Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. Values
    There are lots of different ways of getting the mind to settle down, and the breath is the object the Buddha discussed most frequently and in most detail for settling down with. But there are other ways of getting the mind to settle down as well. You can focus on the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha either by simply repeating one of those words … 
  3. Trust in the Power of the Mind
     … That’s because the mind is not just on the receiving end of things. Mano-pubbangama dhamma mano-settha mano-maya: The mind is the forerunner of all experience. The mind is in charge. Things are made by the mind. There’s a good reason why they put that verse at the beginning of the Dhammapada. It’s the power of the mind that … 
  4. Farming Your Body & Mind
    We focus on the breath so that we can observe the mind. But begin by giving your full attention to the breath. Try to make the breath something you find interesting. Be sensitive to how it feels as you breathe in, as you breathe out. Where in the body do you feel the sensations around breathing? And not just the air coming in and … 
  5. Good & Independent
     … We do our best to try to figure out what in the mind is unskillful and what in the mind is skillful. We encourage the things that are skillful, like heedfulness, mindfulness, goodwill, concentration. Things that are unskillful, we try to put them aside. Any hindrances that come into the mind, anything that gets in the way of your mind settling down right now … 
  6. Reflect
     … If your mind is the type that can do concentration as a separate activity—in other words, just pound the mind into stillness and then bring it back out and use it to analyze things—make sure you learn how to read your mind. This is the important issue in both cases. Read your mind: When does the mind need to rest? When has … 
  7. Figuring Out Concentration
     … So, as you’re getting the mind to settle down, you’re taking this habit of the mind that you’re already familiar with and applying it to the task of getting the mind to settle down. What do you direct your thoughts to? What do you evaluate? To begin with, you try to direct your thoughts to the topic of the concentration itself … 
  8. Mental Balance
     … One the one hand, you create a more spacious mind for yourself. If you’re stingy, if you’re always worried about hoarding things, your mind gets more and more narrow, more and more fixated on things, and it’s a very unpleasant mind to be in. But if you can learn to be generous, the mind begins to open up. It’s a … 
  9. Intelligent about Change
     … Here he was, the master of analogies, and even he couldn’t find an analogy for how quickly the mind can change. The twinkling of an eye is still slower than the mind when it’s ready to change. And that’s the kind of change you have to fight. Once the mind is in good shape, you have to resist its tendency to … 
  10. Put Some Heart into Your Practice
     … But also just the happiness that comes from realizing you haven’t caused any harm helps get the mind into concentration. When the mind is settled down and you want to see the mind in action, it’s best when you’re trying to do something good and you have been doing good things. The mind when it’s virtuous, the heart when it … 
  11. Restraint Leads to Freedom
    The mind, when it’s in a state of concentration, is expansive. Your awareness fills the whole body. The object you’re focusing on, the breath, fills the whole body. But to get there, you have to start out with restraint. The mind has to stay with the body in and of itself, and you have to put aside all thoughts with reference to … 
  12. Put Your Heart into It
    The Pali word for “mind”—citta—also means “heart,” which means that when we’re training the citta, we’re training both the heart and the mind. A lot of times the emphasis is on the mind, in the sense that we’re trying to figure things out, and that is an important part of the practice. I’ve heard some people say, “Don … 
  13. The Humane Quality of the Path
     … It’s not simply through force of will, it’s also through understanding what’s going on in the mind, understanding the ways the mind tends to hide things from itself, the ways it suddenly slips off seemingly without warning. As you get to know the mind, though, you begin to realize that there are warning signals that the mind is about to play … 
  14. Dualities
     … He says you get your mind quiet, and then you start contemplating things that come in pairs. He says, for example, black and white or fast and slow. Of course, he’s not talking about things outside. He’s talking about things in the mind—black states of mind and white states of mind, fast thoughts and slow thoughts—so that you can see … 
  15. A Home for the Mind
     … This is why mindfulness is essential to the practice. Mindfulness actually means keeping something in mind. It’s paired with alertness, which is what watches what you’re doing in the present moment. You need the two of them together. Without mindfulness, it’s hard to connect cause and effect, because sometimes the causes and effects are close in time and sometimes they’re … 
  16. Choiceful Awareness
    There’s a passage where the Buddha says that it’s possible to abandon unskillful qualities in the mind. If it were not possible, he wouldn’t teach it. It also is possible to develop skillful qualities in the mind. And again, if it were not possible to do that, he wouldn’t teach it. The underlying principle here, of course, is that we … 
  17. Mental Movements
     … Or you can focus on the pain itself and ask yourself, “Okay, what shape does the pain have in the mind?” It’s all in the mind. Pains don’t have shapes. But buried someplace in your mind there’s this preconception about the shape of the pain. Or watch the movements of the pain, its comings and goings. Why does it come? Why … 
  18. Take an Interest
     … You can use it as a foundation that gives the mind a stable place to stay with a sense of well-being. Then you can watch the mind, and the movements of the mind are a lot more interesting than the movements of the breath. But again, these are things we tend to ignore. When a thought tells us that this is right or … 
  19. Feel-Good Religion
    When you establish mindfulness in the right frame of reference, you’re protecting yourself and you’re protecting others. The Buddha said this one time. The image he gave was of a pair of acrobats standing on top of a bamboo pole, one acrobat on top of the shoulders of the other one. Initially, the master, who is one at the bottom, said to … 
  20. Strengthening Your Goodness
     … So be mindful to exercise the body, be mindful to exercise the mind. Be mindful to nourish the body properly, be mindful to nourish the mind properly. That way, you’ll be strong enough to meet all your duties and then some. In other words, you’ve got your own inner set of duties, what the Buddha sets out in the four noble truths … 
  21. Pleasure & Pain
     … It’s the movement of the mind out to those things that spills the oil. So, what does the mind want out of sights? If you keep these questions in mind, you can learn an awful lot simply by doing your best to maintain your state of concentration. You see this flow of the mind outside, and if you look for it enough, you … 
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