Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. At the End of the Day
     … Seeing the larger picture like that, he asked, “Where does karma come from?” It comes from the intentions in the mind. So he turned in and looked at the mind. All the ups and downs in the world come from here: all the ups and downs in the mind. If you don’t tune in to the mind, there’s no end to the … 
  14. Skills Needed at Death
     … If you had no control over the mind at all, and if the thoughts in the mind didn’t make any difference at death, then that would make sense. But in the Buddha’s analysis, the mind is making choices at that point. The problem is, it’s often making them under the power of aversion. It doesn’t want to die, but it … 
  15. Concentration & Insight
     … So, you’re not harming anyone; you’re not developing qualities of the mind that will be harmful for you or for others. At the same time, you’re giving the mind a sense of pleasure that actually adds to its clarity. Most sensual pleasures make the mind clouded: You get narrowly focused on one thing and block out everything else. As a result … 
  16. Stay
     … We’re here training the mind. And so it’s not too much to ask to get the mind to be in position, and just try to stay, stay, stay right there. And if part of the mind rebels, you keep reminding it that there’s a purpose to this. It’s not just the staying, because once the mind can stay, then you … 
  17. Independent Values
     … The mind that gets pushed around is a mind that doesn’t have a foundation. You try to find places for the mind to establish its happiness but they crumble away. You try wealth, but wealth doesn’t work. Relationships: Relationships don’t work. They change. So the question is: Where can the mind settle down to a happiness that lasts? The best place … 
  18. Meditation as a Skill
     … But you realize it’s going to take a little time for the mind to settle down, so you protect the meditation. You’re very careful not to let the mind wander off and take up with other desires. You do what you can to help nurture a state of mind that’s willing to settle down, because sometimes even with the best breath … 
  19. Wide-open Awareness
     … But when you stay with the breath, the mind has a foundation. You begin to notice that when certain kinds of thoughts come into the mind they cause a tensing up. They really do cause parts of the mind to shut off from other parts of the mind. That allows for the mind’s tendency to deceive itself. It’s like when you were … 
  20. Dreams & Voices
     … As the Buddha said, the mind is more variegated than the animal kingdom. Every animal had a desire to become that kind of animal, so these are all possibilities of the mind—and your mind, too. There are lots and lots of things you have been and still could be. So you might use that thought to develop a sense of samvega. If you … 
  21. Safety
     … Sometimes you hear mindfulness defined as a wide, open state of mind that accepts everything that’s coming in. Well, that wasn’t the Buddha’s definition. Mindfulness is keeping something in mind, and it has definite boundaries if you want to make it right mindfulness, because you have three qualities that go along with this practice. One is mindfulness itself, the ability to … 
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