Search results for: "The Mind"
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- All Dhamma, All the Time… It helps to keep the mind still in order to be able to remember. Because if you’re running around, not paying attention to things, or running around paying attention to things to the exclusion of what’s actually going on, you’re not going to be able to remember what happened because you saw it just in passing—if you saw it at …
- Understanding Aggregates… You realize that—even though you’ve learned how to make the mind as constant as possible and as easeful as possible and as much under control as possible—still, there are the ups and downs. The fact is, this too is fabricated. You put up with those ups and downs as long as it’s the better alternative to wherever else you might …
- Safety All Around… So it’s a pleasure that allows you to see the mind clearly and puts you in a position where you can move on to the next training, which is the training in heightened discernment: basically, seeing things in term of the four noble truths. What’s noble about the truths? They force you to question your clinging and your craving. Otherwise, you’re …
- Cooking the Present Moment… All kinds of old habitual patterns may be coming up in the mind. But again, the way you relate to them is going to make the difference between whether you create more new bad karma out of them or something really good. Instead of using them as something to suffer over, you can turn them into something that gives insight—something that gives rise …
- In Heedfulness We Trust… But the skills of keeping the mind under control, developing your mindfulness, developing your alertness, developing ardency, your discernment: These are precisely what you’re going to need. And of course, they don’t show their benefits only then. As you go through daily life, these qualities based on heedfulness will see you through. After all, the five strengths, the five faculties, the Buddha …
- Overcoming Complacency… After all, the mind is going to focus on where it is and what it has to do. Even up through the state of non-returning, there’s going to be a vague sense of “I” around those actions. At that point, it’s not identified with the khandhas, but there’s still that sense of “I” that somehow lingers around them. So if …
- Priorities in Life… There really is a deathless, something you can touch with the mind. And you can bring the mind to that threshold through your own efforts. That’s the big issue of life. After all, that’s the issue that inspired the young Bodhisatta to go out into the wilderness to begin with. It’s because he wanted to find that deathless that we have …
- Make the Most of Right Now… You start thinking, “Well, I’ll make a practice of relaxing my way to awakening, or taking the ease-full path.” I was listening to a Dhamma talk from another tradition last night in which the teacher was saying he didn’t like the idea of translating samādhi as concentration because simply the idea of concentrating the mind makes you tense: There’s something …
- Full Attention… We forget how fabricated our feelings are, how conditioned they are, and the fact that just because there’s a feeling in the mind right now doesn’t mean that it’s the real you, that it should be there, that it’s actually helpful, or that it’s something you really want to identify with. One of the skills we develop as meditators …
- Living Honorably… That comes from something inside the mind itself. To see that—to comprehend that suffering and to abandon the cause—you’ve got to develop strength. This is why we’re meditating, to gain the strength of mind that comes from mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. These are the things that give you the strength to deal with these problems. As long as the mindfulness …
- Karma & the Sublime Attitudes… The discernment is what frees the mind—frees it from all the restrictions it places on itself, all the unnecessary burdens and suffering it places on itself. So the results of staying here much longer-lasting, much more solid than whatever pleasure you might get by following your distractions. As you stay with the breath, you can see your intentions a lot more clearly …
- Control… If the mind slips off, you can choose to come back. With every breath, you have the opportunity to choose what you’re going to do with that breath, what you’re going to do with the strength** **that comes from that breath. So it’s wise to have a clear sense of priorities. What do you really want out of life? Where are …
- Noble Standards… It closes the mind to the idea that maybe there are things in the human mind that are more than we can have anticipated. I remember, in encountering Ajaan Fuang, what was so radical about the experience was the sense that he did have some psychic knowledge that I had never thought possible before. It opened my mind: Maybe there’s more out there …
- Volunteer Spirit… It’s good for the mind and it spreads out its good influences in many areas of our lives—even to other people. There are other people who benefit—in blatant and subtle ways—because we’re meditating. The most blatant way is that if we can cut down the amount of greed, anger, and delusion in our actions or motivating our actions, other …
- The Reality of Emotions… If you can maintain these kinds of feeling, the mind is in a much better position to look at things from a calm, steady point of view. So when you run across a good feeling like this—whether it just happens or you can induce it—learn how to maintain it. This is part of the duty of the path, learning how to develop …
- Training Your Desires … There’s a large part of the mind that really doesn’t like that. It’s when we realize that we have to change our understanding of what works and doesn’t work, and that we have to train our desires: That’s when wisdom begins. We realize that we can’t get everything we want the way we want it. We have to …
- The Karma of Not-self… You’re doing this because you see that benefits will come down the line from training the mind. Trying to bring the mind under control is a form of selfing right there. Each time you catch yourself wandering off with a distraction, you drop the distraction. That’s a form of not-selfing. You come back and you self with the breath. This is …
- What We Have in Common… It was simply a matter of how the mind, every mind, works. So as we focus on this, it’s what keeps us working together, belonging together. The Buddha talked about how a group can stay together. We look at our society now and everything seems to be tearing apart. It’s good to think about how we can put it back together. There …
- More than Just Letting Go… Even before you’ve seen things, or heard things, or smelled or tasted or touched or thought things, the mind has primed itself to suffer because of all the processes that come prior to the contact and that we do in ignorance. What we’re doing as we meditate is to turn our attention onto that area and bring some knowledge to it. Because …
- Dedicating Goodness, Spreading Goodwill… And then finally the motivation gets to the level where it’s simply a natural expression of the mind, the mind doesn’t grab onto things. You see that this item would be good in the hands of that person and you’re happy to give. In terms of the items, you want to make sure you haven’t stolen anything to give, and …
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