Search results for: "Mindfulness"

  1. Page 183
  2. The Path to the Top
     … These are all good qualities to develop in the mind: persistence, patience, endurance, mindfulness, concentration, discernment, compassion. The balance of these qualities as you develop them in the mind is a good thing. So you don’t lose out. What you may lose are a lot of the pleasures the world provides right now—sensual pleasures, everyday pleasures—but are those the things we … 
  3. Metta Isn’t Love
     … It’s going to be up to you to develop skillful attitudes in your own mind. You want to make sure that your mind is not partial. Otherwise, you’re going to be good to the people you like and not good to the people you don’t like. That’s going to create bad karma. So as you develop metta as a universal … 
  4. All of a Piece
     … It also supplies to actions in the mind as well. So the lessons you learn on the everyday level when seeing that the things you like to do give bad results, and you’re able to say no, that’s good practice for your meditation, good practice for gaining discernment, good practice for awakening. The principle applies all the way through. The same with … 
  5. Pull Yourself Up by Your Fetters
     … You push against them by developing the path, getting the mind into concentration. And it’s something you hold on to while you’re developing it. While you’re sitting here, hold on to the breath. The image that they give in the Forest tradition is of a red ant. They have these big red ants in Thailand that live up in mango trees … 
  6. Noble & True
     … There will be times when the mind says, “I want X,” and you look at the four noble truths that say, “No, you don’t. You may want X but it’s not good for you. It’s not going to help put an end to suffering, and it’s not going to lead you to a happiness that’s harmless.” You have to … 
  7. What You Bring to the Moment
     … The mind is primed to look for certain details. When it’s in a mood to be lustful, it’s going to look for certain details. When it’s in the mood to be angry, it’s going to look for other details. The details may aggravate the lust or the anger, but the fact is, you’re already looking for trouble. That should … 
  8. In the Elephant’s Footprint
     … When you come back from that, it cuts through some fetters of the mind, some of the fetters that tie you to the process of samsara. One of those fetters is self-identity views, in other words, viewing that you either are your aggregates or you own the aggregates, or the aggregates are in you or you’re in the aggregates. The mind doesn … 
  9. Disenchantment
    One of the traditional principles of the teaching is that when the mind gains concentration, it’s able to see things as they are. Actually the Pali term means “seeing things as they’ve come to be.” There’s an interesting passage where the Buddha makes a distinction between bhava and bhuta. Bhava means a state of being, becoming, the process of becoming, which … 
  10. Dharma Warriors
     … We all know that eventually we want to gain insight and eventually there are lots of things we want to do on the path to gain insight, to gain understanding about the ways of the mind. But if your foundation isn’t solid enough, you’re not going to be able to tackle these things properly. They can overwhelm you. So in particular: As … 
  11. Noble Conversation
     … Things in the mind go up; things in the mind go down. If they can go down, they can go back up again. That’s a case where conversation is actually helpful. This is one of the skills of being a meditator: knowing what to talk about, when and where to talk about it, and who to talk about it to. The Buddha discusses … 
  12. The Not-Self Discourse
     … All of that comes from the mind. It’s all just five aggregates, but those aggregates can take all kinds of shapes, all kinds of identities. But it’s still all very artificial and it’s all going to come crashing down. Even whale-eater-eater-eaters have to die. Then you try to take on a new identity again—and again and again … 
  13. Write It Down in Your Heart
     … This is one of the ways in which we develop mindfulness, the ability to keep things in mind. Traditionally, that was how it was done. People were taught to memorize and they got good at developing mindfulness in their meditation. That way, when they picked up a piece of information, it stayed with them. They didn’t have to go searching on their phones … 
  14. A Goal Without Limits
     … It’s given as an analogy with the type of goodwill you want to have, the kind of mind you want to have, a mind where unkind things don’t stick. People can say horrible things to you, but their horrible things don’t stick. That makes it easier to be patient with difficult things, and to have goodwill even for the people who … 
  15. Steal the Dhamma
     … The instructions back in those days were just, “Bring your mind down.” This was before Ajaan Lee had formulated his Method One and Method Two. So Ajaan Fuang would meditate, bring his mind down, down, down, down, and he got very depressed, very dull. So, he figured, “This must not be right.” So, he turned it around, bringing it up, up, up, up, up … 
  16. Courage
     … They seem to have taken a part of your own mind. It’s part of your own mind that’s saying, “Nope, nope, nope, I don’t want to push this hard.” That’s when you need to have the courage to let that go, saying, “No, I can’t identify with that.” Even though it’s been a part of you for who … 
  17. Taking Responsibility
     … In other words, things can come up in your mind, and you don’t have any grounds for saying No to them. An important part of the path is just that, seeing things come up in your mind and realizing, “If I act on these things, it’s going to be unskillful. I have to say No.” That was the Buddha’s first instruction … 
  18. You Can’t Eat the Buddha
     … conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. These are qualities we all have to some extent, but we’ve got to learn how to strengthen them, and they in turn make the mind stronger. So our food here isn’t bread and wine. Our food is concentration. The Buddha compared the different levels of concentration to different types of food. The first jhana, he said … 
  19. The Path of Adventure
     … Now, that someplace else is not outside of the mind. It’s not as if we’re going to leave our mind to go someplace else. We stay right here, but the image of the path means that there are things that have to be done to achieve the goal at the end of the path. We have to keep following the path until … 
  20. Compassion Without Clinging
     … When you’ve got the mind independent like that, that’s a mind you can trust. And that’s a mind that doesn’t have to suffer. So when you think about the Buddha’s shoulds, remember they’re not imposed on us. They’re ways in which the Buddha opens opportunities for us to live in this world of our likes and dislikes … 
  21. Disconnecting
     … The Buddha asks him, “Where have you been? You look like someone out of your mind.” The man explains, and the Buddha says, “Yes, sorrow and lamentation come from those who are dear, from those we love.” The man says, “What do you mean? Those we love give us nothing but joy.” So he leaves. He runs into a group of gamblers, tells them … 
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