Search results for: "The Mind"
- Page 177
- Don’t Just Do It… You have to remember that we’re here to gain insight by concentrating the mind. In other words, we’re doing one thing that will lead to something else closely related—insight—but the insights come only if you’re paying careful attention. This is where the reflection comes in. We’re reflecting on our actions. Think of the Buddha’s teaching to Rāhula …
- The Best News in the World… The question was, was there a way of understanding action? Was there a way of directing the mind so that it could act in a way that would actually lead to the deathless? Again, that’s kind of unlikely. The deathless couldn’t be caused, so how could you cause it through your own actions? What he saw was that you didn’t cause …
- Doing Your Duty… So you try to keep the mind on an even keel. These are times of danger and fear. The fear is unnecessary, aside from the type of fear that underlies the wisdom of heedfulness. Any fear beyond that is totally useless. The fact is that all times are times of danger, and this is a time of specific dangers. We take on the duties …
- Emulating the Truth… to see which qualities of the mind are skillful, which ones are not skillful, by looking at what they actually lead to. This is how we also develop the wisdom faculty in the factors of awakening, the factor that’s called analysis of qualities, dhamma-vicaya: looking at what’s skillful in our actions, and what’s not skillful, and seeing that they’re …
- Being Right… In the days when it’s difficult for the mind to get settled down, you say, “Okay, here’s a puzzle. Let’s see if we can figure it out.” It’s in this way that practicing with difficulties outside can be very useful in practicing with difficulties inside your meditation, so that when we talk about taking daily life as practice, it’s …
- Be Decisive… That’s how concentration arises in the mind. You make up your mind that you’re going to do this, and you do it. And then you just keep on doing it. As for the nibbling-away conversations that come at the edge of your concentration, you don’t have to pay attention to them. Just keep focusing in, focusing in, focusing in. What …
- Overcoming Fear… So, when the mind is settled down and you want to bring up the issue of fear, these are the kinds of questions you should ask: “What are you clinging to? Is losing it inevitable?” If so, you’ve got to learn how to prepare. That means preparing your mind and also preparing your determination that no matter how bad things get, you’re …
- Feeding Off of Others… When you realize that there is the possibility of this happiness, then the fact that our relationships with one another come and go so easily doesn’t weigh so heavily on the heart or the mind. This is what we’re training here, both heart and mind. In Pali, the word citta covers both. If you try to get your head around the idea …
- Anumodana… It’s because basically you feel bad about enjoying things, but if you feel bad about enjoying things yourself, then how are you going to feel good about other people enjoying things? How are you going to want to make other people have joy? The mind just shrivels up, the heart shrivels up, with an attitude like that. So to nourish the heart, it …
- Choosing Sides… As the Buddha said, when mindfulness becomes a governing principle in the mind, it sees things that are unskillful and it works toward getting rid of them. It sees things that are skillful and works toward giving rise to them. It actively gets involved in making things arise and making things pass away. So you are taking sides as you practice. Hopefully, you’re …
- Borrowed Goods… not so much you’re just comprehending them; you’re getting some comprehension out of them, understanding how the mind creates suffering for itself and seeing how it doesn’t have to. When you realize it doesn’t have to, that’s when you’ve gotten good use out of the aggregates. So they’re borrowed goods. You moved in on them when you …
- The Limits of Interconnectedness… our own sensation of the breath, our own experience of what’s going on in the mind. This is because eventually we want to deal with the problem that lies in this part of our awareness, which is our pain, our suffering. Nobody else can feel our suffering. No matter how much politicians may claim that they can feel our suffering, they don’t …
- Getting Out of Karmic Debt… So this simple exercise of training the mind to come back again and again and again, and to learn how to develop a liking for doing this, has a lot of ramifications. The liking is what makes it flow, makes the practice develop. When you start looking for ways in which you can undercut your lust, undercut your greed, undercut your aversion, undercut your …
- Complacency… The work of the world is never done—but the work of the mind can *be done. This is also an issue in a famous story from the Vinaya. The different cousins of the Buddha were planning to ordain, and there was one who wasn’t quite sure whether he wanted to ordain or not. So one of the other cousins said, “Well, what …
- Interdependence… the ones who are • strong in their conviction that their actions will make a difference; • virtuous, very careful to be harmless; • generous with their time, generous with their knowledge, generous with their forgiveness; and • discerning in how things come and go in the mind, seeing which things come and have a good effect, which things come and have a bad effect. That’s what …
- A Sense of Humor… We’re making paradigm shifts in the mind—and particularly paradigm shifts on what we identify with. You look at things in one way: These feelings are your feelings, your perceptions are your perceptions, and so on down the line. But you can suddenly shift around and see, “No. They’re not.” They’re the same things—the same feelings, the same perceptions—but …
- Truths That Are Noble… It’s through purifying your actions that you purify the mind. So your gaze is always reflected back inward. The Buddha himself, when he was searching for awakening, took that attitude. Whenever he found himself in a blind alley, the first question was: “What am I doing wrong? Why am I doing x? It’s not getting good results. Why don’t I try …
- Friends with the Breath, Friends with the Buddha… So you can’t trust everything that’s coming up in the mind. Even the members that you developed yourself: Sometimes they were committee members that came from a desire you had when you were young and you thought you’d figured something out for gaining that desire but didn’t really look at it carefully. So you have to do a lot of …
- The Beginnings of Wisdom… you get in the more advanced stages of the practice, you look at the states of concentration that you can develop. Sometimes you don’t realize they’re states of concentration. The mind just gets really, really still—very expansive, very bright—and you might ask yourself, “Is this it? Is this what I’ve been practicing for?” Well, you pull out that question …
- A Wealthy Memory… But it was the experience of having good Dhamma teachings in the mind and seeing how valuable those were, as little reminders of what the right attitude is: That reminded me that we’re working here in the practice not just on a technique of breath meditation, but also on our values. An important part of the meditation is sorting through what things you …
- Load next page...
