Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. The Veils of Delusion
     … The process is what’s important because this process is what keeps the mind weak, keeps the mind dependent on things outside. If we learn how to see through these processes in the mind, making all these creations, we begin to see that the mind doesn’t need things outside. If it learns how to see through these things, take them apart, it comes … 
  3. Your Inner Mob
    Your Inner Mob September 6, 2005 The mind is like a town meeting: lots of people, lots of different opinions. Sometimes the town meeting is well run — people are reasonable, courteous — but often it goes out of control. People start shouting, and a kind of mob psychology takes over. If you’re standing outside the mob, it’s easy enough to see that the … 
  4. Approaching the four noble truths
     … The term for singleness of mind—cittass’ ekaggata—is sometimes translated as one-pointedness of mind: so one-pointed that, in some cases, people interpret it as meaning you can’t even sense your body or anything else around you. Of course, that wouldn’t work for a Dhamma talk. What the term really means is the mind is gathered together around one thing … 
  5. The Buddha’s Wisdom
     … The practice of concentration actually begins with mindfulness: The Buddha gives you new things to keep in mind, not just the precepts, but now you’re going to focus on, say, just the breath in and of itself, or feelings or mind states just in and of themselves. But it’s good to start with the breath because everything else revolves around that. You … 
  6. Two Hands Washing
     … For instance when you try to keep the mind with the breath, sometimes you find that the mind settles down very easily. They seem to fit. There’s very little problem: direct the mind to the breath and it settles down. Other times, though, it won’t settle down. You’ve got other issues going on. So, the first question you have to ask … 
  7. Close to the Heart
     … Now, this opening may happen suddenly or gradually, but the important point is that as you get to know the breath, get close to the breath, you’re also getting closer and closer to your own mind, closer to the more sensitive parts of your mind. As you deal with the breath more precisely, with more sensitivity, you find that the mind is finally … 
  8. Sober Up
     … One of the first steps is getting the mind to stay with one thing so that you can learn how to rely on it, and so that it can keep things in mind. When it jumps around from thought to thought, there’s a little bit of forgetting that goes in between each of the thoughts. And there’s a part of the mind … 
  9. Three Virtues for the Mind
    When we think about the precepts, we tend to think about the five precepts dealing with actions of the body and the words we say, but there’s also a list of precepts for the mind. It involves three things: avoiding excessive greed, avoiding ill will, and developing right view. This is part of what we’re doing as we meditate: developing these virtues … 
  10. Established in Full
    When you establish mindfulness, you’re doing two things. One, you put aside greed and distress with reference to the world. Two, you try to keep track of something here in the present moment. It can be the body in and of itself, feelings in and of themselves, mind states in and of themselves, but we usually start with the body and we don … 
  11. Single-minded Determination
    Single-minded Determination June 15, 2004 We’re here for the sake of true happiness. That’s why the Buddha left his palace and went out into the wilderness. He wasn’t satisfied with the happiness that comes in normal, everyday life. He wanted a happiness that was dependable, a happiness really worth all the effort that would go into it. All kinds of … 
  12. The Fires of Sensuality
     … As a result, that part of the mind just gets starved, starved, starved, so that it feels all alone. What the Buddha is doing here is giving some food to that part of the mind, the part of the mind that wants a happiness that doesn’t have to be tied down to these things. These contemplations will help incline the mind to want … 
  13. The Flowing Mind
     … You’re doing it all the time, as the mind flows out to the senses. It’s not that things from outside come in and stir up trouble in the mind. The mind is going out looking for trouble, looking for distraction, looking for entertainment. Sometimes it looks for things to get lustful about; other times, things to get angry about. It’s because … 
  14. Faith in Present Intentions
     … We can develop states of mind that minimize the effect of past bad actions. It’s one of the reasons why we develop limitless goodwill, limitless compassion, empathetic joy, equanimity—to make our minds enlarged. We develop virtue, concentration, discernment so the mind is not overcome by pain or by pleasure. When you’ve developed those qualities of mind, it actually can have an … 
  15. Building Concentration
    When we practice mindfulness, it comes in two stages. The first is simply the stage of establishing a frame of reference, as when we stay with the breath—that’s the body in the body—putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. This means that any other topic that comes up in the mind, we’re not going to go there … 
  16. One Thing at a Time
     … You see how the state of the mind depends on the breathing, and how the breathing depends on the state of the mind. Again, everything gets brought back to the mind. It’s simply a matter of learning how to use the acts of the mind and the results of those acts to train the mind higher and higher. This goes to show that … 
  17. Reading & Meditating
     … getting the mind really, really still, and then observing what happens in the still mind. After all, all those factors for dependent co-arising are showing themselves all the time, but they show themselves more clearly, more distinctly, when the mind is really still. You see their connections more clearly when the mind is really still. So you have to know, one, how to … 
  18. Proactive Mindfulness
     … That’s how you establish mindfulness. It’s in the establishing of mindfulness that good qualities in the mind begin to grow. You’re basically applying three qualities here: mindfulness, alertness, and ardency. Mindfulness means keeping something in mind. In this case, you’re keeping in mind the fact that you want to stay with the breath. Mindfulness is not just a passive observing … 
  19. Clearing a Space
    Practice would be easy if the problems of the mind were neat and orderly, if they fit into nice categories and came in nice, graduated steps—starting first with the easier problems and moving up gradually to the harder ones. That way the practice could be neat and orderly, too: You’d start out with virtue, and when your virtue is perfected you could … 
  20. Lean into the Present
     … The ease helps, but we’re here for the sake of seeing how the mind creates suffering out of things it doesn’t have to suffer over. There can be pain in the body, but the mind doesn’t have to suffer from the pain. There can be crazy thoughts going through the mind, but the mind doesn’t have to suffer from them … 
  21. The Buddha’s Currency
     … You see that you can get the mind still and you can really see clearly what’s going on inside the mind. You gain a sense of which qualities of the mind need to be developed, which ones need to be abandoned. You really see that the suffering that weighs the mind down most is the suffering that comes from within. The world may … 
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