Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. Preparing to Meditate
    Try to get the mind ready to meditate. Sometimes you find that it settles down easily: just focus on the breath and there it is. Other times, there’s a resistance. Something’s wrong. Sometimes what’s wrong may be the breath itself, but other times it’s attitudes you carry around in the mind. We like to think that meditation is a process … 
  3. Your Tranquility & Your Insight
     … How to regard fabrications? How to investigate them? How to see them with insight? Regarding them as fabrications basically means seeing them as events in the mind. Doubts come into the mind, restless thoughts come into the mind, lustful thoughts come into the mind, and we tend to just jump into them. They become little becomings. A thought-world appears, there’s something you … 
  4. Basics
     … That’s getting the mind in position. Now the problem with both the mind and the body in position is how to keep them there. It’s not that difficult to get them into position, but to keep them there: That takes effort. And particularly the mind, because the mind is so used to running around. The body can sit here perfectly still, yet … 
  5. Don’t Objectify
    We focus on watching the breath so that ultimately the mind can watch itself, because the breath is probably the closest thing that you could focus on outside of the mind. In the beginning, it’s a lot easier to stay with the breath than it is just to stay with awareness, because awareness is so large and vague and has such ill-defined … 
  6. Reliable Action
     … That’s why the mind is so hard to trust, and it’s why we have to work on it. This is why we develop mindfulness. Give the mind something to keep in mind, like the breath, and give it something to watch, like the breath, so that you can use your mindfulness and your alertness together right here, right where the mind and … 
  7. Duties in the Present
     … This ability to keep that thought in mind: That’s mindfulness. Sometimes we hear mindfulness described as present awareness, but actually the word for present awareness is sampajañña: alertness. All-around knowing in the present moment: That’s sampajañña. Sati or mindfulness is keeping something in mind: in this case, keeping the breath in mind. As you keep the breath in mind, the Buddha … 
  8. The Mind Isn’t Hot
     … The theme he settled on was, “The body may be wet, but the mind isn’t wet. The body may be wet, but the mind isn’t wet.” He repeated that to himself and, after a while, he became convinced that it was true. The mind is what? It’s awareness. It’s just aware. That’s what the mind is. It’s not … 
  9. Inner Strength, Inner Wealth
     … Then there’s the strength of mindfulness: the ability to keep all of this in mind, to remember the example of the Buddha and to remember how you can develop a desire to do what’s skillful and to abandon what’s unskillful. In other words, you keep in mind the lessons you’ve learned from others and you also keep in mind the … 
  10. Centered on Concentration
     … It gives the mind an anchor. The images in the Canon are many: It gives the mind nourishment, it gives it solidity, it gives it support; it’s a shelter for the mind; they call it vihāra-dhamma, a home for the mind; it’s medicine for the mind—all these good things. So you have to learn how to respect it. In the … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. Do Jhana
     … That’s mindfulness. But that’s not the Buddha’s mindfulness. His mindfulness is keeping something in mind—like keeping the breath in mind—and learning how to use these other qualities in a mature way: That’s how the meditation actually becomes successful. It is something you can succeed at. You focus your desire on the causes. You try to fine tune your … 
  13. Inner Wealth
     … Because as you develop the mind in this direction, you find that you enjoy your mind more and more. It’s a more livable mind. As we wander around, we don’t live in any one particular place all the time, but we’re in our minds all the time—so you want to make sure your mind is a spacious mind and a … 
  14. The Current News
     … To see the long term requires not only clarity but also mindfulness: the ability to remember what you did. This is one of the reasons why we practice not only being with the present moment but also developing mindfulness and alertness and ardency: keeping in mind the lessons we’ve learned from the past as to what’s useful and what’s not, being … 
  15. Staying True
    Focus the mind on the breath. Notice where you feel the breath in the body. Any spot where the sensation is very clear that now the breath is coming in, now the breath is going out: Focus on that spot. It doesn’t have to be at the nose. It might be in the chest. You can feel the rising of the chest as … 
  16. Alighting on the Dhamma
     … But if you do point those words at what’s going on in your mind—you allow them to point, you allow them to come into the mind, to illumine what’s going on in the mind—then you’ll benefit. You’ll be able to step back from things happening in the mind and see them in a new light. But as we … 
  17. Ask the Right Questions
     … They lie in your mind. This is why we train the mind. And so the source of a happy new year is here in the mind: the qualities we develop in the mind. There’s a passage where the Buddha talks about an auspicious day, or an auspicious night. It’s interesting that back in his time, when they used the lunar calendar, when … 
  18. Achieving Balance
    An important principle in meditating, in getting the mind to settle down properly, is to develop a sense of balance so that your desire isn’t so strong that it runs away with you or so weak that you don’t really care. Your effort isn’t so strong that it wears you out, but not so weak that you don’t accomplish anything … 
  19. Tranquility & Insight
     … However, thinking a lot gets the mind tired, which is why the Buddha said the best thing to do was to get the mind into concentration. That’s when you gather the cows in. After all, if the mind is tired from thinking, sometimes it’ll start thinking unskillful thoughts, and it’ll be difficult to keep them under control. So you let the … 
  20. Taking a Stance
     … In Pali, the word for the object of the mind, arammana, literally means a “support” for the mind. When you meditate, you want to find a good, solid support, because when your support is solid you can deal with whatever’s coming at you from whatever direction, whether thoughts inside the mind or things people do or say from outside. Your response — if it … 
  21. Gradually Sudden
     … Yet, when the mind begins to slow down, and you begin to see the steps by which the mind goes through its processes of creating thoughts and then dropping them, it all begins to make sense. Not in the sense that you agree with what the mind has been doing, but you can understand how the mind has been operating under ignorance. If you … 
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