Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. Bojjhanga: Discernment Fosters Concentration
     … You have to understand the mind to a certain extent to get it to settle down. And to see things really clearly, the mind needs to be still. So you use what discernment you’ve learned in the past or learned from Dhamma talks and apply it to stilling the mind. Then, once the mind is still, you can start seeing things for your … 
  17. Determined to Stay with the Breath
    When you meditate, you’re making up your mind that you’re going to focus on one topic. And that phrase “making up your mind” means that you’re going to have to deal with all the different contrary impulses there may be in the mind. When you tell yourself that you’re going to focus on the breath for the next hour, what … 
  18. Don’t Clap Hands with Pain
     … As he said, once you learn not to cling, then even painful feelings don’t need to have an impact on the mind. The mind experiences them as something separate, he says. That’s the way it naturally is for an arahant. But we can work in that direction by training our minds to step back a little bit from the pain and comprehend … 
  19. Questioning the Hindrances
    There’s an interesting passage where the Buddha says that you need both tranquility and insight in order to get the mind into right concentration. The Pali terms are: for tranquility, samatha and insight, vipassana. You need them both for there to be right concentration. This goes against the idea you sometimes hear that the Buddha taught two very distinct kinds of meditation. One … 
  20. Perfecting the Mind in an Imperfect World
     … That way you find you gain greater and greater unity in the mind, greater unanimity in the mind. When the mind is working together like this, then it develops a lot of strength. If you have a lot of unexamined thoughts and unexamined assumptions still sloshing around in the mind, they’re going to drag you down. You can’t gain awakening simply through … 
  21. Strength of Concentration
     … So even though when concentration is defined as a strength, it’s said to be that you bring the mind to singleness of mind with the purpose of letting go, the question is: How do you first bring the mind to singleness? The Buddha’s definition is warning us that the purpose of concentration is not to build up powers. They do happen to … 
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