Search results for: "The Mind"
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- Break Things Down… Then the Buddha asks him, “Have you seen that ‘this has come to be’?” That’s when Sariputta launches into quite a long discourse on seeing things as they’ve come to be—as individual events in the mind, individual habits, individual qualities in the mind. You see that they have their nutriment—there’s something that feeds them; there’s some allure to …
- In Accordance with the Dhamma… You see that all the stress that’s weighing down the mind comes from your passion for fabrication. You’re making all kinds of worlds out of your experiences, and in the course of that you’re making yourself suffer. But a lot of those worlds are hard to give up. The different hopes and ideals we have: Some of them are in line …
- Concentration as Wilderness… You find that if you settle down with the breath, large parts of the committee of the mind are not really here yet. They’re still carrying on their conversations about home or work or whatever, assuming that you will give in after a while and forget about the breath. And you will – to begin with. But then you remember that you’re not …
- A Path for a Noble Desire… Based on that, all the other factors of the path follow, all the way up to right concentration, because for this message to really sink into the mind, you’ve got to get the mind focused. You’ve got to give it a sense of well-being that doesn’t depend on things outside. This concentration is not the goal of the path. After …
- A Rite of Passage… If you’re going to get the mind still, you can’t get involved with any thought, no matter how wonderful or inspiring or whatever it is. You’ve got to just drop it, drop it, drop it, because you want a place where the mind can step back and see thoughts and other things as processes. You want to see where they’re …
- The Brahmaviharas Are Not Enough… It involves both the observer, the more passive side, and also what you might call the director, who looks over the situation in the mind, tries to notice where something’s wrong, and then figures out what to do about it. The director asks questions, tries to think up solutions, puts them to the test, and then judges the results. This is not just …
- Overconfidence & Underconfidence… As the Buddha said, if you find that, by living at your ease, the mind does develop, okay, live at your ease. But if you find that, by living at your ease, laziness creeps in, other unskillful states creep in, that’s a sign that you’re going to have to push yourself with a certain amount of pain. And how do you deal …
- Is It Worth It?… Where is the effort worth it? And the Buddha said, “Right here, in right effort.” With right effort, you’re not only doing good things for yourself and other people, you’re also developing good qualities in the mind—and those good qualities can take you beyond cause and effect. That’s what’s really amazing about the Buddha’s analysis of cause and …
- Patience & Sensitivity… what state is the body in; what state is the mind in. The ajaans talk metaphorically. They say, “Is your mind leading forward or leading back? To the left or the right?” Forward or back, of course, would be leading to the future or the past. Left or right would be focusing on things you like or things you don’t like. And how …
- Strength of Persistence… The part of the mind that says, “Why put in an effort? Just put in a minimum, what you can get by with”: That falls away, too. That’s probably the biggest obstacle in the path—the attitude of “well, just enough to get by.” We may not come to the meditation consciously with that attitude, but if that’s the way we live …
- Slogging Through Difficulties… After all, the Buddha said that his awakening came not because he was a special person but because he developed qualities of the mind that everybody can potentially develop. And even in his case, he had to go through six years of torment before he found the right path. That means you have to be prepared for difficulties in your path, too. Otherwise, you …
- Goodwill for Safety… The kind of conversation that goes on in the mind has a huge effect on feelings, which is why we repeat the brahmaviharas every day, twice a day as a group—to get those thoughts embedded in your mind. And it’s why we don’t just chant them in Pali, we also put them in English. As an exercise, if your native language …
- Shoot Your Pains with Wisdom… You’re getting the mind in a position of inner strength where it doesn’t feel the need to go out and straighten out the world before it’s going to practice. If you had to straighten out the world before you could practice, nobody could practice on the human plane. You need to get some perspective on this issue. There are crazy people …
- The Noble Search… And then from the breath we talk about the mind, which doesn’t belong to any particular religion. We talk about the mind, we talk about the problem of suffering, which is a universal problem. We don’t have to talk about religion at all. We just talk about the mind’s suffering because we have a cure.” Again, when they say the Buddha …
- Honesty… This is why so much of our training focuses on the mind, because your actions come out of your mind. Your intentions shape what you do and determine the results of your actions. A lot of the practice is a question of skill in how to act in such a way that avoids suffering, and then finally cuts through the causes of suffering. That …
- Dignity in the Face of Hardship… The choice to train the mind so that it keeps its processes of fabrication headed in the right direction is something that we can always do. We can always fabricate a comfortable breath. We can fabricate our inner conversation around the breath. We can fabricate the perceptions that we bring to the meditation. When we learn these skills in the meditation, we can apply …
- A Cocoon of Energy… It’s good to get the mind used to that perception so that you don’t feel cast adrift. The more steadily you can hold on to this perception, the better. This way, you learn how to replace your preconceived notions with the Buddha’s perceptions. Now, some people may complain that his perceptions are also preconceived notions. And it’s true, but they …
- Strength from Within… Ajaan Lee, when he was giving a Dhamma talk to one of his students who was on her deathbed, reminded her that strength of the body and strength of the mind keep us going, but ultimately we have to depend on strength of the mind. When he talked about conviction, he said it really comes down to the precepts. If you really are convinced …
- Bigger than the World… Meanwhile, allow the mind some time to be in this other zone, the zone where you’re not in a world, where you’re not in your self. You’re here with events in and of themselves, right here, present in the body. The Thai ajaans talk a lot about this. They say, “When you’re sitting here like this, are you a woman …
- In Your Right Mind at Death… That requires that you’ve had at least a glimpse of the deathless, so that you know there is something in the mind that’s outside of space and time. Death goes only as far as space and time. There’s something in the mind that death can’t touch. When you’ve seen that, as the Buddha says, there’s no fear about …
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