Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. Bodywork for the Mind
     … One of her friends had been studying meditation with another teacher who basically had told her, “All you have to do is just sit here and empty your mind. That’s what meditation is all about.” Ajaan Fuang was quite emphatic that “No, that’s not the case.” He said, “If you empty your mind, it’s like opening the door to your house … 
  3. Protection from Fools
     … So the skill you need is to be still, and keeping the mind still requires mindfulness and alertness to protect it: mindfulness to keep your meditation object in mind, and alertness to see how well you’re staying with it. Then comes discernment, the ability to see how you can maintain that still state in the midst of your other activities. For most of … 
  4. Right Livelihood
    For the mind to settle down, you need to give it space. This principle works on many layers. You need to give it a good space in the body. You need to give it a good space in your life. Because meditation isn’t simply a practice that you can fit into the cracks of your life regardless of what shape those cracks are … 
  5. Working at Home
    Working at Home August 13, 2008 A traditional Pali term for concentration is vihara-dhamma, a home for the mind. It’s a place where the mind can stay. But it’s also more than that. As with any home, there’s more to the home than just the bedroom. And there’s more to the home than just living in it. First you … 
  6. Training Your Inner Teacher
    We’re trying to find a special kind of truth inside ourselves, the truth of the end of suffering, a deathless dimension that can be accessed by the mind. The Buddha describes the steps in awakening to that truth. You start by finding a teacher who’s reliable, and you listen to the Dhamma; you pay careful attention; you try to remember the Dhamma … 
  7. Nuclear Thinking
     … Mindfulness and alertness are like teachers of the mind, and you’ve got to train them to be sharp and wise. When alert mindfulness fills the body, fills your awareness, then your random thoughts get very quiet. But your thoughts are sneaky. As soon as mindfulness slips a little bit, a new thought forms in the corner. Then it spreads out to fill up … 
  8. Hindrances to the Heightened Mind
     … Just because something comes up in the mind, they make us feel that we’re committed, that we have to think the thought through. There’s also the problem where one part of the mind says, “Well, as long as I’m trying to get the mind into concentration, I can’t let there be any thoughts at all in the mind,” and so … 
  9. How the Tree Leans
     … The same applies to the mind. You can be sitting here very still with the mind focused on the present moment. But the present moment keeps changing. The present moment you were focused on just a few seconds ago is gone. The mind is leaning in different directions. As the Buddha said, based on the thoughts that you encourage in your mind, it’s … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. Perceptions of the Breath
     … If you can think of the body as a large sponge or some other porous material, with lots of breath channels all over the place and then just hold that perception in mind, see how the body responds. These perceptions are means by which one part of your mind communicates with another part of your mind. The Pali word sañña, perception, took on an … 
  13. In the Mood
     … Sometimes that’s enough to get the mind to settle down. Other times, you need to think about other things first in order to get into the right mood to stay with the breath. The Buddha talks about gladdening the mind, steadying the mind, and releasing the mind. These are ways of taking a mind that’s a little bit out of balance and … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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