Search results for: "Mindfulness"

  1. Page 177
  2. Respect
     … The mind tends to be very fickle. You give it something comfortable to stay with, and it’ll be okay for a while. Then it’ll change its mind and say, “I want something different right now.” Try to resist that temptation, although you can appease it a little bit by changing the way you breathe. If you get tired of long breathing, you … 
  3. Pride
     … So this is one of those qualities you have to be very careful with, because if you easily take offense, there are a lot of good lessons you could learn from other people but you won’t, because you’re looking down on them or you’ve closed your mind to them because perhaps they may look down on you. There’s a nice … 
  4. Skillful Distress
     … Now, most people think that the way out is to go for householder joy—in other words, trying to find sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, or ideas that give refreshment to the mind, happiness to the mind; or for householder equanimity—looking for things that will calm you down in terms of those six senses. But the problem with the senses is that … 
  5. The Kamma of Self & Not-self
     … Once you develop a good, strong body of skills on how to be mindful, how to bring the mind to a good state of concentration, you’ve taken the sense of self and its quest for a good long-term happiness about as far as it can go. But the quest for happiness doesn’t end there. It goes further. At that point, you … 
  6. Know the Dhamma by Its Results
     … And when you can recognize something in your mind where you’re carrying baggage around—old resentments, a sense of pride—you have to put them down. You begin to realize that you were weighing the mind down to no purpose. Even though you held onto these things tightly and cherished them, they really didn’t help you. That’s the first set. These … 
  7. Getting Out of Karmic Debt
     … So we try to develop the attitude that whatever food we get is good enough, whatever we get in terms of clothing and shelter, that’s good enough, so that we can focus on the real work, which is being not content with the quality of our minds. The Buddha identified that as the secret to his awakening: that however skillful he was, if … 
  8. Intelligent Equanimity
     … Make up your mind that you’re not going to make that same mistake again. And then move on. It’s not that you deny your mistakes. You freely admit them. It’s not that you’re blasé about them. You realize that a mistake’s a mistake and you don’t want to repeat it. But if you simply brood on the mistakes … 
  9. Complacency
     … the state of your mind, the state of your actions, the state of your words, and particularly, the solidity of your mind. How solid is it? How easily does it get knocked off by events? That’s one of those winds that come through the side boards of your shelter: the wind of loss, the wind of loss of status, the wind of criticism … 
  10. You Can Do Better
     … As I noted then, mindfulness is the driver, watching over things, directing the chariot in the right direction. Another interesting comparison is the horses, which can be compared to the engine of a car. There are two of them. One is conviction; the other is discernment. These are the things that pull your practice along. It’s easy to see how conviction would play … 
  11. Choose Your Battles
     … So here we are on a long-term project, cleaning out the mind. It’s like cleaning out an enormous house that’s been vandalized and has had all kinds of animals moving in. Nobody proper has lived there for a long time; nobody’s been cleaning it up. It’s full of all kinds of junk, all kinds of garbage. There are a … 
  12. Light Your Way
     … The leper follows the Dhamma in his mind as he’s listening, and he becomes a stream-enter. But soon after that, he dies. He gets reborn in one of the heavens. There, the story tells us, he outshines all the other devas. That’s the end of the story in that particular sutta. There’s another sutta, though, that talks about a leper … 
  13. Cornered
     … You begin to notice the machinations in the mind: Even on a subtle level like that, they’re there. At the same time, you realize that anywhere else you could go would also be fabricated—so you incline the mind to something that’s not fabricated at all. But here, again, the Buddha has you corner yourself with discernment. He wants you to think … 
  14. Taking Risks
     … And the point when you really know is when you finally do get to that point where there’s no more suffering, there’s no more stress in the mind. There will still be pains in the body, but the mind itself has no pain, no suffering. There’s nothing that weighs on the mind at all. There’s nothing inconstant, nothing stressful. That … 
  15. A Sense of Well-being
     … Only when you make the mind really, really quiet can you begin to sense the shadow radiation put off by the mind. Only then can you sense how much that energy shapes your experience, how much it affects the experience of the people around you. This is why the Buddha put so much emphasis on the question of intention, because that’s where the … 
  16. Close to What You Know
    Our minds are filled with all kinds of knowledge, but exactly how certain is that knowledge and how useful is it? Right now as you’re meditating, there’s not much you need to know. You’re sitting here focusing on your breath, so notice how the breath feels. If it doesn’t feel comfortable, see what you can to do to make it … 
  17. Brahmaviharas & the Breath
     … You hold certain perceptions in mind, like the perception of goodwill, or that you would want to spread goodwill to others, or that you yourself would benefit from it. But there also has to be a feeling of well-being to have that impact on the mind. This is where physical fabrication comes in. You can work with the breath and get a sense … 
  18. Listening to the Practice
     … That’s the function of mindfulness or sati. The awareness can also be translated as being self-aware, being alert— that’s called sampajañña. It actually involves two things: One is noticing how the breath is going, how it feels; the other is noticing what you’re doing. Sometimes you’re told to not do anything to the breath, just allow it to come … 
  19. The Right Attitude to the Body
     … One way of disabusing the mind of the idea that it’s going to gain true happiness through sensuality is to ask yourself, “What is the sensual thinking you’re most attached to?” It’s your ideas about the body. So you have to frequently remind yourself of its drawbacks again and again and again because it goes so deep in the mind, this … 
  20. Savor Your Breath
     … With a guitar, what sounds good to you? What harmonies hit a soft spot in your body or mind? With the breath, what feels good to you as you breathe in? You want to get sensitive to this, because you’re going to be getting sensitive to what the Buddha calls name and form. “Name” covers all the different activities of the mind. “Form … 
  21. The Three Perceptions & Their Opposites
     … As you try to get the mind to settle with the breath, there are a lot of things going on that you don’t control. But you’re going to try to work with the breath so that it does become more constant. The mind’s concentration becomes more constant. There’s a sense of ease in body and mind, and you gain some … 
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