Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. Heedful of Ruts in the Mind
     … The thoughts that you have will lead to states of becoming in the mind; states of becoming in the mind will lead to becoming on the large scale. It’s there in the first verse of the Dhammapada: manopubbaṅgamā dhammā, manoseṭṭhā manomayā All phenomena have the mind as their forerunner, mind as their chief, they’re made of mind. Who does the making? This … 
  3. Riding an Elephant to Catch Grasshoppers
    The Thais have an expression, “riding an elephant to catch grasshoppers.” It’s a good image to hold in mind when you find yourself obsessed with minor things, things that are less important than the practice — and “minor things” here may in the eyes of the world seem major, but you remember from the point of view of training the mind to put an … 
  4. Mindfulness over Time
    Of the factors for awakening, there’s one that the Buddha says is useful everywhere, and that’s mindfulness. And of the factors, it’s probably the most misunderstood. You often hear that it means being in the present moment, totally accepting what’s going on. But then you look at the very beginning instructions in mindfulness of breathing. They talk about discerning long … 
  5. The Message of Mindfulness
    The Message of Mindfulness April 19, 2012 In the Buddha’s instructions for breath meditation, after you’ve got your body in position, he says to establish mindfulness to the fore. In other words, you make up your mind what you’re going to try to remember as you meditate, and bring that to the forefront. Make it stand out in your mind. In … 
  6. For What It’s Worth
    We focus on the breath to train the heart and the mind. In Pali they use one word, citta, to cover both what we mean by heart and mind. The mind is the calculating part, the part that reasons, takes things apart, tries to understand them. The heart is the part that wants true happiness, that wishes well, the good heart—and you’re … 
  7. The Mind Like Water
    The Buddha often compares the mind to water, flowing water, and it flows because of craving. All our defilements, all of our emotions, are like flowing water, and we have to bring them into check if we want to understand them, get some control over them. As the Buddha said, it’s through mindfulness that they come into check. It’s like a dam … 
  8. Expert’s Mind
     … That’s why we have the path factors of right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. In terms of right effort, you try to generate desire and stay firm in your intent to abandon what’s unskillful and develop what’s skillful. Then you try to keep that in mind. As you keep that in mind you find that the mind is ultimately able … 
  9. A Well-thatched Roof
    A night like this with a cold rain outside makes you think of that verse in the Dhammapada where the Buddha says if the mind is not well developed, it’s like a hut that hasn’t been well thatched. It’s going to leak. Rain can leak in. In the same way, when the mind is not developed, passion can leak in. When … 
  10. Basic Stuff
    When you meditate, you want to get your body in position and your mind in position. First the body: Face straight ahead, place your hands on your lap, and close your eyes. That’s it. That’s the easy part. The hard part, of course, will be to maintain this position. But try to sit comfortably. Then get your mind in position. Tell yourself … 
  11. Why Mindfulness
    Why Mindfulness August 13, 2010 You may have noticed that there are many definitions of what mindfulness means: acceptance, non-reactive awareness, a wide-open awareness. In fact, the definitions are so many that one writer has said that mindfulness is a very mysterious quality, one quality that perform so many different functions for the mind. But it wasn’t the nature of the … 
  12. Respect for the Mind
    Why do we show so much respect for the Buddha? Because he teaches us to have respect for our own minds, and two aspects of the mind in particular. One is our desire for true happiness. And the other is our ability to attain that true happiness. Some places you’ll hear it said that true happiness is impossible. “You have to accept whatever … 
  13. Attached to the Body
    We like to think that the mind is in charge of the body, yet when you look at the way most of us live our lives, it seems like the body’s in charge. We worry about feeding it, giving it a place to sleep, all these other things that we decide that the body needs: food, clothing, shelter, and medicine. And that’s … 
  14. Determined to Be Undefeated by Death
    Sometimes when you come to meditate and you tell the mind to stay with the breath, it’s pretty obedient. It settles down. It’s happy to be here. And sometimes it’s not. When it’s not, that’s when you have to be determined to get it to settle down. And there are four steps to a good determination. The first is … 
  15. The Path is Fabricated
     … That, the Buddha said, is a symbol for mindfulness—in this case, mindfulness of the body. So there’s a lot in the Canon to show that mindfulness is not necessarily an open, receptive mind state. Sometimes you are mindful to be open and receptive, but other times, you’re mindful to be very focused and doing your best to delight in abandoning and … 
  16. Informing the Whole Committee
    One of the strangest things about the mind is that it talks to itself. You’d think that if the mind were a single thing, it wouldn’t have to talk to itself. Everything it knows, it would know, without having to communicate. But the fact is there are a lot of different power centers or knowing centers here in the mind. It’s … 
  17. Healing Breath
     … Try to develop each of these seven qualities in your breathing, so the breathing can be healing and healthy both for body and for mind. The first factor is mindfulness. Mindfulness here means any of the four establishings of mindfulness, each of which entails three qualities. First is mindfulness itself, which means the ability keep something in mind. In this case, you focus on … 
  18. Strategic Friends
     … This way, you get a sense of the importance of training the mind. It makes a huge difference if you develop these qualities. If you train the mind—perhaps using the term mind is too amorphous. What is this mind that you’re training? Think of it more in terms of specific qualities. You’re developing mindfulness. You’re developing alertness, developing discernment, concentration … 
  19. Keep Your Spirits Up
    When you’re training the mind, it’s very different from training an animal or training a child. When you’re training someone outside, it’s very clear who’s the teacher and who’s the student. But when you’re training the mind, it’s not clear at all, because one part of the mind is training another part of the mind. You … 
  20. Mindfulness 2.0
     … Ardent, alert, and mindful, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world: This is how you get the mind into concentration. “Alert” means that you watch what you’re doing and the results that come from what you’re doing. “Mindful” means that you keep in mind what you’ve got to do. And ardency is the desire to do it well … 
  21. Mental Seclusion
     … You can focus your attention fully on the mind. In this way, we develop what the Buddha calls the heightened mind, the mind that’s not a slave to defilements, not a slave to the issues of the world, a mind that can lift itself up above. But to develop that kind of power, we first have to make the mind very small. In … 
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