Search results for: "The Mind"

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  2. Stretch Your Mind
     … When the mind is small, it can easily hold on to these things. When you stretch it, these things slip from its grasp. And then you can focus it, and you’ve got the right attitude to bring to your focus, because there will still be a commentary going on in the mind as you’re trying to get the mind to settle down … 
  3. The Ivory Intersection
     … Sometimes you think, “If I could only take care of everything else, if everything else got settled and tied down, tied up, then I could find some time for the mind.” But if you wait until that point, you’ll never get around to the mind, because there’s always going to be something that comes pressing on you. So you have to learn … 
  4. The Dhamma Channel
     … For the mind to see the refinements of the breath, the mind has to get very refined as well. So think of your awareness being refined right here. Then, when there’s less interference from the mind, you’ll find there’s less interference from the breath. Things grow very, very still, and you can see things clearly. The slightest movement that comes up … 
  5. Metacognition
     … Here the powers of observation are directed thought and evaluation, as you try to get the mind to settle down. Even though you’re trying to get past thinking, you need some thinking to adjust the breath and the mind so that the mind can settle down comfortably. It has to have a sense of enjoyment in its concentration object if it’s going … 
  6. Mindful of Your Potentials
     … There’s a potential for the mind to be skillful and a potential for the mind to be unskillful. If skillful qualities haven’t arisen in the mind yet, you can be mindful to make them arise. Then you’re mindful to keep them going. That’s the other thing you’re mindful of: Once something skillful is there, you don’t just let … 
  7. A Concentration Checklist
     … In other words, the mind settles down and suddenly you realize, “Hey! The mind has settled down.” The mind hasn’t been talking to itself for a while, you realize, “Wow! The mind hasn’t been talking.” And that’s the end of it. This is where you have to take a very matter-of-fact attitude toward whatever comes up. You can’t … 
  8. Virtue
     … The precepts carry through with this resolve in the area of your words and your speech, while the meditation carries it through directly in area of the mind. But it’s hard to divide the mind from your words and your actions. After all, who’s giving the orders when you do something? Who’s giving the orders when you say something? It’s … 
  9. Use Your Defilements
     … This is a skill that we’re working on, and it’s in the process of developing these skills and the path that we refine the mind. We get to recognize which defilements are useful, which ones are not. Like that desire to get the mind to settle down: If you focus on the results you want, you’re not going to get them … 
  10. True to the Practice
     … It comes through our efforts to understand what the mind is doing. So the first order of business is to settle down and look at the mind, to see what it’s doing right now. This is why we give the mind a place to stay, because if it doesn’t stay in the present moment, you can’t watch it. It’s like … 
  11. Verbal Fabrication
     … When the Buddha talks about directed thought and evaluation as factors of the first jhāna, they’re not just an unfortunate wobbling in the mind that can’t settle down yet. You’re using your inner speech to get things comfortable inside, to get the mind to be happy to be with its object by adjusting the object, adjusting the mind. Adjusting the object … 
  12. Guardian Meditations
    The Buddha talks of times when you meditate, you try to focus on the breath or any of the other topics in the body, but there’s a fever—a fever in the body, a fever in the mind. It doesn’t allow you to settle down. In cases like that, he says, try to find another theme that’s inspiring. Focus on that … 
  13. Sober Up
    Sober Up January 30, 2011 In English, when we talk about getting the mind to stay focused on something, we talk about its “settling down.” And in one way that’s right. The mind tends to be flying around all over the place. If it can focus on one object, it’s like a flock of birds that finally settle down on one spot … 
  14. Making Yourself Worthy of Trust
     … If you want to learn how to make the mind trustworthy, you set up an intention that you know is good—the intention to train the mind, the intention to be with the body in the present moment, so that you can get the mind to settle down in good, solid concentration. As you try to maintain that intention, you’ll see other intentions … 
  15. To Stay the Course
     … He focuses on the suffering that the mind creates for itself when it’s clinging. And where does that come from? It comes from the mind’s own actions. It comes from its cravings. That’s the suffering that’s weighing the mind down. Without that suffering, outside sufferings wouldn’t bother the mind at all. As you learn how to develop equanimity for … 
  16. Fabricating Equanimity
     … You breathe in a way that calms the mind, steadies the mind when it needs to be steadied, or gladdens the mind when it needs to be gladdened. So what the Buddha’s basically saying is that as you start out, you want to get your mind very, very even, so as you’re trying to figure out how to get yourself to settle … 
  17. The Ennobling Path
     … This practice goes against a lot of the mind’s habits. After all, the mind is a creator. It keeps cooking things up. Once there’s craving, then there’s going to be clinging. Once there’s clinging, then there’s the creation of these worlds that the mind likes to inhabit. It keeps forgetting that as soon as you inhabit them, they start … 
  18. The Value of Concentration
     … As soon as the thought comes into the mind, you’re right there. The hard part is in staying there, and for that you need to have a strong sense of how valuable it is to have a peace of mind, to have the mind centered in one place. You need to be very protective of what you’ve got. In the beginning it … 
  19. Unskillful Thinking
     … Do you want to identify with it or not? If you let the mind be ill, the mind is going to go around latching on to other things to identify with, and then it gets itself even worse off. This is why we’re working on the health of the mind. If you can learn how not to fall prey to your thoughts, you … 
  20. Why the Breath
    Why the Breath January 9, 2004 We watch the breath so we can watch the mind. The breath is like a mirror for the mind. When you look at the way you breathe, you can get a good sense of what’s going on in the mind. If you get really familiar with the breath, you can begin to detect things that are happening … 
  21. A Sense of Space Inside
     … We’re trying to put the mind in a position where it can observe itself. After all, the whole point of the teaching is that the suffering that really weighs us down is the suffering created by the mind itself. There may be things happening outside that we don’t like—and some of them can be really bad—but the question of whether … 
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