Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 168
  2. Ideals
     … That’s what the mind tells itself—and it weakens itself that way. It shoots itself in the foot. Now, it is true that there are mistaken ideals, misinformed ideals. This is an area where you have to practice what the Buddha calls “guarding the truth.” When you approach the practice with ideals, you have to ask yourself, “What are your ideals based on … 
  3. Alone Together
     … After all, when we meditate, we’re trying to make the mind consistent. As Ajaan Lee points out, we’re taking something that’s stressful—the way we breathe, the way we experience the body—and making it easeful; we’re taking something inconstant—the way the mind moves around—and we learn how to give it some constancy; we’re taking something that … 
  4. Wise About Pleasure
     … If there’s a pleasure that you indulge in and it doesn’t have a bad impact on the mind, it doesn’t give rise to unskillful qualities, then it’s perfectly okay. As he said, he doesn’t reject pleasure that’s in accordance with the Dhamma. For example, there’s the pleasure of living in a harmonious community, the pleasure of the … 
  5. Friends & Enemies
     … But the internal enemies can harm your heart and mind, and the harm they do to the mind and the heart can last for a long time, even beyond death. So do what you can to destroy those enemies. You start out by looking at your behavior. You want to make sure that, at the very least, these enemies inside don’t bother the … 
  6. Shame & Compunction
     … Be careful not to give in to the parts of the mind that are careless or apathetic. After all, that’s what compunction comes down to: It’s the opposite of apathy, the opposite of the attitude, “I don’t care.” You want to care. It’s wise to care about the results of your actions. Wise to care about what wise people think … 
  7. Dispassion & Delight
     … Delight when you can get the mind to settle down and it stays. Delight in concentration—when the mind can be on its own and have a sense of well-being that’s totally sufficient inside. Delight in the fact that you’re on a path that leads to harmlessness, to an absence of conflict, to total peace with nothing lacking. Let those thoughts … 
  8. Mundane Right View
     … what we do, how we think, how we focus the mind, how we position our awareness. These are all very important things in the meditation. When the Buddha starts with the principle of karma, he starts in two very interesting ways. The first is the principle that there are things that are given. In other words, the act of giving is important. It has … 
  9. Samvegic Ironies
     … It may not seem like much—just in and out, in and out—but the way you develop your mind as you stay with that in and out, explore it, experiment with it, use it as a mirror for seeing what’s going on in the mind, can take you to freedom. And it can make you reliable. When you can depend on yourself … 
  10. Forgiveness
     … Then there’s transcendent right view, which deals more with events in the mind: suffering, its cause, the end of suffering, and the path to its end. Many of us make the mistake of wanting to go straight to the transcendent level. Who wants to muck around in the mundane? Especially when you hear the theory about two levels of truth, that there’s … 
  11. The Right Piece in the Right Puzzle
     … Fabrication consists of your directed thought and evaluation as you adjust the breath to fit with the mind, adjust the mind to fit with the breath, and then keep them there together. Then there’s consciousness, which is aware of all these things. You have to see that these things, too, once you’ve mastered the concentration, are stressful, and inconstant—and they’re … 
  12. Recollecting the Devas
     … Whatever he saw in the vision, he would then take it and test it, and consider whether it really was a useful principle in training the mind—whether it would make him more scrupulous, make him more observant, give better results. In those ways, the visions were a good thing. But it wasn’t the case that he accepted everything that came in every … 
  13. Friendship
     … If you don’t take an interest, if you see it simply as a chore—you’ve got to sit here for an hour watching your breath, and there’s nothing else to do—what usually happens is that the mind starts creating other worlds for itself. It starts remembering the past, planning for the future, doing all kinds of other things except learning … 
  14. Pay Careful Attention
     … But then there are actual situations, the actual qualities in the mind that are truly there. The fact that they’re truly there, your experience of their being truly there: That’s the second kind of truth. For instance, with the four noble truths, the Buddha said to comprehend the first truth, to abandon the second, to realize the third, and to develop the … 
  15. Unlimited Mind, Limited Resources
     … Because acts of generosity and taking the precepts are food for the mind. Recollection of death is for when you’re getting lazy. After all, death could come at any time. Earthquakes happen, little things can malfunction in your body, and they don’t come with any forewarning. So you have to ask yourself, “Am I ready to go tonight?” If not, that means … 
  16. Asalha Puja
     … So he asked himself, “Could this be the path?” And something inside him said, “Yes.” But then he realized that because he’d been starving himself, he didn’t have the strength to get the mind into good strong concentration. That’s why he left his austerities. So the key to the path—and as the Buddha sometimes said, the heart of the path … 
  17. The Bowl of Oil
     … And as for the part of the mind that complains, you don’t have to listen to it—because the practice isn’t just sitting with your eyes closed. The Buddha taught a complete path. It includes generosity and virtue along with the meditation, and so be happy in other people’s generosity. Now is a good time for us to practice our generosity … 
  18. The Three Perceptions as Tools
     … He was less interested in looking at the characteristics of what things are, or in making statements about reality out there, and was more interested in developing perceptions that will have an impact on the mind—perceptions that are true as far as they go, and that focus on an aspect of reality to develop dispassion. In other words, we’re not trying to … 
  19. To Be an Adult
     … This is why we train the mind. Society likes to keep adults like children. They give you flashy things or dangle flashy things in front of you, saying, “If you want this, do what we tell you.” They don’t care whether you’re really an adult or not. In fact, advertisers, politicians, the people who run the media: They all want to keep … 
  20. All Your Old Baggage
     … And what have you got right here? You’ve got the body sitting here breathing, you’ve got the mind thinking and aware. So you’ve got all the raw materials you need, all the tools you need for a good meditation. And regardless of however well it’s going to go, try to keep a good attitude toward the whole thing. In other … 
  21. Finding Your Own Balance
     … It’s not that you try to forbid the mind from thinking. You have to think about the object. You have to evaluate the object, evaluate how the object and the mind are getting along together. If they’re not getting along, what can you do to change? For the breath, not only is there the question of how long or short or heavy … 
  22. Load next page...