Search results for: "The Mind"

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  2. The Path of Happiness
     … As Ajaan Fuang, my teacher, said, “The practice brings you to the mind.” You begin to see the mind in action. What does the mind want? Basically, it wants happiness; it wants a happiness it can depend on. In fact, just about everything we do is for the sake of happiness—one kind of happiness or another. Yet the problem that’s one of … 
  3. Achieving Balance
    An important principle in meditating, in getting the mind to settle down properly, is to develop a sense of balance so that your desire isn’t so strong that it runs away with you or so weak that you don’t really care. Your effort isn’t so strong that it wears you out, but not so weak that you don’t accomplish anything … 
  4. Open Door Meditation
    There’s a good reason why we sit still with our eyes closed as we try to get the mind still: to teach the mind a lesson from the body. Not too much is coming in and particularly not nothing is coming in through your eyes, and there’s a lot less to distract you. Then you can tell yourself, that any thought that … 
  5. Insight in Concentration
     … This is where you run into a lot of interesting issues in the mind. People often think that you first do concentration, then, when you really get good at concentration, discernment comes. Well, a lot of discernment comes in the course of trying to keep the mind here in the present moment, because after a while different ideas will come up in the mind … 
  6. Gather ’Round the Breath
     … your awareness of the breath, your awareness of the mind together with the breath. You want your mindfulness to think about the breath, and to think about the mind, and your alertness to pay attention to both: How are things going with the breath? And to what extent is the mind staying with the breath? In the beginning, you have to go back and … 
  7. The Battle of Your Selves
    We sit here trying to get the mind into concentration, to get it focused on the breath, and all of a sudden we find it someplace else. By that I mean without any sense that we intended to go someplace else, it’s just that we’re there. This is a good lesson in how your self is pretty arbitrary, and how there are … 
  8. Watch What You’re Doing
     … Watch more and more carefully for the next time the mind is about to slip off. Look for the steps, so that you can see exactly where mindfulness lapses, and then immediately stitch it all back together again. You begin to see that the mind’s wandering off does have an intentional aspect. You learn similar lessons even as the mind gets more and … 
  9. The Adventure in the Present
    We’re here to train the mind, because as the Buddha said, it’s when the mind is well trained that you find happiness. If your mind isn’t trained, it’s like a puppy that hasn’t been trained. No matter how beautiful your house may be, the puppy can make a mess anywhere. In other words, no matter how well things may … 
  10. Death Is Normal
     … The values of the mind are, in some ways, inverse to the values of the world. In the world, the more things you have, the better. For the mind, it’s not the case that the more thoughts you have, the better. Actually, it’s better to strip things down, to get the mind centered around one thought. Think of a rare fruit in … 
  11. Insight into Pain
     … Now, to see the movements of the mind as it’s applying these perceptions to things, creating the bridges that allow stress to come into the mind: that requires a lot of stillness, which is why the Buddha said that genuine insights require really strong concentration. You can have insights about other things without much concentration—you see little movements in the mind here … 
  12. Happy to Be Here
     … Often we think that only after we get the mind in concentration will it be in a good mood, but that’s not the case. When the Buddha talked about it, he said that you start out with a sense of joy, a sense of gladness, and that provides a place where the mind can settle down. You want to be happy to be … 
  13. Appropriate Attention
     … Just focus on the affairs of the mind in the present moment. Just be aware in the present moment. Use the breath as your anchor to keep you here. As you work with the breath—trying out long breathing, short breathing, fast, slow, heavy, light—you provide yourself with a way of staying interested in the present moment. You’re not just forcing the … 
  14. Get Out of the Way
    Get Out of the Way December 7, 2010 The mind has its ups and downs, and we have to learn how not to get upset by the downs or complacent about the ups. This is where patience and equanimity, combined with conviction, are important elements in the path. On days when you’re down, when the mind is just not cooperating, realize that it … 
  15. Poison Your Fantasies
    Buried down among the many layers of voices in the mind is a voice that’s always asking a question: “What to do next? What to do next?” This is because the mind is active. It can’t just sit still. It keeps moving, moving, moving; planning this, planning that; trying to decide, when it realizes it has a choice, what the better choice … 
  16. Customs of the Noble Ones
     … I need to train the mind.” The only way you’re going to find happiness inside is by training your mind. Thinking that way gets you ready to settle down with the breath because the mind can come up with all kinds of reasons for not staying here. You’ve got work you’ve got to do; things you’ve got to plan—whatever … 
  17. Look at Yourself
     … You do it in a way that gets the mind to settle down, because the concentration is then needed for discernment. You can gain discernment from reading books, of course, without much concentration, just enough concentration to read. But to really see these things happening in your mind, you have to get the mind really, really still. At the same time, in getting the … 
  18. Practice All Day
     … Get a sense of which part of the body is more sensitive to tension in the mind, events in the mind, so that when the breath seizes up at that spot, you know something’s happened. You breathe through the spot, and then if you have time, you turn around and look at the mind. If you’re in the midst of a conversation … 
  19. A Unified Committee
     … But because of each of us has a different set of rules of order for how the mind works, the nature of the discussion tends to be different. This is why each of us, as we’re settling in, will have very different experiences as the mind gathers into oneness. It’s important, if you listen other people talking about their meditation, that you … 
  20. Battling Darkness
    Battling Darkness August 6, 2005 One of the standard analogies for meditation is that you’re going into battle with all the habits of the mind that create suffering. They’re called defilements because they darken the mind. As the Buddha once said, the mind is luminous, but these defilements come creeping in. If the mind didn’t have some luminosity, you wouldn’t … 
  21. The Triple Training
     … What we’re doing here is lifting the level of the mind, training the mind in a way where the three aspects connect with one another. Heightened virtue is meant to make it easier to get the mind concentrated. Heightened discernment is meant to make it easier to get the mind concentrated. Heightened mind helps with your virtue, it helps with discernment. And your … 
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