Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. The Problem of Suffering
     … When the mind is really still, it can use those same three characteristics as tools for prying loose more refined attachments. That’s why the teachings are there. So keep this in mind. The Buddha’s teachings are best understood from this perspective, from this perspective of a still mind: Alert. Mindful. Inquisitive. In other words, when a disturbance comes up, you want to … 
  17. Endurance
     … You’re going to be looking at your own mind as the mind is looking at the breath. In the beginning, you want to pay most attention to the breath, and pay attention to the mind mainly when it’s not with the breath. When it’s wandering off, bring it back. Try to breathe in a way that will make the mind want … 
  18. Distractive Thoughts
     … But know that you probably will wander off again, because that’s the way the mind is used to operating. When they talk about samsara, it’s not a place, it’s an activity of the mind that wanders around. This is what the mind’s been doing for who knows how long. So take it for granted that the mind will wander off … 
  19. Establishing Priorities
     … You’ve got to keep in mind the fact that the mind has to be trained if you want to gain true happiness, and you don’t want to train the mind only when you sit here with your eyes closed. You want the training to be 24/7 because the mind’s potential to create problems is 24/7 as well. So it … 
  20. Do You Want to Stop Suffering?
     … You learn to watch your mind more carefully. This ability to watch your own mind in action: That’s the discernment that allows you to dig deeper and deeper and deeper inside, always with that thought in mind: There’s something that you’re doing that’s causing stress, that’s weighing down the mind, and you don’t have to do it. You … 
  21. A Positive-Sum Game
     … Each time you’ve overcome the impulse to go someplace else, there’s a small victory in the mind. The mind will come up with all kinds of reasons as to why you should move someplace else. As you learn to see through those reasons, that’s another victory. You’ve gained some insight into how the mind pushes itself around, how it lets … 
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