’s going to be a next year. We don … 
  9. Your Goodness is Your Protection
     … It’s because of our conviction in the principle of kamma—that our lives are shaped by our actions, and our actions are shaped by our intentions, and our intentions are shaped by the mind—that we realize we’ve got to train the mind. That’s the principle of conviction. And it carries through our outside activities as well, in terms of virtue … 
  10. Admirable Friendship
     … He was giving each person space so we have the solitude and the quiet that can be conducive to the mind. At the same time, there’s space for giving encouragement. In other words, even though we live together, we try not to get in one another’s way, and that way, the fact that there are quite a number of people here together … 
  11. Goodwill in Action
     … He says dying is like migrating to another country, and if you suddenly had to go, how much good baggage would you be able to take with you and how much clutter would you take that would weigh you down? If you find anything in the mind that’s going to weigh you down, visualize it as piles of luggage under your arms, on … 
  12. The Acrobat
     … At the same time, you’re alert to see how things are going with the body—if that’s your frame of reference—and how things are going with the mind in reference to the body. What things arise in the body, what effect they have on things outside arising and passing, and the arising and passing away of things outside in terms of … 
  13. Bless Yourself
     … That’s the kind of mindfulness that gives you a good solid foundation and gets the mind into concentration. So wherever you go, make sure that you maintain these two qualities: virtue, right view. And the fortunate thing is that nobody can take them away from you. Someone once asked Ajaan Mun, “Can you separate a person’s virtue from his or her mind … 
  14. Life in the Context of the Practice
     … In other words, discernment is what teaches you to make the most of what little you’ve got and to appreciate what you’ve got, to make it something that’s really good for the mind. So these are some of the forms of wealth you want to gain in life. Not wealth in material things: You want wealth in qualities of the mind … 
  15. An Enduring Cheerfulness
     … Part of the source of that strength was that I was engaged in an exploration, learning about the breath, learning about the mind. When you’ve been meditating for a long time, you tend to forget how precious this opportunity is, how rare it is, and what a good opportunity it is to be with your mind. You may have decided you don’t … 
  16. Empathetic Joy
     … Think of some examples and ask yourself, “Why would you not be happy for their happiness?” At some point, you’ll come around to the quality of resentment in the mind. If you’re sitting here breathing easily, and the mind is beginning to settle down, you can ask yourself, “Why would you want to engage in resentment? Someone else’s happiness or good … 
  17. The Duty to Be Positive
     … Sometimes we think that it’s being realistic, that we should really believe the voices in the mind that say, “I’m a really bad person, I’m a horrible person, and I’m never going to get anywhere with this practice so I might as well give up.” Those are destructive voices and are not really helpful on the path at all. They … 
  18. The Buddha’s Eight Principles
     … But that would go against the principle of persistence, which is that if there’s something unskillful in the mind, you’ve got to get rid of it. If something skillful is not there yet, you do your best to give rise to it. But remember, contentment is just about material things. Discontent has to do with the realization that there’s still more … 
  19. Serial Clinging Is Still Clinging
     … And look at the mind: It runs all over the place. It’s not so much attached to the objects as it is to the planning, the fantasizing. And even there, the plans and the fantasies may change. Clinging to sensuality doesn’t mean that you hold permanently to one fantasy or one plan. It means you hold on to this or that activity … 
  20. Conviction & Confidence
     … training the mind. Whether the results come quickly or slowly is not the issue. We’re working on something that’s noble. There’s dignity to what we’re doing. We’re stepping back from our usual concerns, our usual appetites, and looking carefully at the implications of our actions, realizing that if we’re going to act in a way that’s responsible … 
  21. The Buddha Aimed High
     … Get the mind in a good state of concentration where there’s rapture and bliss that come from simply sitting here being very still, secluded from sensuality. Sensuality is the first type of craving you’ve got to watch out for, because that’s so pervasive. If you can pull the mind out of its fascination with thinking about sensual desires, sensual objects, and … 
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