Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 175
  2. A Decent Education
     … Get so that pain holds no mysteries for you, holds no fear, because you understand not only the sensation of pain but also how the mind can latch onto it and create problems around it. Then you learn to abstain from those ways of latching on. It’s like knowing that when you stick your finger into a flame it’s going to burn … 
  3. The Not-Self Discourse
     … All of that comes from the mind. It’s all just five aggregates, but those aggregates can take all kinds of shapes, all kinds of identities. But it’s still all very artificial and it’s all going to come crashing down. Even whale-eater-eater-eaters have to die. Then you try to take on a new identity again—and again and again … 
  4. The Wisdom of Merit
     … So you start bringing that set of principles into the mind. You’ve learned how to say No to yourself. And hopefully as you practice virtue, you realize it’s important how you say No to yourself skillfully, so that you’re not just bottling yourself up. You actually see the advantages that come from making a promise to yourself and holding to it … 
  5. Faith in Karma
     … Remember the Buddha’s teaching that the mind can change so fast that there’s nothing to compare it with how fast that is. That gives you a sense of how precarious the whole thing is, and should inspire even more dedication to want to find a way out. But the reflection on everyone’s karma is also a reflection to induce equanimity for … 
  6. The Buddha’s Revolution
     … The Buddha looked for freedom in an unexpected place—in dispassion, gaining freedom from the concerns that tie the mind down to its passions. Dispassion is like going out into the wilderness after having been bound up in the issues of being around home, being around your neighborhood, all the back-and-forth that goes on between people. You get out into the wilderness … 
  7. One Step at a Time
     … In fact, if you start thinking too far ahead, you’re going to miss this breath, and you’re going to miss the point where the mind slips off. But if you keep things small, keep things manageable, you do a lot better job. So: this breath, this breath, this breath. And as for your past breaths — well, for one thing, they’re not … 
  8. A Sense of Yourself
     … That means that mindfulness is devoted to getting the mind to settle down with a sense of well-being. So use your powers of mindfulness, alertness, ardency for that purpose. When you know what the Canon actually says on these topics, it helps protect you from so much misinformation that’s out there. The fifth quality in having a sense of yourself is your … 
  9. Birth Is Suffering
     … A dream world appears as the mind loosens its moorings with the outside world, and then you go into the world. And you’ll notice how random the process is. We talk about our dreams sometimes with a sense of disbelief. How could that have happened? How could that dream have occurred to you? Well, the same sort of thing happens with rebirth. Sometimes … 
  10. The Buddha’s Universal Solvent
     … That’s certainly true of the universe of the mind. And most stories involve suffering. There’s a passage where the Buddha uses the pattern of dependent co-arising—which he usually uses to describe the origin of suffering—to describe the origin of the world. Our sense of the world comes from the processes of dependent co-arising. You start with ignorance and … 
  11. Not Getting What You Want
     … From renunciate distress then you go to renunciate joy, when you begin to gain insight into things that have burdened the mind, and you see that you’re now free from those things. So the distress there is actually useful. It’s to be encouraged, but you don’t just sit with the distress. You act on it—through your conviction that there is … 
  12. Ways to Think
     … So an important part of the meditation is, on the one hand, gaining a solid center for the mind, as when you focus it on the breath. Another important part, though, consists of these reflections we have. They help you think your way through difficult emotions, difficult situations. Which is why the reflections are an important part of the meditation, why we have the … 
  13. Goodwill & Heedfulness
     … It’s not that the mind is naturally compassionate, benevolent, or kind. It has the potential for kindness, but there are all kinds of other potentials as well. We do have the potential to be cruel. Our tongues are like knives, our arms and our hands are like guns: We can do all kinds of good or harm with these things. So this is … 
  14. Maybe the Buddha Knew Something
     … Tying the mind down means that if you’re going to stay in concentration, you can’t just wander around wherever the mind may go. Any thought that would pull you away, any desire that would pull you away, you’ve got to say No. At the same time, you have to learn how to develop a sense of ease and well-being around … 
  15. Dhamma in Line with the Dhamma
     … We train the mind so that we can find something better than the way we’ve been feeding on things, something that enables us to let go. That’s how dispassion happens, that’s how disenchantment happens. It starts with meditation, although meditation lies in a larger context where you’re learning to be generous and virtuous as well—practicing good qualities and seeing … 
  16. Wind, Fire, Water, Earth, Space
     … When you want to make the mind be like earth, you just get in touch with whatever earthiness you can feel inside the body. It helps give a sense of solidity to your awareness. In the same way, space is very useful. You think of things just going through space, and nothing affects the space. Space permeates everything. It goes through atoms out in … 
  17. Willing to Question Yourself
     … What way of relating to the breath is going to be helpful? How do you relate to the breath in a way that allows the mind to settle down? How do you perceive the breath—in other words, what are the images you hold in mind about what’s happening when you breathe? What kind of breathing feels good? What kind of breathing is … 
  18. A Larger Perspective
     … This is why we spread thoughts of goodwill to all beings, compassion, empathetic joy toward all beings, equanimity toward all beings, to open up the mind a little bit—to get that concept of “all beings” in there. This is also why the reflection on birth, aging, illness, death, separation, and the principle of karma comes in two forms. In the first, you reflect … 
  19. Working Hypotheses
    We bring the mind to the breath, and we get it to stay there with a sense of ease. Not only because this is a good place to be in the present moment, but also because it’s a good path—it takes us to a good place. We trust that that’s so. When the Buddha teaches right view, in the very beginning … 
  20. Inner Negotiating Skills
     … This, too, is one of your skills as a negotiator, reminding the voices in the mind—the short-sighted ones—that if you just do what you want without thought for other people, it’s going to lead to suffering down the line. The third skill is suppression—your ability to say No to yourself and make it stick. In Buddha’s vocabulary, this … 
  21. Spread Goodness Around
     … When people hear about it, it sounds like a very materialistic attitude toward training the mind, gathering up as many points as you can. Maybe we should translate it in another way: In one book I translated it as “inner quality” or “inner worth.” You can also translate it simply as “goodness,” which unfortunately is a word that also doesn’t get used much … 
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