Search results for: "Mindfulness"

  1. Page 179
  2. The True Dhamma Has Disappeared
     … The teachings on mindfulness, the teachings on concentration and discernment: They’re all there to make you a more reliable observer of what’s going on in yourself, so that you can see cause and effect, so that you can see those truths of inconstancy, stress, and not-self and use them as tools. When you get the mind really still and you think … 
  3. One Thing Clear Through
     … It becomes just a natural expression of the mind. All the steps of the practice become a natural expression of the mind once it’s fully trained.
  4. The Duty to Be Positive
     … If you’re constantly wallowing in thoughts of “things I’ve done in the past that were really embarrassing” or “things that I’ve done that were really horrible,” those thoughts are going to come back as an habitual groove in your mind as the body weakens. And especially when there’s the sudden surprise: “This is it. This is death,” the mind then … 
  5. Giving & Taking Time
     … To see what’s going on in the mind, you have to watch it over long periods of time. And you have to give up a lot of your other interests to focus on this. Ours is a society that likes to have its cake and eat it too—and get a few extra pieces on the side. But the practice, the training of … 
  6. Free to Do the Right Thing
     … We have lots of different views about the world that are jumbled up in our minds. It’s hard to tell which view is going to come out and impose itself on you at any particular time. So one of the skills in meditation is learning how to put all those things aside and to look only for what’s true and beneficial and … 
  7. Eyes in the Back of Your Head
     … Still, the mind is a lot less burdened by it because you’re not trying to carry it. Sometimes that happens. We feel that if we don’t surround the pain with our commentary on it, it’s going to take off and spread everywhere. That fear is what makes us hold it. But, actually, the holding is a weight on the mind. Then … 
  8. Working Hypotheses
     … He took something we’re doing all the time—shaping our experience—and asked, “What if you tried to shape it in the most skillful way possible? What would that entail?” And it turns out that it develops a lot of good qualities in the mind. Just that desire to find a happiness that’s more lasting, more solid, he said: That’s the … 
  9. The Best News in the World
     … The difference lies in the qualities of mind he brought to the breath. And you can develop the qualities that he did. So it’s good to think about how he developed those qualities. By all accounts, he was a very sincere and dedicated person. Think about it: someone whose pleasures of his life were quite extensive—he was a prince, his father was … 
  10. The Need for Agency
     … As you’re sitting here right now, there are some things appearing in the mind caused by what you’re doing right now; other things appearing in the mind are a result of past actions. So, there are some things that are happening in the mind that you don’t take responsibility for right now because they come from past actions and can’t … 
  11. Tenacity
     … This is why the Buddha stressed the principle of respect for concentration, having some trust in your concentration—not that everything that pops into your mind as you sit here meditating is going to be reliable, but at the very least, when you’re mindful and centered, you’re a lot more likely to get good responses, good inspirations out of the mind than … 
  12. You Should Heed These Shoulds
     … This is why you have to develop the path so that you can see your own mind very clearly. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The third noble truth is to be realized. How do you realize it? You watch your mind as craving gets abandoned. And you get to that point by developing the path. When the Buddha says to be virtuous … 
  13. Faith
     … They tell you, “You’ve got the power in your hands.” You’re sitting here meditating right now, you can develop your mind in ways and directions that you may not have believed. It’s going to take time and it’s going to require effort, which is why the quality of concentration and conviction go together. You’ve got to get the mind … 
  14. Willing to Learn
     … The training of the mind is the big value. Money is not the big value. The way people interact is a little bit different. And so in the beginning, it’s very normal to feel awkward. There are things you’re enthusiastic about but other things you’re very unsure about. And you’re going to be changing as a person as you come … 
  15. Stay Centered
     … As the mind moves from one thing to another, it’ll drop into a moment of what Ajaan Lee calls “passing out,” and it’ll then focus on something else, have another thought. In that moment of passing out, a lot of machinations are going on. You want to be able to see through that. One of the worst things, of course, is what … 
  16. Doing Favors & Making Merit
     … It’s not right that I don’t give them something.” Higher than that is, “Giving makes the mind serene.” You just feel good giving the gift. The highest is when giving doesn’t expect anything in return. The act of giving is simply an ornament of the heart and mind. This is the giving of a non-returner. So we’re working in … 
  17. A Confident Ego
     … Then there’s the ego that’s a necessary part of your mind. That’s the ego that the psychologists talk about—the one that has to negotiate between your sense of what you should do and your sense of what you want to do, because sometimes the shoulds can get awfully oppressive. And if you have the wrong set of shoulds in your … 
  18. Obstacles to Full-body Awareness
     … Otherwise, if—as the breath gets comfortable— your awareness gets very small, you tend to either fall asleep or go into delusion concentration, when the mind is still but it doesn’t really know anything, which is not what you want because nothing gets accomplished by that kind of meditation. The problem is, when you expand your awareness, sometimes there are things that get … 
  19. Looking in the Dhamma Mirror
    Sometimes after I’ve given a Dhamma talk, a person will come up and say, “I wish so and so had been here to hear this.” The thought that immediately comes up in my own mind is, “Well, did you hear this?” We’re here to train ourselves. The Dhamma is a mirror for us to use to look at ourselves. The Buddha uses … 
  20. Right View about Right View
     … When you come across something in your meditation where you think, “This is really true,” you have to ask yourself, “True for what purpose?” And what does it do to your mind, keeping this particular truth in mind? If you see that it’s having a bad effect, you tell yourself, “That’s not the truth for right now.” That’s when you have … 
  21. Goodwill as Right View
     … That gets the mind in the right frame to sit down and meditate and not get entangled with a lot of the loose ends from the events of the day. Then when you come out of meditation, devote some time to goodwill again, this time for the sake of others. Your mind has greater strength when you’re coming out of concentration, and whatever … 
  22. Load next page...