Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 161
  2. Using Perceptions
     … Either way, you can use perceptions like this to help the mind settle in. So even though it’s a sketch, it’s a useful sketch. What this means, of course, is that whatever we experience is going to be colored by the perceptions we bring to it, and it is possible to change your perceptions. So change them well. One of the most … 
  3. Goodwill for Bad People
     … The purpose of goodwill is to establish a principle in the mind. The Buddha calls it a determination: that you’re going to have goodwill regardless. And it’s important to think about it in those terms. This is a determination that you’re going to act on goodwill regardless of how the other person is acting or speaking or thinking. You’re going … 
  4. Rooted in Desire
     … One of the reasons we practice right concentration is to put the mind in the right place—where it can see that sensual desire is not all it’s cracked up to be, and it really is something you might want to let go of. Learn how to give up your attachment for it. Now, this requires a strong desire of another kind. The … 
  5. The Noble Truth about Craving
     … This is a parable for what happens to the mind. When it takes on a state of becoming, it starts out with a desire. At first, the desire is just a little tiny thing. You say, “Wouldn’t it be nice if x?” Then you decide to go for it. And in the course of going for x, you change. You become a different … 
  6. Mind Your Own Business
     … I kept wondering, “What do people do who are watching movies every day? Isn’t their mind a cacophony?" Well, the same principle applies to your conversations, because the things you talk about to yourself and to other people start reverberating around in the mind. Then when you’re sitting here trying to get the mind quiet, and particularly if there’s been something … 
  7. The Sublime Attitudes in Context
     … They obscure the mind. The nice pink cloud of universal goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity gets spread out in all directions, looks nice, feels nice, but it can hide a lot of things, like contrary attitudes that you don’t want to express to yourself. When the brahmaviharas are just a cloud like that, then when the time comes to actually act on … 
  8. Ultimate Reality
     … This is why we practice concentration, why we have techniques for concentration, and specific questions to ask about what you’re doing while you’re centering the mind, what the results are. That’s something you can learn as you sit here with your eyes closed. That’s knowledge you can use. It can guide your actions. After all, the mind is an active … 
  9. The Rewards of Right View
     … Of course, that turns the mind to think about: Well, what is permanent? What is constant? What is something you can rely on? That’s how the perception is meant to direct your thoughts. The Buddha says that if you try to maintain this perception of inconstancy but you still find yourself attracted by the baits of the world, you have to keep reminding … 
  10. The Joy of Heedfulness
     … In other words, you can’t simply let yourself be content even with good things in the mind, much less bad. I was listening to a talk a while back where someone was saying that when you read about jhana, it gets you all worked up, and you want to have jhana states in your mind. But the Buddha taught contentment. So this person … 
  11. Who’s in Charge Here?
     … The customs of the noble ones are customs that go against the customs of practically every nation on earth, because they put the training of the mind first. They put the Dhamma first. It’s for this reason that the customs of the noble ones are closely connected to the principle of practicing the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma, because that’s one … 
  12. Antidotes to Craving
     … If you find yourself clinging to it, you’ve got to learn how to pry loose the fingers of the mind. They keep wanting to hold on. Then there’s craving for becoming. You think about the different things you didn’t get to do or be in this lifetime, and you say, “I’d like to take on that identity.” This was a … 
  13. Inner Authorities
     … It came from training the mind. Think about the Buddha himself, how many voices he had to sort through. People told him that the path he was following was an impossible one. He had sought out the teachers who were most authoritative in that time, and found their teachings lacking. He had to pull himself out of their training. And how did he finally … 
  14. Tapping into the Breath
     … It’s about learning what’s going on between body and mind, because this is a good testing ground for all the issues in the mind. The body is the first thing you’re aware of. The body is the first thing you’re moving around, the area of reality you’re most responsible for. And yet it’s not-self. That doesn’t … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
  22. Load next page...