Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. True to the Breath
     … If you want to find the truth about the mind, you’ve got to stay right here to watch it in action. Even though it may move, you don’t have to move along with it. There’s a part of the mind that just observes the whole process of fabrication. The Buddha compares fabrication to streams in the mind that go flowing out … 
  3. Take Time to Evaluate Your Life
     … You’re going to need to be mindful, alert, and have the energy to deal with these things. This is one of the reasons why meditation is a good preparation for just about everything, because you develop qualities of mindfulness and alertness. Mindfulness: You’re being mindful to remember to stay with the breath. That’s what mindfulness means: holding something in mind. You … 
  4. Moving Between Thought Worlds
     … The suffering comes from the way the mind thinks about things. It creates impossible situations and then burdens itself with them. It doesn’t have to do that. Mindfulness, concentration, and discernment form the way out. And those aren’t just vague abstractions. Mindfulness is the ability to remember what you’re doing as you move from one state of mind to another. Alertness … 
  5. Heeding the Deva Messengers
     … The quicker you are at zapping these things, the more you’re going to see about the various stages that the mind goes through as it creates these states of becoming. This way, the mind won’t be so much of a mystery. Lack of mindfulness is what puts up walls. The practice of mindfulness and concentration tears the walls down, and then your … 
  6. Seeing Through Your Defilements
     … We’re here to get the mind, to understand the mind, and to see through these defilements—in other words, to see the tricks they play in the way they talk to us. One of the big issues in the mind is how the mind talks to itself, and then other voices slip in. You think you’re talking to yourself, when actually it … 
  7. But Not Sick in Mind
     … The desire to make the mind skillful, the desire to bring the mind to concentration: That’s part of the path. It’s not a cause of suffering. There will be some suffering in the sense that if you want the path to show its results and they’re not happening, that’ll weigh on the mind. But that, the Buddha said, is actually … 
  8. Conviction in Charge
     … You have to keep in mind the fact that you have to be very picky about what you choose to follow in the mind. When you choose the right voices, the mind can settle down: Choose the voices that say that it’s good to have the mind still. It’s good to have the mind solid and unperturbed. Because there are other voices … 
  9. Pain & the Middle Way
     … You devote yourself to what he calls the heightened mind: the mind in concentration. From that perspective, you can start understanding what’s going on as the mind gets involved in pleasure, in sensual pleasure, and as it gets involved in pain. It’s not impossible for the mind to be concentrated even though there’s pain in the body. This is something that … 
  10. Change
     … Intelligence is not only wisdom but also the ability to keep things in mind. You’re both wise enough and mindful enough to remember what is important to keep in mind: the things that will protect you. This is why it’s so important to remember that mindfulness does mean just that: the ability to keep something in mind. It’s not simply accepting … 
  11. Training like an Adult
    Training the mind is like training yourself to master a sport. Part of the training is focused on the practice sessions, i.e., what you’re doing right here as you’re meditating, as you’re here doing walking meditation, the skills you want to work on, because we are working on skills. A while back, I was talking to a group of meditators … 
  12. Past Intentions, Present Intentions
     … You develop mindfulness; you develop alertness. So you take the mindfulness and alertness you’ve got—everybody has some to some extent—and you work with it. Then the mindfulness and alertness begin to bear fruit, and you take that fruit and you invest it in more meditation time. After a while, the good states of mind begin to crowd out the bad ones … 
  13. Stretch Your Mind
     … So, seeing the power of the mind, seeing the power of the present moment, he then focused on his mind in the present moment in the third watch of the night. You see what he’s doing: He’s stretching his mind before he settles in. With the body, we stretch it forward, stretch it back, to the left, right. But with the mind … 
  14. Introduction to the Breath
     … Our happiness or lack of happiness depends on our own actions, and the word “actions” here means not only what we do with our body but also with our speech, and most especially with the mind. In other words, the mind can make a difference, that in spite of the situation outside, by training the mind it’s possible to gain a happiness that … 
  15. The Fool & the Wise Person
     … getting the mind to settle down and be still so that you can see these movements, even the slightest ones. And look into the parts of the mind that you don’t like to look into: Where is the dishonesty in your own mind? What are the games that the mind plays with itself? Often we would rather look everywhere but there, but those … 
  16. Attachment to the Body
     … The mind is something else. The mind knows. The image you have is an object of the mind. The sensation you have in the body, that’s an object of the mind. These objects of awareness are not the same thing as the awareness. See if you can make that distinction. Ajaan Maha Boowa talks about what an important milestone in his practice it … 
  17. Fire Prevention
     … And as you work on developing these qualities in the mind, right effort gets included in ardency in your right mindfulness. Then right mindfulness becomes the theme for right concentration. It’s in the fourth jhāna that mindfulness becomes purified. So these factors all help one another along. Now, because mindfulness tends to focus so much on the present moment, we tend to forget … 
  18. Constant, Easeful, Self
     … Try to make the breath easeful and be on the lookout for the next time the mind is going to wander off. This morning I was talking to someone who was dealing with the issue of whether—when you’re sitting there, pulling the mind back, pulling the mind back, pulling the mind back—that really counts as meditation. Actually, it’s a crucial … 
  19. Attention with an Agenda
     … This is why we establish mindfulness in the way we do. It’s done with a purpose. You’re fabricating for the sake of getting the mind into concentration, using mindfulness, alertness, and ardency to do that. Mindfulness is to remind yourself of what lessons you’ve learned from the past and also to remind yourself of what actions you’ve done, because you … 
  20. The Uses of Concentration
     … You simply have to be careful that you also develop mindfulness and alertness while you’re here. That’s another one of the purposes of doing 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 … 
  21. Right Exertion at Play
     … The nothing-but-letting-go model is based on the idea that your mind is basically pure. If anything comes up to disturb it, all you have to do is let it go, and then the natural purity of the mind will appear. But the Buddha never taught like that. As he said, the mind is capable of anything. It’s capable of good … 
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