Search results for: "Mindfulness"

  1. Page 167
  2. Self-Reliance
     … But in the beginning, it’s simply a matter of learning to reestablish mindfulness, reestablish mindfulness. In order to stay established, there also has to be a sense of well-being: It feels good to be here with the breath. You can play with the breath in any way you want until you get that sense of well-being. How do you know it … 
  3. Hitting a Wall
     … And each of us has very particular sufferings, very particular ways of suffering, particular issues that weigh down the mind. But there’s also a sense in which it’s something we all have in common. After all, we all do suffer. We recognize that. And as the Buddha pointed out, there’s a common pattern to the suffering. The same issue applies to … 
  4. Furnishing Your Home for the Mind
     … This is the natural place for the mind to be. You drop the other thoughts and here you are with your breathing. Now, to stay here requires several qualities in the mind. You have to be alert to what’s going on. And at the same time you have to have some strategies for making this a nice place to be. You’re trying … 
  5. Hold onto the Breath
     … One thing you do know about the future is that whatever’s going to happen, you’re going to need mindfulness and alertness to deal with the unexpected. And where are you going to get your mindfulness and alertness? You get them by developing them now. And as for tying up loose ends from the past, just leave them loose and dangling. The only … 
  6. Facing Pain
     … No matter how much the mind keeps screaming at you that you’ve got to focus on the pain, you say, “No, I don’t have to. I don’t have to get involved.” Now, sometimes as you extricate yourself from getting involved in the pain, you begin to see the chatter of the mind that pulls you back toward the pain. As you … 
  7. What You Sense Directly
     … Then perceptions are the images you hold in mind that help you stay with the breath—the markers of the mind, the signposts—or the way you visualize to yourself how the breath goes through the body. So the question is, are those two different types of fabrication—in terms of rebirth and in terms of the meditation—related or not? Scholars like to … 
  8. Wisdom Through Doing
     … Anything unskillful comes up in the mind, you want to let it go. You should focus on the breath. Anything that’s not related to the mind and the breath together, just let it go. Give the mind some time to be by itself. You’re not concerned about anything else but just this awareness in the present moment, anchored in the breath with … 
  9. Me, Me, Me
     … Now I see that they don’t really make much sense.” When you see that you have the alternative that you don’t have to do them and you’re better off not doing them, you don’t have to tell the mind that things are inconstant, stressful, and not-self or whatever. The mind simply lets go. So we’re dissecting the sense … 
  10. Layers of Selves
     … There’ll be part of the mind that wants to keep going back to the pain, but you have to say, “Nope, nope, nope. We’re going to stay right here.” You can use a little bit of not-self thinking here. If there’s a pain in the leg, a pain in your hip, you can say, “That’s not me right now … 
  11. Thinking About Rebirth
     … But at the same time, you may do a lot of skillful things, and then your mind can change from that, too. As the Buddha said, there’s nothing so quick to reverse itself as the mind. So even though you did those skillful actions, you might go to a bad place because of a last-minute change in your mind. This taught the … 
  12. Factors for Stream Entry
     … So you use your understanding of right view and you apply it to the mind, trying to develop concentration, mindfulness, and all the other factors you need so that you can really see into the mind clearly. You use your right view to look at all other views that would pull you away, and you learn how to take them apart. Anything that would … 
  13. Cosmic Scale, Human Scale
     … A young journalist interviewed Herschel when Herschel was quite old and, to put it in modern terms, Herschel pretty much blew the young man’s mind about how the stars you see in the sky are so far away that the light we see was emitted many millions of years ago. Maybe the stars themselves no longer exist. Here was an old man who … 
  14. Discerning the Middle Way
    We should always keep in mind that the Buddha’s first description of the path that he taught was the middle way between two extremes. Because it’s a middle way, it requires discernment. In fact, finding where exactly the middle lies is what exercises our discernment. If the path were simply a matter of pushing and pushing and pushing all the time or … 
  15. Practicing for Dispassion
     … We do it all the time in the mind. The thing is, when we do it in the mind, it doesn’t stop there. It’s not just an act in the imagination. It can lead us to act and to being reborn on all kinds of different levels. Think about the knowledges the Buddha gained on the night of his awakening. The first … 
  16. A Generosity of Spirit
     … But you realize that the mind becomes lighter as a result. It’s like the sandbags that hold down hot-air balloons. You give away the things that you’re holding onto, you cut off the sandbags, and the balloon can go higher and higher. The mind becomes more expansive, and that becomes the mind that’s in line with unlimited goodwill, unlimited compassion … 
  17. Happiness is a Skill
     … To one extent you do accept these things, but to another extent you can say, “The things that my mind does around that to make me suffer, I can’t accept those. I’ve got to change those.” That’s what we’re doing as we practice meditation: We’re changing our minds. It’s not simply a process of relaxing and being okay … 
  18. Visakha Puja – True Homage
     … Be very heedful with the mind, because it might want to wander away from the breath. Be ardent, really paying very close attention to what you’re doing. And be resolute: Once you’ve got the mind firmly planted in the breath, keep it there. This way, we practice the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma. It’s an important phrase. Throughout the forest … 
  19. Focus on Your Skill
     … It was by focusing on this skill that the Buddha was able to avoid a lot of issues that would pull the mind off into wrong view no matter which side you took. There were a lot of questions that he wouldn’t answer. “Is the world a oneness?” “Well, no,” he said. “A multiplicity?” “Well, no.” “Is there a self? Is there no … 
  20. Actor & Experiencer
     … The same with good qualities in the mind: Your sensitivity may not be what it could be, your understanding of the process of meditation may not be what it could be, but you take what you’ve got and you apply it. And you learn from applying it. As you do this, you begin to see that there are two sides to the mind … 
  21. Not the Predictable Thing
     … In other words, if your state of mind at death was really good, it could compensate for a lot of bad things you’d done. If your state of mind at death was bad, it could delay the results of past good kamma—which meant that the state of your mind in the present moment doesn’t have to be shaped by the past … 
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