Search results for: "The Mind"

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  2. Meditation as a Skill
     … It also presents challenges in learning how to get the mind to settle down and stay here as you try to figure out, when the mind is not here, how you can bring it back. That’s the beginning of the discernment you’re going to need in order to see through problems of the mind. The big problem, as the Buddha said, is … 
  3. What Are You Taking into the Future?
     … We talk about getting the mind into right concentration, into right mindfulness as a refuge: It’s not a place where we’re hiding away. On the contrary, it’s a place where we’re actually seeing what’s going on in the mind, and see how the mind can take anything and create suffering out of it. But if it has skill, it … 
  4. Training Your Moods
    Remember while you’re meditating that you’re training the mind. You’re giving it a task to do and making sure it sticks with it. We call it training for two reasons. One is that it is a skill that you’re working on here: the skill of staying with one object with a sense of well-being, developing skillful qualities in the … 
  5. Basic Breath, Basic Insight
     … If the mind wanders off again, bring it back again. Don’t get discouraged, because the mind is used to wandering. That’s what the word samsara is all about. The mind wanders around. If you were to keep a map of where your mind has gone in the course of the day, it’d look like something a child has scribbled all over … 
  6. The Field Hospital
     … The problem is, to get this higher pleasure you have to seclude the mind from sensuality. That’s not quite the Catch-22 it sounds like, because all you have to do is create a little space in the mind, a little space of time, the ability to inhabit the body, at least for a little while—to get the mind to settle down … 
  7. Skills for Dying Well
     … It’s a process that happens in the mind. Like everything else, it’s rooted in desire. Then, around that desire, you develop a sense of the world in which the desired object can be found. Then you take on a role in that world. That act of taking on the role is called birth. It happens all the time in the mind: Anytime … 
  8. Reflections
     … Sometimes in the texts they say that first you get the hindrances out of your mind and then you feel joyful and at ease, and the mind settles down. Other times, it’s in the process of getting the mind to settle down that you can fight them off. You give yourself one place to focus, one topic to focus on, like the breath … 
  9. Dhamma Intelligence
     … He had to make himself small, to content himself with watching the breath, seeing what could be learned about the mind as he got the mind to watch the breath. It showed itself in the distractions it created. You learn a lot about the inner workings of the mind when you can figure out why it likes these distractions. That means you have to … 
  10. Factors for Awakening
     … And I’ve mentioned many times that the Buddha’s instructions for mindfulness are basically his instructions on how you get the mind into concentration. You start out ardent, alert, and mindful, focused, say, on the breath in and of itself, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. When you do that really well, you get the mind into the four … 
  11. Yes & No
     … You can tell it, “Look, I’ve got to get the mind to settle down first and then I can think clearly about this issue.” As long as the mind isn’t settled down, it’s going to be hard to sort things out. That’s one way. In fact, if you have an important issue you have to deal with in your daily … 
  12. Inner Voice Lessons
    Inner Voice Lessons August, 2002 One of the first things you notice as you try to quiet the mind is the lack of quiet — all the chattering going on, all the discussions, the dialogs, the committee discussions going on up in your head, and sometimes all over your body. There seems to be never-ending chatter. Often our first thought as we start to … 
  13. Good Work
     … So the meditation begins simply with the quest to find a place where the mind can rest and disentangle that stress debt and let it dissolve away. Then you can get down to work, seeing where the mind fools itself into going along with mind states that are really detrimental to it, fooling itself into actually liking them. The mind does a big propaganda … 
  14. The Sport of Wise People
     … How is it that holding a picture in the mind will change the way you breathe? And what pictures are you holding in the mind? There’s that great series of questions that Dogen asks: “Is the mind sitting in the body or is the body sitting in the mind?” “Where are you in the body right now? Can you think of yourself as … 
  15. The Good We Already Have
     … And as the breath gets steady and still this way, the mind begins to take after the breath. It gets in touch with its levels of steadiness and stillness as well. Because there already are parts of the mind that are totally unaffected by anything. It’s just that they get covered up by all the other things going on in the mind. But … 
  16. Think Outside the Ruts
     … We have to learn to develop some dispassion for them, so that we can get out of them, because they tend to be like ruts in the mind. The Buddha uses the word “bending” the mind. You keep thinking in certain ways and the mind gets bent in those directions. Nowadays, we’d say they’re like ruts—like a rut in a road … 
  17. Beyond Natural Suffering
     … It’s the mind that doesn’t like the pain. As the Buddha said, beings are creations of the mind. If it weren’t for the mind entering into these physical elements, there wouldn’t be a being here. There wouldn’t be a body. It’s the mind that has all these desires. And if you think the mind is perfectly innocent, that … 
  18. Responsible Happiness
     … When the mind has a sense of well-being right now, then even the idea of acting in an unskillful way becomes very unattractive. So you’re changing the balance of power in the mind. The mind is like a committee, as I’ve said many times. We have all kinds of members in there. The members you’re proud of. The members you … 
  19. The Story-telling Mind
     … And when the time comes where the mind needs a rest, the mind needs to settle down, that’s what should be done right now. That’s the best thing you can do right now. And that way the narrative leads you into the present moment. You want to look at the attitudes you’re fostering in your mind and make sure they’re … 
  20. Lessons of Distraction
     … It’s creating ruts in the mind. Especially at the point when you’re facing death, the mind is going to be weakened either by the pain in the body or by the fear of what’s going to happen. An opening comes, in line with the mind’s ruts, and you’re going to run for it. If you don’t look carefully … 
  21. Stay
     … We’re here training the mind. And so it’s not too much to ask to get the mind to be in position, and just try to stay, stay, stay right there. And if part of the mind rebels, you keep reminding it that there’s a purpose to this. It’s not just the staying, because once the mind can stay, then you … 
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