Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. The Five Hindrances
     … And one way to cut through that is to keep reminding yourself to look at these thoughts as events in the mind, part of a chain of causes and effects. Where do these thoughts come from? Where do they lead? Why are they taking over the mind? Sometimes it’s through your views. Buried some place in the mind is the idea that you … 
  12. Persistence
     … There’s right view, which helps you to know what’s, say, right speech or wrong speech, right action or wrong action, right mindfulness or wrong mindfulness. Then there’s right mindfulness, which keeps in mind the fact that you want to develop skillful qualities—the right factors—and you want to abandon the unskillful ones, the wrong factors. And then there’s the … 
  13. Questioning Everything
    One of the important benefits of concentration practice is that it allows you to question everything that comes in your mind. As you’re focusing on the breath, the only thoughts that are really relevant are the ones that help you stay focused on the breath, the thoughts that ask questions about: How is this breath? What’s going on with that breath? How … 
  14. The Power of Intention
     … We work on concentration so that we can see the mind more clearly. Why do we want to see the mind? We want to see what it’s doing as it forms an intention. All the qualities that are to be brought to bear on getting the mind into concentration—mindfulness, alertness, ardency—are focused on your actions, your intentional actions. Mindfulness keeps things … 
  15. In Your Power
     … And you bring the right qualities of mind. Start with mindfulness, but not just any old mindfulness. Start with right mindfulness, establishing mindfulness in the right way at the right places: right at the body in and of itself, at feelings in and of themselves, the mind in and of itself, mental qualities in and of themselves—ardent, alert and mindful putting aside greed … 
  16. Committed to the Breath
     … It’s near the mind, but it’s not directly at the mind. I remember, years back, reading a Tibetan lama saying that the breath is a very poor object for meditation, because what happens when you die? You won’t be able to focus on the breath—you should focus directly on the mind. Well, focusing on the mind is like observing wildlife … 
  17. The Uses of Fear
     … It’s a legitimate motivation for wanting to get your mind to settle down, for wanting to gain some insight into why you are suffering. You realize that if you don’t gain control over your mind, then when aging, illness, and death come, you’ll be at a total loss. At the same time, you have the confidence that if the mind is … 
  18. Self-Reliance
     … The same principles apply to the mind. You have to watch the mind, live with the mind, watch its dealings, see how it handles hardships, see how it frames questions. Look at what kind of questions your mind is asking and how it goes about answering them. This way you get to know your own mind. You learn how to read your practice to … 
  19. The Right Medicine
     … As the Buddha said, both samatha, tranquility and vipassana, insight, are necessary to get the mind to settle down in right concentration. He didn’t draw a clear distinction between samatha practice and vipassana practice. They’re qualities of mind you need to bring to the process of stilling the mind. Without any understanding of the mind, your concentration may be strong but it … 
  20. Blessings
     … When the mind can settle down like this, you realize you have your own space. So to protect it. Try to be mindful, alert, and ardent in what you’re doing. Mindfulness means keeping something in mind. In this case, you’re keeping the breath in mind. Alert means knowing what you’re doing. Breathing in long, breathing in short, deep, shallow, you know … 
  21. The Strength of Heedfulness
     … But all that thinking can be tiring, so the mind needs to rest from time to time. This is how the strength of mindfulness leads to the strength of concentration—when you’re heedful—because you know that if the mind gets tired, it’s very easy to slip back to your old unskillful ways. So the mind does need to rest, and it … 
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