Search results for: "Mindfulness"

  1. Page 194
  2. Remembering Ajaan Fuang
     … At that point, we had Keeping the Breath in Mind, Frames of Reference, and The Craft of the Heart. So he gave her a copy of each and said, “You can print whichever one you like.” She took them and then, a week later, she came back, saying, “That’s not what I want. I want his autobiography.” Now, I had already translated the … 
  3. Toxic Environments
     … Hold that perception in mind. A lot of the reason why we feel so influenced by toxic places is because we’re hoping to take in something from them. We’re hoping for approval, something to give us some emotional sustenance. So we hope to feed on them. Of course, when you open yourself up to feed on things, they can be toxic. You … 
  4. Generosity & Gratitude
     … You’re here to develop good qualities of mind. You’re looking for a happiness that’s harmless. That, in and of itself, is a gift. Think of all the different ways you’ve gone through life looking for happiness in which you’ve actually harmed other people. We don’t like to think about it. People tend to get very defensive when you … 
  5. The Third Noble Truth
     … the sense that you’re sick and tired of feeding off the issues the mind produces. To develop disenchantment, you try to practice in a way that helps you see that the things you’ve been feeding on really don’t satisfy you that much. Their allure or attractions aren’t worth the effort that goes into finding and preparing them. One of the … 
  6. Dhamma Warrior
    There’s a passage in John McPhee’s Coming into the Country, where he talks about people who go to Alaska with their minds made up that they’re going to live out in the wilderness, get away from the corrupting influence of society. And he said there tend to be two types of people who don’t make it: those who decide that … 
  7. Skillful Papañca
     … There are going to be parts of your mind that don’t want to follow the practice. It’s like a civil war or a sibling rivalry inside, a fight where no holds are barred. You’re going to need a very strong sense of who you are as a meditator and what you want. Take on that identity and use that to fight … 
  8. Emulating the Truth
     … to see which qualities of the mind are skillful, which ones are not skillful, by looking at what they actually lead to. This is how we also develop the wisdom faculty in the factors of awakening, the factor that’s called analysis of qualities, dhamma-vicaya: looking at what’s skillful in our actions, and what’s not skillful, and seeing that they’re … 
  9. A Sense of Entitlement
     … It’s important to keep that in mind. Part of the reason for that chant is to give a sense of samvega. You think about all the suffering that goes into making sure that we have the food we need to keep this body going, the clothing, the shelter, the medicine — not only from the work we ourselves have done to get these things … 
  10. Lavish Goodwill
     … For people who are small-minded, you give lots and lots of goodwill. For people who have done unskillful things, lots of goodwill. After all, who in this world has not done unskillful things? We’ve done unskillful things, just as other people have. If you think that only pure people deserve your goodwill, who are you going to extend it to? Then there … 
  11. Interdependence
     … the ones who are • strong in their conviction that their actions will make a difference; • virtuous, very careful to be harmless; • generous with their time, generous with their knowledge, generous with their forgiveness; and • discerning in how things come and go in the mind, seeing which things come and have a good effect, which things come and have a bad effect. That’s what … 
  12. Judgmental vs. Judicious
     … You’ve got to learn how to use your own powers of observation inside your own body and mind. That’ll take time. There will be setbacks. And there will be points though where you realize, “Okay I’ve been wrong up to now, but now I’ve seen for myself why I was wrong.” That’s a step forward. And you wouldn’t … 
  13. Friends with the Breath, Friends with the Buddha
     … So you can’t trust everything that’s coming up in the mind. Even the members that you developed yourself: Sometimes they were committee members that came from a desire you had when you were young and you thought you’d figured something out for gaining that desire but didn’t really look at it carefully. So you have to do a lot of … 
  14. Pride, Good & Bad
     … I’ll say whatever I see is true, or whatever I have come through my mind.” There’s a certain kind of courage or bravery about that, but is it always appropriate? After all, we live in a culture of restraint here. Just as Ajaan Fuang was scornful of people who were eager to bring the Dhamma up to date, Ajaan Suwat was scornful … 
  15. Your Ancestral Territory
     … It’s one of the establishings of mindfulness, the basis of your concentration practice. You can think of the stories about the quail and the monkeys, and how if they wander out of their ancestral territory, they’re going to get into trouble. But if they stay in their ancestral territory, they’re going to be safe. In the story of the quail, it … 
  16. One Person
     … Basically it meant that you inspired them to observe the precepts, to try to develop their minds so that they could get rid of passion, aversion, and delusion. That’s not an easy thing to do. So it’s no wonder he said he would rank those who were able to assist themselves—i.e. those who did practice the precepts themselves and were … 
  17. Respect for the Training
     … There are a lot of people who don’t like rules, who feel that rules make you a very small-minded person: that they make you think that by abiding by the rules and trying to get a good mark on your rules, you’ll get by. And that’s a very immature attitude towards the rules. Both of those attitudes are immature, i … 
  18. The Flood of Views
     … In other words, an idea comes up in the mind and you can ask yourself: Is this part of the path? Or is this going to sweep me down? No matter how right the opinion might be, remember that there are a lot of right opinions about all kinds of topics, but they’re not right view. They may be right about the world … 
  19. Count Your Blessings
     … At the same time, recognize where you have problems, recognize that there are difficulties, recognizing that there are parts of the mind that are not one hundred percent with the practice. Sometimes we try to deny that, which doesn’t help. We’re not living in Pollyanna-land. Or we may not like the idea that there’s a part of us that doesn … 
  20. A Good Example for the World
     … right conduct, establishing mindfulness, developing the factors for awakening. So here we are, beneficiaries of the Buddha’s teachings. This is what he wants us to do. Go into the fortress. And this is the path. This is how we show our gratitude for the teaching and it’s how we keep it alive. The fact that there are people who really are serious … 
  21. Why Limit Yourself?
     … Do you want that? Why would you want anything less than an unconditioned happiness? Maybe one voice in the mind might say: How can a conditioned path find the unconditioned happiness? But the way the Buddha explained causality shows that through a complex process—in which some causes give rise to results immediately while others take time: When you put those two principles together … 
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