Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 161
  2. Your Committee of Addicts
     … And these are the different roles that the mind plays. This is where the committee of the mind comes from, taking on these different roles. Some members of the committee can think only of sensual pleasures. Others are very attached to their views about the world. Others are very attached to ideas of what should and shouldn’t be done. This includes people who … 
  3. In a World of Crooked Wheels
     … It’s based on those two that you can develop right mindfulness, and right mindfulness, of course, is how you get the mind into right concentration. It’s through right concentration that your views, which have been made straight—in other words, you hold to right views—actually become your own discernment. When we start out, we borrow the Buddha’s discernment. But through … 
  4. Antidotes for Narcissism
     … The actual awareness of the mind comes under sampajañña, alertness.And even that is more focused that simple awareness: You’re alert to what the mind is *doing, *and the results that coming from its doings. So when you reflect on your body, it’s also important to reflect on the bodies of others, to make comparisons—the right comparisons. The same with feelings … 
  5. When Nothing’s Happening
     … The other question I want to address—similar, in a way—is when the mind gets still, where do you look for the unfabricated? The answer I gave, of course, was that you don’t look for the unfabricated. You look for where your clingings still are. Remember your duty with regard to the four noble truths. You do want to realize the cessation … 
  6. Warm Your Heart
     … Why are you giving? What do you expect to get out of it? The lowest motivation, of course, is just thinking, “I’m going to get this back with interest.” The highest is, as he says, “It’s an ornament for the mind”: something that makes the mind beautiful. And there are many gradations in between. In terms of the recipient, you want to … 
  7. In Cahoots with Your Defilements
     … In other words, that’s the mind when sees the danger of the defilements very clearly and doesn’t have to wait for the suffering to come. You see these dangers in other people, you look at your past, and you realize there’s been a lot of suffering going on here, so you’ve got to do something it. Then there’s the … 
  8. Not-self Is a Value Judgment
     … But there are a lot of other identities lurking in the background of the mind. The identity of you at work, the identity of you at home, the identity of you as a feeder, as an enjoyer of sensual pleasures: all kinds of identities that you could take on right now. For the time being at least, you have to learn how to not … 
  9. The Human Condition
     … That’s why we’re working on the sense of ease and wellbeing that comes from having the mind in concentration. That’s part of the path toward renunciate joy. We don’t have to wait until the very end of the path to gain some of this joy, you know. It comes with the sense of wellbeing you gain when you center the … 
  10. The Inner Saboteur
     … At the very least for this hour, let’s really get together and focus our attention on trying to do something about the mind, learning how to bring it to its object, how to keep it there, and really paying attention to what’s actually going on in the mind.” These, you might call them traitors inside you, the parts of you that sabotage … 
  11. Skillful Desire
     … Why am I having this setback? Why do I have to work so hard?” The mind is a complex thing. You may be making progress in one area and falling back in another—and it’s normal. There are times when you have to push yourself hard, and a part of the mind puts up a lot of resistance. Well, if you don’t … 
  12. Initiative
     … But for the forest ajaans, it also meant that whatever was required to develop the mind, you’d do it. If they had ever heard that saying from the third Chan patriarch, “The Great Way is not hard for those with no preferences,” they would have understood what it meant. Of course you prefer wealth over poverty. Of course you prefer gaining freedom from … 
  13. Willing to Learn
     … The training of the mind is the big value. Money is not the big value. The way people interact is a little bit different. And so in the beginning, it’s very normal to feel awkward. There are things you’re enthusiastic about but other things you’re very unsure about. And you’re going to be changing as a person as you come … 
  14. In Context
     … We’re here practicing concentration, trying to get the mind to settle down, stay with one object, the breath. That requires thinking, it requires an intention, it requires a sense that you’re going to benefit from this—and also, a sense that you’re competent to do this. After all, concentration is something you do. The whole path is something you do. But … 
  15. Evident Inequality
     … When the mind has been trained, it can make a big difference in our lives. So it’s worthwhile training, worthwhile sitting here with our eyes closed, putting up sometimes with the pain, putting up with the distractions, learning how to overcome them, putting forth the effort to overcome them. Because it does make a difference. When I first went to Thailand, I was … 
  16. Learning from What You Do
     … In the training of the mind, you have to do the training, but it’s useful to talk things over with someone who has been through the training so that that person can point out areas where you’re blind to your own failings, to your own unskillful ideas. A lot of the things that need to be trained out of the mind are … 
  17. Focus on Your Intention
     … the breath that you’re focusing on; the feeling of pleasure you’re trying to create by the way you focus; the perception of the breath as a whole-body process that helps you stay with the breath and helps that feeling of pleasure to spread through the body; the fabrication, the directed thought and evaluation by which you adjust the breath, adjust the … 
  18. Heedfulness & Confidence
    Heedfulness is a skillful quality of the mind. In fact, the Buddha said it’s the root of all other skillful qualities. Anxiety, however, is unskillful. It’s one of the hindrances. And it’s important that you understand the difference. That passage just now, connecting heedfulness with the ability to see dangers, makes it sound like heedfulness is anxious. But it’s not … 
  19. In the Land of Wrong View
     … Are they really in-line with your own true interests? Do they clash with the Buddha’s basic teaching that happiness comes from training the mind? There are a lot of different areas out there in the world where we could be competing with one another. Some people try to compete in being smarter. Some people compete in trying to be wealthier, better looking … 
  20. Large-hearted
     … The reason we develop whole-body awareness is that we want to have an all-around vision of what’s going on in the mind, in the body, so that defilements can’t sneak up on us from behind and bang us over the head—or so that they can’t operate in the dark while we’re blissfully ignorant of what they’re … 
  21. Duties
     … You read about the minds of arahants—their task done, no passion, no aversion, no delusion, not suffering, no limitations—and that seems very far from the mind you’re experiencing right now. This is called renunciate grief, the grief you feel when you realize that there is a deathless goal that others have attained, but there’s a lot you need to do … 
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