Search results for: "Mindfulness"

  1. Page 38
  2. In the Mood
    In the Mood October 20, 2011 When you meditate, you’ve got to put the mind in the right mood. Sometimes, focusing on the breath is the way to put it in the right mood. You take a couple of long, deep, in-and-out breaths, and it feels good. You can just feel the stress and the strain melting away. The patterns of … 
  3. Equanimity After Victory
     … When the mind has come to discernment—the discernment that comes as you peel away layers of fabrication on the mind—then you can arrive at equanimity. But you don’t stop with equanimity in the practice of concentration. You use that equanimity to look more carefully into the mind, to see the subtler defilements that come up, that are apparent when the mind … 
  4. Inner Discontent
    Training the mind is like training a child. You have to have a sense of when to be gentle with it and when to be strict. This is a sense that you can develop only over time—which means that there are going to be mistakes in the practice, times when you push yourself way too hard, you get frazzled, and you begin to … 
  5. Mindfulness Island
     … He says you do that by establishing mindfulness. Now, if you think of mindfulness as meaning just awareness, it doesn’t help you very much. But then you remember that when the Buddha used the term “mindfulness,” he talked about it as a faculty of the memory—the act of keeping things in mind. This is where mindfulness becomes helpful—because there are values … 
  6. Free for the Time Being
     … Because when you find yourself in a situation where you’re really tempted to break the precept, it’s best that the precepts be really clear-cut in your mind. They’re not long and complicated, with lots of exceptions and conditions. No killing. No stealing. No lying. Period. It’s easy to keep in mind. So you need mindfulness, you need alertness so … 
  7. Space for Sustained Contemplation
     … Which, if you do that, shows what’s going on in the mind. The mind itself is not responsible, and an irresponsible mind can’t settle into concentration. So we want to be admirable friends for one another—in other words, be good examples for one another and respect one another’s space. As I said, our inner space has a lot of problems … 
  8. A Foundation for Restraint
     … Once the mind has settled down, you want to protect it. The big destroyer of your concentration, the big destroyer of your mindfulness, is this tendency to want to go feeding off sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations the way you had been in the past, bringing more things back to clutter up this home of the mind. So watch out for that. Try … 
  9. The Time & Place to Let Go
     … The mind isn’t ready for it. The mind needs to be cared for. The mind needs to be looked after.” It’s your most important tool, so you treat it well. Like right now: This is a time for getting the mind to be still. It’s not a time to be thinking about issues at home, issues at work, tomorrow or the … 
  10. The Sport of Wise People
     … How is it that holding a picture in the mind will change the way you breathe? And what pictures are you holding in the mind? There’s that great series of questions that Dogen asks: “Is the mind sitting in the body or is the body sitting in the mind?” “Where are you in the body right now? Can you think of yourself as … 
  11. Remarkable Qualities
     … If you bring the right qualities of mind to it, it’s going to turn into something remarkable, a real home for the mind, something you can really depend on, to carry you through all kinds of difficulties. The Pali word for meditation, bhavana, means to develop. It’s in developing the qualities of mind that we bring to the breath that the breath … 
  12. Stick to Your Duties
     … getting the mind to settle down, getting the mind to be clear, mindful, alert, ardent, and then using those qualities to find a sense of well-being in the present moment. You become a better judge of when stress comes, even in the concentration itself. If the mind hasn’t settled down like this, your sense of what constitutes stress and what constitutes pleasure … 
  13. There’s Work to Be Done
     … There are certain qualities of mind that you’ve got to develop in order to get the mind to settle down. You start with the instructions on right mindfulness: that you keep track of either the body in and of itself, feelings, mind-states, or mental qualities in and of themselves. The Buddha mainly recommends starting with the body. At the same time, you … 
  14. The Quality of Your Awareness
     … We follow that trail deeper and deeper into the mind until we find out what’s really causing all the problems. That’s how we find what we’re looking for. So it’s a matter of that quality of your attention. This is why we practice concentration. This is why we pose questions in the mind to learn about the mind as it … 
  15. Wake Up from Addiction
     … That’s a good thing to keep in mind, as food for mindfulness the next time around. As we’re practicing, we’re trying to gather up enough experience so that our mindfulness isn’t informed just by what we’ve heard or read. It’s also informed by what we’ve done that’s gotten results. And you want to remind yourself of … 
  16. Responsible Conviction
    Meditation is a process by which you develop good qualities in the mind, qualities like mindfulness, alertness, ardency, concentration. We do this because we believe in the power of the mind. The mind is not just on the receiving end of material events. By working on the mind from within, you can make big changes in your life, big changes in the world around … 
  17. The Steps of Breath Meditation
     … And the breath is the topic he recommends most highly, most frequently — because the breath is not only a place where the mind can settle down and gain concentration, but it’s also something the mind can analyze. It’s where all the insights needed for Awakening can arise — while the mind is being mindful of the breath, alert to the breath, and also … 
  18. Virtues Bright & Neither Dark nor Bright
     … In other words, they’re part of training the mind. You practice the precepts, say, as a way of expressing your goodwill, but at the same time you’re also using them to develop your mindfulness, your ardency, your alertness. Those are qualities you’re going to need as you practice mindfulness, and especially the kind of mindfulness that leads to concentration. Mindfulness, of … 
  19. A Graduated Discourse
     … We do that by training the mind, developing mindfulness, alertness, ardency as we try to stay with the breath, stay with the events in the mind in the present moment. Mindfulness is not just watching things coming and going. It’s remembering what’s skillful and what’s not skillful, so that when you recognize what’s coming up through your alertness, you’ve … 
  20. Delusion Concentration
     … Remember that the pleasure is created by the flow of the breath, the stillness of the mind, working together. Both of these conditions depend on the focus of your mind on the breath, alert and mindful. You don’t want to drop your alertness; you don’t want to drop your mindfulness, because that’s what happens in delusion concentration. You’re not very … 
  21. 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 … 
  22. Load next page...