Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 163
  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. Sending Happiness
     … How do you direct your thoughts to the breath? How do you evaluate the breath? Or if you find that the mind isn’t willing to settle down with the breath, what other things could you be thinking about right now that would be in line with the Dhamma? One of the monks who stayed with Ajaan Lee toward the end of his life … 
  17. Allowing the Breath to Spread
     … This is an important training for the mind right there. Our tendency is to fixate immediately on either pleasure or pain: pleasure, because we like it; pain, because we feel threatened by it. We have to do something about it. There are times when you have to tell yourself: Just don’t go there yet. You’re not ready for it. No matter how … 
  18. Between You and Your Eyes
    The Buddha’s teachings are primarily about things that are immediately present to our awareness—the feeling of the breath, the movements of the body, thoughts moving in the mind: things immediately present, but things that we tend to miss, things we’re pretty ignorant about. When we suffer, we think we know suffering, but we don’t really. When we have a desire … 
  19. Bodies & Minds Outside
     … the mind when it’s depressed, the mind when it’s scattered. All the great meditators of the past and the present have had just exactly the same kinds of problem. Yet they were able to get past them. In the same way, when you’re sitting with pain, realize that other people have sat with pain, too, and yet they were able to … 
  20. Hold onto the Breath
     … So if you can’t get the mind to settle down in the present moment, what are you doing that’s putting all those peas under the mattress? Sometimes they’re not just peas under the mattress, they’re burrs on top of the mattress. One of the difficulties of the path is that we have to admit that we’re the ones who … 
  21. Shoulds & Ideals
     … If you put these imperatives into practice, you’ll find that the mind does get lighter, its burdens get lighter. You’re not carrying around so much stuff. You don’t have all those suitcases weighing you down. In terms of Western psychology, these imperatives are the Buddha’s superego. They’re the part of the mind that tells us what we should do … 
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