Search results for: "The Mind"
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- The Best of a Bad Situation… When the mind is reluctant to practice, what can you do to get it back in the mood to practice? If it seems scattered, with lots of frenetic energy, how can you put that frenetic energy to good use? If it seems sluggish, how can you wake it up? Instead of looking at these problems as obstacles, look at them as challenges, as opportunities …
- The Buddha’s Last Word… Sometimes you grow by listening, and sometimes you grow by thinking, and sometimes you grow by developing qualities in the mind. Those are the three ways in which discernment is developed. But the “completion” there is that you want to complete all the factors of the path. You want to complete all the good qualities of the mind. The heedfulness is the motivation that …
- The Courage to Set Yourself Free… You learn a lot about the mind as you sit for long periods of time. But you’re not just putting up with the pain. You want to comprehend it. That means viewing it from a position where you don’t feel threatened by it. This is why we work with the breath to make it comfortable. Then we can look at the pain …
- Inconstant, Stressful, Not-self… If we learn to develop dispassion for these processes, then the mind is released. But you have to do this reflection in stages. You don’t just drop everything and go off and lie down on the ground and hope for everything to end. First you have to develop good, skillful states in the mind. This is why we’re meditating, working on concentration …
- Go Out of Your Way… You’re trying to develop all kinds of good qualities in the mind. They start from the outside and go in. One of Ajaan Fuang’s students told me once that he had told her that when I first showed up on his doorstep, he had some misgivings about taking on a Westerner as a disciple. Westerners are known for their bull-headedness, their …
- Goodwill & Gratitude… Even though you’re extending goodwill for everyone, those thoughts of goodwill help to clear the mind and prepare it for the meditation. The Buddha taught this to his son. Before you focus on the breath, try goodwill for everyone. That helps to clear up any issues you may have had from the day. And it’s good to stop and think: What does …
- Strength of Conviction… that there is a deathless element that can be touched at the mind. It can be found through your own efforts, and it’s more than worth whatever difficulties you may encounter in following the path that goes there. So it’s good to think of those huge dimensions of space and time that the Buddha awakened to in the first and second knowledge …
- Exploring Contentment… He’d try to figure out what was causing that suffering and what qualities he would have to develop in order to see even deeper into the mind. That was something he was always working on. We see this throughout the story of his life. He gained really high levels of concentration from his study with his two teachers, but he realized that those …
- Self Determination… You practice generosity, you practice virtue, and especially you practice meditation, developing qualities of the mind where you take charge of your own mind for the sake of your long-term welfare and happiness. It’s one of those rare cases where you really do get to practice self-determination. Or in the Buddha’s terms, you direct yourself rightly. You choose your direction …
- Two Kinds of Seclusion… The Buddha talked about the customs of the noble ones, in which the highest value is placed on developing skillful qualities of the mind and abandoning the unskillful ones. That’s the bottom line in the customs of the noble ones. In the customs of other counties, they have other values which may or may not be healthy for the mind—oftentimes not. They …
- From Compunction to Release… The rewards may not be coming right away, but you’re convinced in the principle that if you train the mind, you’ll be much less likely to cause yourself suffering. So here you are, training the mind. And you’re training it in a way that tries to give rise to a sense of well-being. When you find that you can breathe …
- Motivation… Sometimes the Buddha encourages developing a sense of heedfulness, realizing that if you don’t train the mind, you’re in big trouble. There are lots of passages in the Canon where the Buddha has you ask yourself, “Are you ready? Do you realize the dangers that you might have to face?” That’s the first way of sparking desire: realizing that if you …
- The Dhamma Without Price… We do that by focusing on our practice, training the mind in an institution that places the training of the mind as its bottom line. As for the economics of buying and selling, that gets pushed off to the side. The fact that the Dhamma is supported by gifts is what keeps it pure, keeps it in line with its original principles, and keeps …
- The Value of Refuge… a sense of happiness that didn’t depend on sights, sounds, smells, tastes, or tactile sensations—a happiness that started within the mind and then spread through the body. The happiness of form; the pleasure of form. There was pleasure; there was rapture. So he asked himself, could this be the way? And the answer that came to him was Yes. So he asked …
- Take Time to Evaluate Your Life… You evaluate the object of your meditation, in this case the breath, so that the mind can be really snug with it, so that it’s not likely to want to wander off. One of the meanings of evaluation is that you evaluate the breath as it’s coming in, going out. How does it feel? Could you improve it? And can you improve …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
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