Search results for: "The Mind"

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  2. Nourishing & Interesting
    We had a visitor this evening who complained that he would go once a year on a vipassanā retreat, learn how to get the mind into a state of equanimity, but then he couldn’t maintain that equanimity when he came back home. He wanted to know what to do. I told him if meditation is just equanimity, it gets dull very fast. If … 
  3. Asalha Puja – Completeness
     … If you see a situation calls for a certain kind of action that would help alleviate suffering in the mind, you go in that direction. That’s how you achieve completeness in the mind. Otherwise, the mind is always going to be lacking. It’s always going to be hungry. When the mind is hungry, you can’t trust it. It’s going to … 
  4. The Most Important Thing to Be Doing
     … getting your mind trained, getting the mind to settle down, so that it has a sense of well-being and is able to see itself clearly—so that it can take care of business inside. Empires rise and fall, but the mind remains. That’s got to be your perspective. Because the mind remains not only through the death of the body but through … 
  5. The Gradual Path of Skill
     … Ajaan Chah has a nice statement where he says, “The mind isn’t ‘is’ anything.” You can’t really define the mind as this, that, or the other thing. It’s just the quality of knowing. Ajaan Lee makes the comment that the mind is neither good nor bad but it knows good and bad, it develops good and bad habits, but eventually it … 
  6. Noble Right Concentration
     … Intentions come from where? They come from the mind. So you’re not interested in things in general outside, whether they change or not. You’re interested in the products of the mind. They change because the mind changes. It’s precisely here that you want to see cause and effect. After all, that’s what the four noble truths are about. The second … 
  7. Lessons from Generosity & Virtue
     … After all, when the mind is training itself, there’s one part of the mind training other parts of the mind, or one faction training the other factions. You’ve got to identify who are the helpful ones and get as many of the different parts of your mind on your side. This is one of the reasons why the Buddha talks so much … 
  8. An Island of Certainty
     … The mind, the state of the mind, is what we have to preserve. And that’s something we can know directly—as long as we don’t lie to ourselves. As Ajaan Chah said, one of the first things you learn as you watch the mind is how quickly it lies to itself. So as you look around and realize you can’t depend … 
  9. Exercising the Mind
     … Try to be quick in noticing, when the mind slips off, why did it slip off? What distracted it? In the beginning, don’t analyze it too much. As soon as you sense that the mind has slipped off, just bring it back. We talked today about the problem of meditating for an hour. You have the luxury of a whole hour, while the … 
  10. No Arrows, Nothing
     … If your present karma is skillful, then no matter how bad the situation in the body, the mind doesn’t have to suffer. The minds of arahants are totally free from suffering. They’re like the rest of us in that their bodies have pain and pleasure and neither-pleasure-nor-pain, but none of these things make inroads into the mind. So the … 
  11. Worthy of Trust
     … Of course, the nature of these ships is a metaphor for the mind. The mind frequently changes its frame of reference, sometimes so fast that we can’t keep track it. In between each change, we conk out, lose track of where our old frame of reference was, and suddenly find ourselves in a new one. We rarely know how we got there. Think … 
  12. The Strength of Conviction
     … You have the mindfulness and the alertness not only to keep your meditation in mind, but also to keep in mind what you did and then notice the results that come from what you did. That way, if the results aren’t what you want, you can try changing what you’ve done. In other words, sometimes when you bring the mind very forcefully … 
  13. Every Little Bit
     … If the mind is really still, it can see them. If you’re not still, you just run right past. So the little things matter—both the good ones and the bad ones. So pay careful attention to what you’re doing, careful attention to what’s going on in the mind. Get the mind really, really still. Have a strong sense of being … 
  14. The Importance of Being Truthful
     … That’s why we’re here training the mind, because our actions do come out of the mind. Again, the Buddha never talks about what the mind is. And he certainly never says that the mind is basically good or basically bad. Ajaan Chah, in one of his finer turns of phrase, says, “What is the mind? The mind isn’t is anything.” That … 
  15. Equanimity Isn’t Nibbana
     … Our present decisions, what we’re going to do with the mind, what we’re going to focus on, how we develop it: That’s the kamma we witness as we meditate. So you want to focus on doing things that help you understand what’s going on in the mind right now. What is this process of intention? How does the mind create … 
  16. The Seven Factors for Awakening
     … When there’s too much energy in the mind, try to calm things down, do what you can to calm the breathing, do what you can to just stay in one spot, despite the temptation to keep moving around. In here, the factor that makes a difference in the mind is the ability to watch over things. That’s equanimity. There’s another sutta … 
  17. Look after Your Mind with Ease
     … Like right now, we’re sitting here, getting the mind to settle down. This requires that you do a certain amount of talking to yourself. You want to do it in a way that’s skillful, that actually does bring the mind to a quieter state where you can put all that chatter aside. In the beginning stages, talking to the mind is necessary … 
  18. Refuge
    Breathe in a way that the mind can settle down with. In the very beginning, this may mean taking good long, deep in-and-out breaths, to clear out all your energy channels and to make sure that the breath is perfectly obvious here in the present moment. As you settle in, allow the breath to get more subtle. You’ve got to create … 
  19. Open Are the Doors to the Deathless
     … Exactly what are you doing that’s causing a burden to the mind right now? Do you have to keep burdening the mind in that way? The Buddha’s answer is No. What is your answer? Part of the mind will say, “I don’t know. I can’t see.” Okay, get the mind quiet. Then if anything comes up in the mind that … 
  20. Mastering Pleasure & Pain
     … In some cases, when the mind settles down, the pleasure is rather mild; in other cases, it can be really strong. Part of this will depend on how hungry the mind has been up to that point. Some people complain that when they first get the mind in a strong concentration it’s really intense—the rapture is very strong—and then after a … 
  21. Beyond Inter-eating
     … And if there’s anything coming up and creating a barrier for the mind, you learn to look at that with appropriate attention as well, so that you starve the barriers—the hindrances—and you feed the good qualities of the mind. Once you’ve got those good qualities going, and the mind is in a good state of concentration, that concentration becomes your … 
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