Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 176
  2. Everybody Suffers
     … What is it in the mind that keeps giving rise to this spark that desires birth? The Buddha said that that’s the cause of suffering: this drive for becoming. I was talking this evening to someone about the Buddha’s take on happiness: Normal happiness is based on feeding. This person was saying that the solution would be to have lots of different … 
  3. Good Friends Inside
     … Every voice in the mind that helps you stay there: That’s a friend. Any voice that pulls you away regard for the time being as not a friend: one of those friends that makes friends only to cheat them, or one who is good only in word. These voices say, “Think about this. This will be a lot more interesting.” But if you … 
  4. Faith in Goodness
     … The good thing is that as you develop more good qualities in the mind that are strengths, that provide the path away from all the sorrows that we usually experience, you find that you have more goodness to share. So you’re willing to dedicate it to all those in the past who’ve wronged you, all those you’ve wronged. In that way … 
  5. Comprehending Pain
     … Then look to see what the mind is doing in response to the pain, or how it’s shaping your sense of the pain to begin with through its perceptions. Remember: As the Buddha said, the actual suffering itself is clinging to the different aggregates. There’s craving that’s located on something, and around it develop passion and delight for that thing, which … 
  6. Unsentimental Goodwill
     … What do you get out of love? The mind gets altered and you suffer pain, sorrow, grief, and despair.” There’s another passage where the Buddha talked about how closely intertwined love and hate are. If you love someone, then you’re also going to love the people who are good to that person, regardless of whether they’re good people or not. Or … 
  7. Issues of Control
    We have the chant on the brahmaviharas—particularly the chant on goodwill—to make the mind expansive. It’s good to think goodwill for all beings several times a day, like that character in Through the Looking Glass who said he liked to think about two or three impossible things before breakfast every morning to open up his mind. We open up our minds … 
  8. In Debt to Generosity
     … It’s to be really sincere in trying to be mindful, trying to get the mind to settle down, doing the best to understand your defilements so that you can go beyond them, because the world needs more people like that. So just as the practice is a cooperative effort, the results you gain from the practice are not just yours alone. The people … 
  9. To Escape the Prison of Time
     … And the third was the knowledge of how to put an end to the effluents, in other words, the currents of defilement that come flowing out of the mind and that lead to more becoming and more suffering. Those are the three knowledges that he found most useful to talk about. Then, of course after gaining those knowledges, he gained awakening to nibbana, which … 
  10. You Are Not Powerless
     … You have to think about the impact of your words. “When I say this, what’s this going to do to my mind? What’s this going to do to the minds of the people around me? What kind of actions will it inspire?” We’re in close quarters, even as we’re maintaining social distance. The way we speak to one another has … 
  11. The Raft
     … There are perceptions—saññā—the images you have in the mind about how the breath comes into the body, where it comes in, where it goes out, where you would like it to come in, go out, where you would like it to go in the body. Then there are fabrications: directed thoughts and evaluations, the way you talk to yourself about the breath … 
  12. The Third Noble Truth
     … the sense that you’re sick and tired of feeding off the issues the mind produces. To develop disenchantment, you try to practice in a way that helps you see that the things you’ve been feeding on really don’t satisfy you that much. Their allure or attractions aren’t worth the effort that goes into finding and preparing them. One of the … 
  13. Respect for the Precepts
     … When you can look at your actions and realize that you haven’t harmed anybody, that you’ve held to your principles, it gives you the self-esteem and confidence needed to get the mind into the type of concentration that will lead to discernment. Then concentration and discernment will help make your practice of the precepts even more solid and perceptive. One of … 
  14. Justice vs. Skillfulness
     … This is why we work on the mind, because only in the mind can closure come. Meanwhile, outside, the main question is not an issue of justice or injustice. The issue is, is this particular action I’m contemplating doing skillful or unskillful? The Buddha never tries to justify, say, oppression by saying that the oppressed people deserved it. The word “deserve” also doesn … 
  15. Happy for People You Don’t Like
     … It inclines the mind to look for happiness that’s extraordinary: noble, true, harmless, safe. This way, when you’re enjoying the happiness of others, reflect on it so that you’re doing it for the sake of the happiness that’s most worthy of enjoyment and most worthy of pursuit.
  16. Songkran
     … There’s a lot that needs to be done to straighten out the mind so that we can live well and, when the time comes to die, we die well. The question is, have you done that work yet? For almost all of us, the answer is No. So, we want to stop and take stock of what was good in the past year … 
  17. Perceptions of Self & Not-Self
     … When they’re not clung to, they’re not going to create a burden on the mind. That means that the issue is the clinging. You have to remember that the passage we chanted just now was delivered to a group of monks who had already heard the Buddha’s first sermon, describing the four noble truths and their duties. So they were alert … 
  18. Deconstruct Your Emotions
     … Two, it sensitizes you to things going on in the mind that you might miss otherwise. Some people think of concentration as being a blocking out—and even though there are certain things that you’re blocking out right now, you do have to become very sensitive to the energy in the body. And that’s directly related to things coming up in the … 
  19. Look Around
     … If you get too narrowly focused on your one spot, then there are a lot of things in the mind that get hidden. What you see in that one spot may be very clear, but a lot of other things connected to it can get hidden. As with any spotlight, everything right next to the spotlight gets thrown into the dark. You want to … 
  20. Playing Your Lute
     … Try to get the mind into as still a state as you can. And even if it’s not as still as you’d like, at least maintain what you’ve got. Don’t throw away the good things you’ve maintained. Those basic principles of initiative and maintaining apply all the way through the practice. You want to build a practice that’s … 
  21. Of Essential Worth
    The Buddha was once approached by a brahman who said, “This business of going forth, training the mind, doesn’t really help many people. You train your mind and you’re the only one who benefits.” Whereas the brahmans had many activities and were helpful to many. In those days, some of the brahmans were very wealthy landowners, and this brahman said that by … 
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