Search results for: "The Mind"

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  2. No Happiness Other than Peace
     … You begin to take that for granted, that the mind’s got to move in order to have some pleasure. The things you focus on have to change, which means there’s no more pleasure in being there, so the mind has to change to keep staying happy. But again, things have to change in a very, very particular way for the mind to … 
  3. Solidly Established
     … This means that as soon as you catch the mind wandering off, you bring it right back. You don’t tell yourself, “Hey, you’ve got a whole hour. You can think about all kinds of things,” and then let the mind wander off as it likes. That doesn’t accomplish anything at all. It doesn’t make any real difference in the mind … 
  4. Space for Sustained Contemplation
     … Just keeping the mind quiet is a major task, to say nothing about digging down and understanding the causes for why we’re making ourselves suffer. Just getting the mind to settle down is a major project. The mind has lots of different traplines. In other words, you feed on all kinds of things. Just like hunters have traplines. In other words, they walk … 
  5. Staying Normal
     … It’s counterproductive.” The part of the mind that can pull back from an impulse: That’s where you’ll find normalcy. Even more so when you practice concentration, learning to keep the mind steady no matter what happens. Sounds come and go. Thoughts of the past, thoughts of the future, come and go. All these things come and go, but the mind stay … 
  6. A Flammable Mind
     … All the parts of the mind that were ready to flare up because they were so dry are now soaked with something wet and cool. When the mind really is solid in this state, then even though there may be sparks outside in terms of what you see or hear or think about, the mind just doesn’t catch. It doesn’t have a … 
  7. The Veils of Delusion
     … The process is what’s important because this process is what keeps the mind weak, keeps the mind dependent on things outside. If we learn how to see through these processes in the mind, making all these creations, we begin to see that the mind doesn’t need things outside. If it learns how to see through these things, take them apart, it comes … 
  8. The Taste Is Release
     … When the mind is nurtured by discernment, it gains release from what are call the effluents, qualities that flow out of the mind, bubble up in the mind, and create a flood that can often sweep us away: sensuality, becoming, ignorance. Those are the four noble dhammas: virtue, concentration, discernment, release. In other words, the instructions remind us that the whole point of this … 
  9. The Values of Stillness
     … With all too many people, when the mind finally settles down a little bit, their next question is, “Well, what’s next? What’s next? When do I get the discernment? When do I get the insight?” Actually, a lot of the insight comes in learning how to get the mind to settle down and then how to stay there. It’s in the … 
  10. How to Leave Meditation
    We hear so much about how to get the mind into concentration that we tend to forget the skill of how to leave it. Because these talks come at the beginning of the period, the skill in how to leave doesn’t often get mentioned, although how you leave concentration is relevant to how you get back into it. This talk basically is about … 
  11. The Path Requires Effort
     … And you have to respect the necessary work, because actually, in the process of getting the mind to settle down, you learn a lot of interesting things about the mind, just through this effort of coming back, coming back. You learn a lot of unexpected things about the mind. It’s easy to read books about Buddhism and say, “Well, ultimately you have to … 
  12. Grief & Regret
    Ajaan Suwat would often comment on the need while you’re meditating to have some respect for what you’re doing, because this is an important skill that we’re working on, and it’s really good for the mind. In the Buddha’s words, you need to have some respect for concentration. That means several things. On the one hand, it means you … 
  13. Inner Poise
     … And to do it rightly, to keep one thing in mind steadily, is really an important skill because it gives balance to the mind so that the mind doesn’t go floating off after things, doesn’t get blown around by things. It’s what gives the mind strength. It’s also what helps us live together with one another. If you’re paying … 
  14. Make the Most of This Breath
     … That’s a lot of good right there, because so much of the trouble in the world, so much of the trouble in our lives, comes from the fact that the mind starts wandering off and we don’t hold it in check. We start going wherever we want to go, thinking whatever we want to think. And the mind can take itself down … 
  15. Feeding Off the Future
    The reason we’re meditating, training the mind, is because the suffering that stabs at the mind is the suffering we create for ourselves by the attitude we bring to things. Now this doesn’t mean that the world outside is all perfectly okay and that the only problem is that our minds are poorly trained. The world outside can be pretty miserable. People … 
  16. Mindfulness over Time
     … Alertness is very similar to what in education they call metacognition, where the mind is watching the mind. It’s the ability—say, when you’ve read a page—that allows you to go back and ask, “What did I actually learn from that?” You’re looking over the activity of the mind. And it’s because of that ability to look at the … 
  17. Admit Your Stupidity
     … I think I’ll stop having attachment.” The mind doesn’t work that way, because we’ll be seeing, as we get to know the mind, that it tends to feed. To think that you can simply give up feeding by realizing that food is impermanent is not very realistic. You have to understand why the mind is feeding on things that are unhealthy … 
  18. Truth Is Where You’re True
     … One of the early problems you run into as you meditate is the way the mind slips off without telling you. You suddenly find yourself someplace else, thinking about what you did last week or about what you’re planning to do next week, and you wonder, “How did you get there?” Well, it’s this ability of the mind to lie to itself … 
  19. Training Heart & Mind
     … In other words, you’re preparing both the heart and the mind for insight. But as I said, it’s not the case that you wait until the mind is fully concentrated to get some insight. You need a certain amount of insight into the processes of fabrication in order to get the mind to settle down. Why you’re meditating, what ways of … 
  20. The Mind's Immune System
    The Mind's Immune System August, 2002 We’re here to look after the health of our minds because the mind has a tendency to fall prey to diseases. There’s a passage in the Udana where the Buddha right after his Awakening surveys the world, and he sees everybody on fire with the fevers of passion, aversion, and delusion. So when we talk … 
  21. Scramble the Image
     … Well, try that with every image that comes up in the mind, once you’re well established and there’s a sense of well-being inside, so that you can step back from the movements of the mind and just watch them as processes. Instead of thinking about how you’re going to gain some pleasure out of this thought or that perception, simply … 
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