Search results for: "Mindfulness"
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- How to Be Self-Centered… Here, too, you can think of the committee of the mind. You’ve got to ferret out which voices are the ones really worth listening to. Just because one voice is loud and repetitive doesn’t mean that you have to take it seriously. Try listening to the voices that are compassionate, that do want you to do the practice well, and are happy …
- In Accordance with the Dhamma… In the same way, our minds are trapped by sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations, not because those things are trapping us—we’re the one’s trapping ourselves. Which is why we have to be especially careful about not changing the Dhamma to fit in with our preconceived notions, because our preconceived notions, for the most part, tend to have feeding as …
- A Separate Self… It has to do with our understanding of how craving and ignorance and particularly the craving and ignorance in our own minds leads to suffering. You don’t go looking outside for craving and ignorance. You have to look inside. You have to take responsibility for what you’ve done. When you know where the problem is coming from, that’s when you can …
- More Wisdom for Dummies… Be very observant—because even in the best-intentioned mind, there are some falsehoods going on, areas where you’re lying to yourself. So your goodwill is what’s going to see you through. That, and the realization, “I’ve been lying to myself. That’s foolish. I’ve got to stop.” This is wisdom for dummies. When you admit the fact that your …
- A Good Narrative… When you train the mind, it really does accomplish something. But often we find it hard to keep up the effort. This is why pasada needs samvega, and samvega needs pasada. Without pasada, the samvega gets depressing. Without samvega, pasada starts getting Pollyanna-ish, and you start getting complacent. This is why the Buddha said that the way to the deathless is to contemplate …
- Admirable Friendship… If, in your mind, you create other people out there, you create a lot of problems. But if you simply see life in the community as an opportunity to watch the principle of cause and effect as it plays itself out, the problems vanish. The same with admirable people: You don’t get jealous of their good qualities; you don’t get depressed about …
- Your Actions Are Yours… That will tell you a lot about your mind—how you approach things. Are you able to maintain a good emotional balance as you work with the meditation and put up with times when the breath is not going well? Do you have the stamina to stick with it until you can try to figure things out? That’s a good sign. If you …
- Determination… You have to develop your energy, your persistence, your stick-with-it-ivedness, your mindfulness and alertness, to refine your discernment so that when you see the results of your actions, you can be a good judge of them. When things are not going well, is it a sign that the path is not going to work at all, or simply that you’re …
- Death World… the goodness of your heart, the goodness of your mind. The death of that is not inevitable. This is one of the reasons why we practice: to take this potential for keeping our goodness alive and nurture it so that when the time comes and we do have to leave the world, our goodness doesn’t die, and it hasn’t died in the …
- Nobody’s Servant… After all, you’ve made up your mind you want long-term happiness. Well, look at what you’re actually doing to make sure that you’re actually doing it well, doing it right, acting in line with that principle. So there they are: discernment, purity, compassion. All admirable qualities, and they all come from looking for happiness in a wise way, looking for …
- A Tale of Two Kings… Hold certain perceptions of the breath in mind so that you can create a feeling of well-being and allow that feeling of well-being to spread through the body. The choices you make as you do that really do change your experience. And they teach you the lessons you’re going to need so that you can dig deeper and deeper inside to …
- Cleaning Out the Stables… At the moment you left your last life, some image related to the human world appeared in the mind, and you went for it. The human world developed around it, and you took on this identity as a human being in the world. The Canon has a very vivid image for this: a crow sitting in a human skull. We like to think that …
- Samvega Transformed… It was the Buddha’s ability to train his students in that same solidity of mind—that’s what took the terror out of terror, turned samvega from a sense of suffering from closed-in meaninglessness into something where the doors are wide open. That’s the Buddha’s accomplishment. And the doors are still open now. That image of the open door comes …
- Self-Bypassing… And this way of thinking is not just a sop for a small child’s mind. When the Buddha says that discernment begins with the question: “What having been done by me will lead to my long term harm and suffering? What having been done by me will lead to my long term welfare and happiness?” there’s still an agent there, there’s …
- The Management of Suffering… He went to the cemetery every day to cry, and he called out again and again, “Where have you gone, my little son? Where have you gone, my little son?” He comes back from the cemetery one day, stops off to see the Buddha, and the Buddha says, “Where have you been? You look like someone who’s deranged, out of his mind.” And …
- Strategic Thinking… That’s called verbal fabrication, because that’s how we create sentences in the mind. Finally, feelings of pleasure develop around that, and we maintain that perception of breath: Feelings and perceptions are mental fabrication. So you’ve got all forms of fabrication right here, where you can learn how to manipulate them skillfully. Once you learn how to manipulate them skillfully while sitting …
- Representing the World to Itself… They say, “Well, breath is air, and air can’t go through the nerves.” If you hold those perceptions in mind, it really does make it difficult. But you can change the perceptions. Think of breath as energy suffusing the body, then it gives you a lot to work with. This is the advantage of the new perceptions. They give you new opportunities, new …
- Not-self… Yesterday someone asked me, “How can you say that we identify with things that we think we control when we find ourselves identifying with fear?” Well, you’re identifying with whatever the mind comes up with. In the process of identifying with that, then whatever it comes up with, you’re going to be stuck with. If you try to destroy that identity, you …
- The Pleasure of Concentration… trying to develop the potentials we have for pleasure within the body, within the mind, here in the present moment. We work with the breath because of all the elements in the body, all the properties in the body, that’s the easiest to manipulate. You can think of breathing in long, and the body will breathe in long. You can think short, and …
- All Winners, No Losers… The state of mind that animates the person looking to settle the score, that’s vera. And from there, it can grow into a type of relationship where both sides have vera for each other. Both sides tend to target each other, especially when you think about the long course of time in samsara. There’s been a lot of back and forth. There …
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