Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. A Sense of Direction
     … At the same time, it allows the mind to see itself clearly. Because when you get the mind well-settled in concentration, mindfulness and alertness come to the fore. You can see the motions of the mind and their results: when they cause harm, when they don’t cause harm. In this area, though, the harm is very subtle, it’s hard even to … 
  3. Respect for Emptiness
     … Those little moments of stillness in the mind: We tend to ignore them, we don’t pay them much attention. We’re so much more interested in running after things, getting the mind all stirred up, yet ignoring those little moments of stillness between what basically come down to moments of disturbance in the mind. We see the disturbance as interesting and the stillness … 
  4. What You’re Responsible For
     … Just focus on the mind and the breath right here, right now. Is the mind staying with the breath? If not, is the problem with the breath or with the mind? First, focus on the mind. Get a sense of what kind of mind you’re bringing to the meditation. Thinking about the future or the past? Put those thoughts aside. Too much energy … 
  5. Constructing & Deconstructing
     … You’re looking for disturbances the mind is creating itself. And the classic example is that when you’re getting the mind to settle down, you’ve got to talk to it. You evaluate the breath, think about the breath, evaluate the breath some more. You think about your mind, evaluate your mind, see how you might be able to fit them together. When … 
  6. The Path to Stream Entry
     … And the cause comes from within the mind. Basically what it’s saying is that whatever is caused by the mind is going to cease. That insight appears spontaneously when you’ve seen something that’s not caused by the mind, and it doesn’t cease. Whereas, everything else that was caused by the mind does cease in that experience. Which is why you … 
  7. The Primacy of the Mind (2)
    The Primacy of the Mind (2) June 22, 2021 All phenomena are preceded by the mind or the heart: the first verse in the Dhammapada. Last night I talked about how people tend to forget this verse when they come to meditation—forgetting the active role of the mind. Tonight I’d like to talk a little bit more about the topic because the … 
  8. Unskillful Thinking
     … They’re sure to spark greed, anger, and delusion in the mind. But if you learn to be really mindful, you can see the whole process of sensory perception: how sights come in, what the mind does with the sights, how sounds are sensed, and what the mind does with the sounds. You begin to see what an artificial process the whole thing is … 
  9. How to Straighten Out the World
     … So keep the breath in mind: That’s mindfulness. Then watch the breath as it’s coming in, as it’s going out: That’s alertness. You also need alertness to make sure that your mind is staying with the breath. If you realize that you’ve slipped off, just bring it right back. The breath is always here. It’s not going to … 
  10. Mindful of the Buddha’s Shoulds
     … right view, right resolve, and all the way through right mindfulness and right concentration. This is something that should be developed. So, these are things you keep in mind—there are some shoulds here. You should comprehend suffering, you should abandon its cause, you should realize the cessation by developing the path. Those are things you’ve got to keep in mind because the … 
  11. Right Speech, Inside & Out
    To get the mind to settle down, you have to talk to it. Remind it of why it’s a good thing to be here, a good thing to be with the breath, how you don’t have to be responsible for anything else right now. Take some joy in that fact. Give it pep talks when it’s discouraged, rein it in when … 
  12. True to the Teachings
     … That’s what we’re doing now as we try to bring the mind to concentration. When the mind is concentrated, try to balance that concentration to make sure it’s not just a dull stillness. Make the mind mindful and alert, so that you can actually look into your own mind to see where there’s still any falseness in there—in the … 
  13. Making an Effort
     … There are people who have all kinds of nice things outside but if the mind isn’t trained, they can still be very miserable: creating all sorts of trouble for themselves and for the people around them. So it’s good to reflect on the difference between a trained mind and an untrained mind. With a trained mind, you think about things that are … 
  14. Feeding Off the Future
    The reason we’re meditating, training the mind, is because the suffering that stabs at the mind is the suffering we create for ourselves by the attitude we bring to things. Now this doesn’t mean that the world outside is all perfectly okay and that the only problem is that our minds are poorly trained. The world outside can be pretty miserable. People … 
  15. The Energy You Broadcast
    The Energy You Broadcast November 2, 2020 One of the distinctive teachings of the Forest tradition is its emphasis on how proactive the mind is in its engagement with the senses and with the world. We’re not just on the receiving end of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations coming in. We don’t simply respond to the stimulus of other people’s … 
  16. How to Save the World
     … The intentions that shape your life come out of the mind, which is why the central part of the practice is meditation, like we’re doing right now: working with the mind, training the mind, in the same way you’d train a vine in a particular direction. You keep bending it, bending it, bending it, without letting it snap, but directing it in … 
  17. Five Precepts, Five Virtues
    The Pali word for meditation, bhāvanā, means to develop, to try to develop good qualities in the mind. Even with something simple like this, focusing on the breath: Take a couple of good long deep in-and-out breaths, and try to stay with nothing but the breath. In other words, the sound of the crickets, the sound of the wind, the sound of … 
  18. Subduing Greed & Distress
     … So when we talk about mindfulness and concentration, we’re talking about the same things here. Right mindfulness is simply how you get the mind into right concentration. When the Buddha describes the four jhanas in right concentration, he’s talking about the stages the mind will go through. But in the description of right concentration, he doesn’t tell you how to get … 
  19. A World Apart
     … In the same way, when you focus on the breath, you can understand the movements of the mind. And when the movements of your own mind are clear, then you’re a lot more in control. So you create this space to give the mind strength, to give it understanding, partly because you can then take that mind that you’ve trained and use … 
  20. Even Animals Can Be Trained
     … You hold on to your ability to get the mind into concentration, because this is the only way to get across. This is why we train the mind to begin with. As the Buddha said, the untrained mind is resistant. You try to get it to do the things you want it to do, and it’ll do something else. But when you realize … 
  21. Momentum Through Restraint
     … Now, that requires that you develop some good qualities in the mind that are conducive to the meditation: mindfulness to keep the precept in mind, alertness to watch your behavior to make sure it stays in line with the precepts, and ardency to stick with this—because there will be times when your precepts get challenged. Say you’re asked for some information that … 
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