Search results for: "The Mind"

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  2. Sober Up
     … And there’s a part of the mind that likes the forgetting—the irresponsible part of the mind, the part that doesn’t want to be held accountable. It’s just going from thought to thought for the entertainment value. Here it is, the mind sabotaging its own true well-being for a little bit of pleasure in the present moment—but it’s … 
  3. Ask the Right Questions
     … 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 they’d talk about 24 … 
  4. What to Keep in Mind
     … It comes from a strong sense of the dangers that can arise if you just let the mind wander wherever it likes, because your thoughts do have consequences. As the Buddha said, if your thoughts tend to go in a certain direction, the mind will go there, your actions will go there, your speech will go there. They’ll get bent in that direction … 
  5. Bad Friends Inside
     … And then you look at the mind, the state of the mind that likes to get involved with greed, anger, or delusion. Because often it’s not so much the object, say, of our greed that we’re really fixated on, it’s the greed itself. We enjoy it, we enjoy wanting. The same with lust: We enjoy not so much the object as … 
  6. Rehab Work
     … So the diseases we have in the mind are self-inflicted. To heal the mind, you don’t just let it sit there and do nothing, or be nonreactive. Again, think of this as rehab work. If you sprain your ankle, you can’t just sit there and leave it immobile. That’ll make it worse. You’ve got to find exercises to keep … 
  7. Mindfulness the Seamstress
     … You’re trying to get the mind to settle down. And for it to settle down, you need to have mindfulness so that you can make the connections between what you’re doing and what you need to do in order to get the mind to settle down—and also to develop the sense of skill. If you can remember what you did in … 
  8. Staying Still
     … the ability to get the mind to settle down and stay settled down. Ajaan Fuang would talk about the distinction between learning how to do the concentration and learning how to maintain it. In other words, getting the mind focused with the breath is doing it. Staying focused with the breath is the maintaining. The maintaining is a different skill. The first skill is … 
  9. Staying on Track
     … The important thing to realize is that whatever unskillful things come up in the mind, there’s always a skillful antidote. In some cases, the Buddha just indicates in a general way what it might be. In other cases, he’s more specific. But in either case, you can take his indications and work with them, realizing that if something unskillful comes into the … 
  10. A Doctor’s Strategies
     … So these are some of the things you can think about when the mind is unwilling to settle down. Or if the mind has a particular problem, you can sit there and watch it. When the mind is sleepy, what is sleepiness? How much of it is physical, how much of it is mental? You can pose that question in your mind. When the … 
  11. Independent Values
     … He says, learn some other skills—other ways of relating to the mind, relating to the whole issue of happiness—and then make the comparison. You find that the sense of ease and well-being that comes from getting the mind centered and still, seeing what’s going on in the mind very clearly, provides a much more satisfying sense of well-being. It … 
  12. Inconstancy
     … It forces you to get the mind even more still, encourages you to get the mind more still because you’re taking more and more seriously the Buddha’s statement that there is no happiness other than peace. Wherever there’s a disturbance, you want to get past it, you want to iron it out until you get the mind to the point where … 
  13. Breaking the Arrows
     … He realized that it is possible to experience these things and not suffer, because there is this other dimension in the mind that’s not touched by them. That’s why we’re meditating: to find that dimension, or if not to get all the way there, at the very least to develop in the mind the strengths needed to withstand the fact that … 
  14. Fire Prevention
     … This is why alertness is such an important part of right effort and right mindfulness to know what’s going on in the mind. There are parts of the mind that operate behind the scenes, in the shadows, and they’re ready to start a fire at any time. If you’re alert, you can see them and get them right away. When lust … 
  15. Past Intentions, Present Intentions
     … It’s an unpleasant state in the mind. If anger or fear, any of these things come up, think in other ways to counteract them. You can do that, too. So you’ve got lots of tools for dealing with the thoughts that pop up into the mind. Remember that the things coming into the mind are here either because of past intentions or … 
  16. The Saints Don’t Grieve
    The Saints Don’t Grieve January 28, 2005 One of the most difficult but important principles in the practice is what the Buddha called, “Learning to see renunciation as freedom.” For most of us renunciation seems to be a restriction — as when you’re getting the mind to focus on the breath. Before you make up your mind to do that, the mind doesn … 
  17. How the Dhamma Protects
     … But the power of goodwill weakens the bad karma from the past so that it doesn’t have so much of an impact on the mind. But still, that’s still not the best protection. The best protection is once the mind is solid and secure in concentration, that you start looking at where the mind still attached to things, where it hankers after … 
  18. When it’s Hard to Settle Down
    When it’s Hard to Settle Down January 17, 2017 When the mind has trouble settling down with the breath, you want to check to see whether the problem is with the mind or with the breath—or with your perceptions of the mind or of the breath. The first problem, the mind: Sometimes you have lots of issues that are unresolved, and simply … 
  19. Talking to Yourself
     … As long as the mind is going to talk, teach it how to talk well. You can’t stop the conversation without first turning it into a skillful conversation. This is when the Buddha gives instructions on getting the mind into concentration. Two of the factors of getting the mind to settle down are what he called vitakka and vicāra, directed thought and evaluation … 
  20. Fear of Death
     … The same thing applies to the thought worlds that appear in the mind as death approaches. And particularly if it’s an unpleasant thought world that’s appearing, you want to be able to stay away from it. So realize that this is just a construction of the mind, because at that point when the mind is in a position where it’s about … 
  21. The Arrows of Emotion
     … A thought will come into the mind and spark a reaction, but then we choose to keep repeating that reaction, repeating the pain, piling on more and more problems, more and more arrows, with the various ways that we comment on the pain itself, the original impulse, and the processes that the mind is going through. These are more and more arrows that we … 
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