Search results for: "The Mind"

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  2. Mindful, Alert, & Ardent
     … That’s alertness, to see how the breath feels, and also be alert to notice when the mind is beginning to wander off. If it wanders off, bring it right back. That’s the beginning of the quality called ardency. In other words, you really do want to work at doing this meditation skillfully. So when the mind wanders off, you don’t let … 
  3. A Safe Home
    Once you’ve got the body in place to meditate, the real work lies in getting the mind in place. Actually, the getting in place is not that hard. You just focus on the breath. Know when the breath is coming in; know when it’s going out. If you’re going to think, think about the breath. It’s okay to think in … 
  4. The Quality of Your Awareness
     … We follow that trail deeper and deeper into the mind until we find out what’s really causing all the problems. That’s how we find what we’re looking for. So it’s a matter of that quality of your attention. This is why we practice concentration. This is why we pose questions in the mind to learn about the mind as it … 
  5. Harmony, Right & Wrong
    When we bring the mind into concentration, we’re trying to bring the body and the mind together in harmony in a right relationship. Both of those aspects are important: both the harmony and the right relationship. This is why we spend so much time with directed thought and evaluation at the beginning: evaluating the breath, evaluating the mind, to see how the body … 
  6. The Mirror Inside
     … Do the improvements have to be in the breath or in the mind? Improvements in the mind would require stepping back for a bit and asking yourself, “Okay, what moods in the mind are getting in the way?” You sometimes carry in moods from the day, so what can you do to counteract those moods? This is why the Buddha didn’t teach just … 
  7. Fabricating with Awareness
     … It’s the mind that cares, and it’s the mind that wants these things. The body is just a tool in the mind. So the problem is not the body, it’s the lust in the mind: Why would it lust for these things? What does he gain? Is lust in and of itself a comfortable emotion? No, it’s not. It just … 
  8. Equanimity
     … This is the kind of equanimity you can use to watch subtle things clearly in the mind. You begin to notice some of the defilements in the mind—and they are defilements. We usually don’t like to use the word “defilement” with regard to our thoughts and emotions, but that’s often what they are. They cloud the mind; they darken the mind … 
  9. Even Common Animals Can Be Trained
    There’s a controversial passage in the Canon where the Buddha says that the mind is luminous. It’s like the Sun, which can be darkened by passing clouds, but the Sun itself is not dark. In the same way, the mind is darkened by passing defilements, but the defilements are not part of the nature of the mind. Now, some people interpret this … 
  10. Concentration & Insight
     … So, you’re not harming anyone; you’re not developing qualities of the mind that will be harmful for you or for others. At the same time, you’re giving the mind a sense of pleasure that actually adds to its clarity. Most sensual pleasures make the mind clouded: You get narrowly focused on one thing and block out everything else. As a result … 
  11. Throughout the Day
     … Often the insights that come as you go through the day, trying to keep the mind centered, come in those little moments when the mind is about to slip off, and you catch it. You begin to see, “Oh, this is the kind of thing the mind does. This is how it slips off.” Or you can catch not only when it’s happening … 
  12. Mindfulness of Breathing: Four in One
     … He was focused on the breath, the mind was solidly centered, and it was from this perspective that he viewed the mind and the world and began to formulate the Dhamma. So to understand what he’s talking about, you’ve got to get the mind here, too. Another reason why you want to get the mind here is because you’re going to … 
  13. The Self-correcting Mind
     … What kind of breathing can the mind stay with? What kind of breathing feels good for the body? What kind of breathing feels good for the mind? What kind of breathing is clear enough so we can focus on it but soothing enough so that it’s actually calming, allows the mind to settle down? Then once the breath feels good, what do you … 
  14. The Uses of Concentration
     … The more quiet the mind, the more you’ll be able to see what’s going on in the mind. And, of course, once you have mindfulness and alertness, you can protect that sense of well-being so that it doesn’t turn into sleepiness—or into delusion concentration. So those two purposes for concentration go together. You want to give rise to that … 
  15. Bad Stuff Happens
     … And it’s not good for the mind. You need to be able to give rise to a sense of refreshment, even rapture, so that when the mind does settle down to be calm and everything gets calm in the body, you can maintain a sense of balance in the health of your body—and also balance in the health of the mind so … 
  16. May You Forever Be Well
     … But the mind that is truly blessed is one that’s not shaken either by the good ones or the bad ones. That requires skill, and this is what we’re trying to develop as we meditate: the skill so that the mind is not shaken. We’re working on the skills of concentration so that the mind can stay with one object with … 
  17. Fabrication
    Fabrication March, 2001 The mind has a basic habit, which is to create things. In fact, when the Buddha describes causality, how experiences come about, he says that the power of creation or sankhara — the mental tendency to put things together — actually comes prior to our sensory experience. It’s because the mind is active, actively putting things together, that it knows things. The … 
  18. Limitations
     … We keep in mind of the fact we want to stay with the breath regardless of whatever else comes up in the mind. Alertness means keeping watch on what’s actually happening with the breath, what’s happening in the mind. Then you build on these two qualities with the quality of ardency. In other words, you try to do them skillfully. Once you … 
  19. Hedgehog Knowledge
     … It’s the same with the mind. Once you learn how to let go of the places where you’re causing yourself suffering, the mind gets freed. That’s how the teachings perform, how they act on the mind to get you to do the practice. Someone said that the practice here is a performing art. It’s a skill that you work on … 
  20. The Dhamma Eye
     … You look back and you say, “Everything up to this point has been subject to origination—i.e., it’s been shaped by the mind—but this is not shaped by the mind.” Things that are shaped by the mind will pass away, but this is not going to pass away, because it’s outside of time. If something were in time, it could … 
  21. The Duties of Happiness
     … That’s at the end of the path, when you’ve taken care of all the members of the mind, and the mind gets more and more unified in its agreement that this is the way you want to find happiness, based on this path of virtue, concentration, and discernment, with concentration the big middle ground that gets the mind right here in the … 
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