Search results for: "Mindfulness"

  1. Page 178
  2. Victory
     … all the four noble truths, dependent co-arising—all the factors are right here—the four establishings of mindfulness, the areas where you pay attention to body, feelings, mind states, dhammas. These are all in this area of your awareness. So you want to sensitize yourself to this area of awareness and see what you’re doing with it. It’s not just a … 
  3. Return of Wisdom for Dummies
     … One of them is that you realize you need to train your mind: You have to train your intentions and be very careful to learn how to say No to an intention you know is harmful. This is one of the reasons why we meditate. We’re learning how to gain some control over our intentions. We make up our mind to do what … 
  4. High Level Metta
     … Directed thought is when you make up your mind as to what topic you’re going to focus on. Evaluation includes all the comments and questions you address to yourself about that topic. So you ask yourself, “What kind of breathing feels good right now? Does this breathing feel good or does that breathing feel good?” That’s directed thought and evaluation. And when … 
  5. Merit & Skill
     … It’s only when you get to the level of non-returning that you can give simply out of a sense that this is a natural ornament, as they say, for the mind. It’s a natural expression of the mind state at that point. But prior to that point, all generosity is motivated by some thought of getting something in return. It’s … 
  6. The Sublime Attitudes in Context
     … If you’re mindful, you keep remembering that these are the attitudes you need for the sake of your own happiness as well as theirs. And they require conscious cultivation. The Buddha never said that we’re basically good or that awareness is basically compassionate. The mind has potentials, but in and of itself your awareness is neutral. It can know good things. It … 
  7. How to Use the Teaching on Kamma
    Years back, I gave a talk on karma to a group of people at a mindfulness meditation center. I explained that the way the Buddha taught karma is not deterministic or fatalistic, that the way he taught karma is very useful when you approach meditation as a skill. As he said, the things you experience in the present moment are a combination of two … 
  8. Generosity & Virtue as Skills
     … This is an important point to keep in mind. We’re not simply sitting here waiting for things to happen. We’re trying to approach each breath in a skillful way, approach all our activities in a skillful way. When the mind settles down, it’s because we’ve developed a skill. Then as we look at that skill and understand it, that’s … 
  9. Staying Grounded
     … It gives the mind more time to be by itself, to be with the body, and not get blown around. So try to keep the mind grounded in both senses of the term, like the teenager who’s been traveling around too much and getting into trouble. You’ve got to ground the teenager. And then, also be grounded in the sense of feeling … 
  10. In the Context of the Path
     … So always keep that analogy in mind, keep that image in mind. We’re following a path. We want to stay on the path. Don’t wander off to the side, and don’t destroy the path in the meantime. Some people are like a person who’s going to the Grand Canyon and knows that the Grand Canyon is like a big ditch … 
  11. The Rewards of Right View
     … Because if you hold in mind the perception of inconstancy—that gain, honor, fame, the things that people go running after because they’re on fire, are not really cooling, are not really going to solve their problem—you develop a sense of detachment. You see that the rewards of the world are really not worth running after. Of course, that turns the mind … 
  12. Antidotes to Craving
     … Are you ready to go?” Then you look into your mind. If you see that there’s anything in there that would pull you back, make it difficult to go well, work on that. So look into you mind. What do you have here? There’s another place where the Buddha said that when you go from this body to another body, you cling … 
  13. Learning from What You Do
     … In the training of the mind, you have to do the training, but it’s useful to talk things over with someone who has been through the training so that that person can point out areas where you’re blind to your own failings, to your own unskillful ideas. A lot of the things that need to be trained out of the mind are … 
  14. The Buddha’s Revolution
     … My mind is free like a wild deer. This is the bliss I have in mind.” So there is a bliss in not being powerful and not having lots of things. You’re not the target of other people’s envy, and your mind can be free like a deer. A deer can go anywhere. There are no rules about having to go here … 
  15. The Dhamma Wheel
     … to get the mind in a place where it can really discern the suffering. This is one of the reasons we have to get the mind so quiet and alert at the same time because when suffering happens it’s very hard to sort out exactly where it is and actually to perform the right duty, which is to comprehend it. Usually, our main … 
  16. Dependable Friends
     … You don’t want to be enemies with your breath, so as you try to stay in the present moment and it gets unpleasant, the mind is going to find reasons to go wandering off. Then when we talk about trying to maintain mindfulness, be present in the body throughout the day, it’s not going to happen, because you’re on bad terms … 
  17. Frame Your Questions Well
     … So you should simply allow the mind to wander as it likes. But that’s also creating a state of becoming, one in which there’s nobody responsible. And it certainly doesn’t create the path. The path is something you have to put together. It’s something you have to fabricate. It’s called a sankhara in Pali, a fabrication. And it requires … 
  18. Noble Priorities
     … how you talk to yourself, how the mind relates to itself. You can develop mindfulness, ardency, alertness, concentration, discernment from what you’ve got inside to put an end to the suffering. That may seem like a selfish quest: It’s your own suffering and not anybody else’s. But when you see someone who’s approaching death and they’re in a torment … 
  19. One Step at a Time
     … If you don’t have that sense of mindfulness — which is what this memory of the past is: mindfulness — if you don’t have that mindfulness, you can’t learn any lessons. And although each present moment may be a wonderful new beginner’s moment, still you don’t learn anything from it. Your progress gets short-circuited right there. So an important skill … 
  20. The Need for Right View
     … The interaction of a lot of different mental events in the mind goes into a decision to do something. That creates the kamma. And it’s going to have results. So you want to be very clear on what’s happening in the present moment that shapes your intentions, and how you can learn to create the conditions that will make your intentions more … 
  21. Breath Teaches the Bramaviharas
     … It has nothing of its own.” The thing is, what do you have that is of your own? Just the perfections you build into the mind, the noble treasures you build into the mind. That’s an area where you can exert some control, where you can make a change. And so you do your best to develop your perfections: generosity, virtue, renunciation, discernment … 
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