Search results for: "The Mind"

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  2. Overcoming Obstacles
     … strengthening your powers of concentration, giving the mind a comfortable place to stay in the present moment, a place where it can stay at home, feel at home, gain nourishment. We got this practice, and yet the mind keeps finding other things to get in the way. It wanders off in the search of interesting sensual pleasures or it gets worked up from being … 
  3. Purity
     … Where do your actions come from? They come from the mind. Is your mind well-trained? If not yet, then you’ve got work to do. These are some ways of thinking that get the mind in the right mood to practice. You think about the mind, you think about the breath, you make adjustments. But there will come a point where the mind … 
  4. Good Fences
     … He looked at them in terms of the mind state from which they came and the actions to which they led. If they came from sensuality, ill will, or thoughts of harmfulness, they were going to put bad ruts in the mind. Or in his image, they would bend the mind in a particular direction. The more you allow yourself to think those thoughts … 
  5. Descartes’ Error
     … setting you in the right direction, observing what works and what doesn’t work, keeping the mind on the path. So when you find the mind thinking, ask yourself, “Exactly where is this leading to? Just more proliferation? Or is it leading to more stripping away, peeling away? Exposing things in the mind that have remained hidden up to now?” You have that choice.
  6. Cleanliness is Next to Mindfulness
     … So it’s not only when you’re sitting with your eyes closed that important things can occur to the mind, important insights can come, or that the mind can gather into one. It’s amazing. Sometimes the mind can really get concentrated while you’re just doing a chore if you approach the chore with the proper respect. So remember that this tree … 
  7. An Auspicious Day
     … That’s where the body and the mind meet. If you want to observe the body and to observe the mind, the breath is a good place to stay, because you can see influences coming from both directions: the ways in which feelings in the body influence the mind, and the ways the acts of the mind have an impact on the body. Try … 
  8. Reclaiming the Breath
     … A lot of good things can happen for the mind as it begins to settle back in here and develop a sense of belonging here. It gains a good foundation in the body—and it gets more and more familiar with the foundation it has inside the mind. There is that part of the mind that just observes without commenting on things, without giving … 
  9. The Psychology of Virtue
     … It doesn’t mention the mind at all. The mind is the important part of the virtue.” When you look at the training rules, you see that they deal with intentional actions, so they sort out what intentions in your mind you should and shouldn’t act on, and they give importance to that. That creates a standard. When an unskillful intention comes up … 
  10. Feeding the Mind
     … Provide better food for the mind. This is what we do when we meditate. We try to find a source of happiness that doesn’t have to depend on other things. The mind can be reliant on itself. That’s the idea. We start by depending on the breath. Feed on the breath. Learn how to savor the breath. Give the mind something better … 
  11. A Trustworthy Mind
     … The closer you get the mind to being genuinely One, the more value it has—the kind of thing you’d actually like to give as a gift. It’s not when you have lots of different thoughts and lots of different ideas that the mind has great value. It’s like having a fruit. If the market is full of that particular kind … 
  12. Insight Is a Judgment Call
     … We fool ourselves, and part of the mind likes to be fooled. But there should be another part of the mind that says, “I’ve had enough. I want something better.” That’s the part of the mind you want to listen to. That’s the part of the mind that’ll get you to release. Because that’s what release is: the mind … 
  13. Three Levels of Concentration
     … This is where the mind grows fairly peaceful, but at this stage it can easily lose its focus. As I said, with momentary concentration, the problem is that it can’t withstand displeasure. Well, the problem with access concentration is that it can’t withstand pleasure. It loses focus when it runs into real pleasure. This is the way the mind normally is. It … 
  14. Your Higher Power
     … The way we breathe is going to have an impact both on the body and on the mind. And you’re reclaiming the breath. Otherwise your greed, aversion, and delusion, your fear and your lust—these attitudes in the mind, these emotions of the mind—come and take over. They take over the breath. They have their way of making you breathe so that … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. Time to Heal
    We come out to a place like this because it gives the mind a chance to look at itself without all of the distractions that get in the way when we’re living with other people. Even though there are other people around here, our main purpose in being here is to take care of whatever duties we have to do in the course … 
  17. Keep the Mind from Wandering
     … It’s an activity, something the mind does. We think of it mainly as what the mind does as it goes from one life to the next, but it’s a basic principle in the Buddha’s teachings that the larger patterns can be seen here in the smaller patterns: what the mind is doing from one moment to the next—and particularly how … 
  18. An Examined Life
     … They were much more in charge of the situation than those who hadn’t meditated, because they’d learned to allow the mind to grow quiet and to be comfortable with the quietness of the mind. People like this don’t keep running away from it, because they’ve realized that when the mind is quiet, it’s not a vacuum. It’s actually … 
  19. The Problem of Suffering
     … The quieter the mind becomes, the less oxygen it uses and the less in-and-out breathing you’re going to need. Think of all the pores in your skin opening up. The oxygen exchange at the skin is enough to keep you going. These are the first steps in getting the mind to settle down, to put it in a place where it … 
  20. Contemplating the World You Create
    We focus the mind first at the breath because as you get to know the breath, you begin to realize that the mind opens itself up there, right at its attention to the breath. And that’s what we’re trying to understand. Our primary task here is not trying to understand the world outside. It’s trying to understand the worlds of our … 
  21. Objectivity
    Some people make a big deal out of the fact the mind is never totally objective, never totally neutral. From that they claim that since there’s no objectivity, everybody is entitled to his or her subjective opinion. Everyone’s entitled to do what they want, to define happiness as they want, and to search for happiness in any way they want, because, as … 
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