Search results for: "The Mind"

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  2. Serenity
     … In this way, you make the body more serene and the mind more serene at the same time. These are qualities that help give rise to concentration. Another way of making the mind more serene is to develop the brahmaviharas, the sublime attitudes: immeasurable goodwill, immeasurable compassion, immeasurable empathetic joy, immeasurable equanimity. These thoughts are soothing to the mind. In the beginning, you have … 
  3. Training in Right Resolve
     … Just working through the tensions in the body helps the mind to calm down. It doesn’t solve the problems in the mind, but it puts the mind in a position where it’s more likely to want to solve them in the correct way. When you’re feeling tight and irritated, all too often you want to go for a quick fix, whatever … 
  4. Look after Yourself with Ease
     … But, the Buddha says, if you think that way for a whole day and a whole night, it may not lead to unskillful actions, but it will tire the mind. These are good ruts for the mind, but you don’t want to get too rutted in them because they are better things to get the mind into: i.e., into good concentration. Goodwill … 
  5. Glad to Be Here
    The Buddha’s instructions on how to get the mind in concentration start, on the one hand, with the reminder that you have to get past sensuality—your fascination with thinking thoughts about sensual pleasures. You can’t let the mind wander off in those areas. The Buddha says you should have a definite sense of the dangers of those places. That’s why … 
  6. Transparent Becoming
    Transparent Becoming December 8, 2007 The mind is used to wandering around. That’s what the word samsara means. It’s not a place; it’s an activity. It’s something you do. For most of us, it’s a matter of going from one desire to another desire. Then either you get what you want and then you say, “Okay, enough of that … 
  7. Oppressed by Old Kamma
     … In other words, just because a thought keeps coming into the mind doesn’t mean it’s true, doesn’t mean you have to believe it. After all, all kinds of random things can come in. The effect of past kamma is very evident. You’re sitting here determined to stay with the breath, and something else comes into the mind—completely unintended. Well … 
  8. Responsible
     … You’re training the mind; you’re taking responsibility in an area where only you can be responsible. You’re responsible for your actions, and where do your actions come from? They come from the mind. So, if you want to act in a responsible way, the mind has to be trained, because it has lots of unruly thoughts, unruly cravings. You’ve got … 
  9. Dispassion Isn’t Depression
     … Particularly, actions of the mind. This is why we meditate—and why, when we meditate, we focus on the mind. In other religions, they meditate on God or some abstract principle, but here we’re meditating on what the mind is doing, because what the mind is doing is going to make all the difference between suffering and not. What you’re doing right … 
  10. On Not Being a Victim
     … This helps you begin to see how much power the mind can have over shaping your experience. In this way you take the willing part of the mind, the proactive part of the mind, and use it to your own advantage. This is why appropriate attention is such an important part of the path. When you could think about things in terms of who … 
  11. What Should & Shouldn’t Be Done
     … They seem to be welling up from some deep part of the mind. Well, they may be coming from a deep part of the mind, but not every deep part of the mind is reliable. There are also some deep delusions in the mind. So it’s good to have some advice on what dangers to watch out for and what possibilities to look … 
  12. Nuclear Thinking
     … This is why, in the process of meditation, there’s a rhythm between periods when you want to keep the mind as quiet as possible, and others when you want to investigate and explore. There’s a rhythm to the practice. And the mind has its own rhythms, too. Sometimes it seems like nothing is going on in the mind; at other times there … 
  13. The Teacher Inside
     … So remember as you’re meditating, you’re not only training the mind, you’re also training the part of the mind that’s the teacher of the mind, that watches, evaluates. Of course, the teacher is sure to make mistakes, like teachers in real life. The first couple of classes that a teacher teaches may not come out all that well because the … 
  14. Protection Through the Practice
     … The Buddha recommends that you question anything in the mind that seems unskillful. At first the mind is going to put up all kinds of resistance. It’s like a politician. There are politicians that tell us there’s no way that there can be universal healthcare, so they just want us to put the question away and forget about it. If you’re … 
  15. Standards for Thinking
     … So learn to talk to yourself about the breath in a way that’s helpful, so that you can breathe in a way that feels refreshing, that releases a lot of the tension, that can gladden the mind when it’s depressed, can steady the mind when it’s all over the place, can release the mind from its burdens. These are things we … 
  16. Developing Absorption
    Sometimes we’re told that when we meditate, we’re trying to put the mind in a position where it doesn’t pass any judgment or is simply receptive. But I’ve never heard the Buddha say that. I’ve never read the Buddha say that. After all, the meditation is something you do; it’s something you develop. That’s the duty with … 
  17. Awakening Is in the Details
     … You can develop perceptions that are better and better, more and more useful—because what we’re looking for in the mind is very subtle. Buddha has a passage where he talks about how you can get the mind into concentration, all the way up through the fourth jhana, and then various knowledges will occur when there is an opening. The most important one … 
  18. Hypocrisy
     … But again, it’s the little things, it’s the little movements of the mind you’ve got to watch out for. So when something questionable comes up in the mind, don’t just sweep it under the rug. Look at it. Ask yourself: What is this? And don’t take the mind’s first answers or excuses as the truth. Question them. After … 
  19. The Trick to Staying in Place
     … That’s the mind in place. The hard part of the meditation is keeping the mind in place. You focus on the breath and, after a while, the mind gets bored. Something else comes up. Anything else can come up and seem a lot more interesting and worthwhile, and suddenly you found that you’ve gone with it. You’re hardly even aware that … 
  20. All Three Functions of Mindfulness
     … Remember to recognize things that are coming up in the mind and learn how to label them as “This is skillful,” or “This is unskillful.” That’s usually not the first thought that comes to us, of course. Lust comes into the mind, anger comes into the mind, and we just tend to go for it. We don’t stop to label it as … 
  21. Seeing Distinctions
    We’re trying to bring the mind to stillness for two purposes, and the purposes go together. One is that when the mind is still, there’s a sense of ease and well-being. The second is that when it’s still, it can see things clearly. These go hand in hand, because if you don’t have a basic sense of well-being … 
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