Search results for: "Mindfulness"

  1. Page 42
  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. Looking for Essence in the Wilderness
     … So that’s the quality of mind we’re trying to find. It can be with good things and bad things, and not make its happiness depend on the good things or bad things. We get the mind still so that we can see the actions of the mind as it’s creating passion or aversion around something. If we get the mind really … 
  12. The Flamethrowing Mind
    The Flamethrowing Mind September 4, 2023 As the passage that we chanted just now said, everything is on fire. Where do the flames come from? From inside the mind. The mind is a flamethrower. It scorches everything we look at, listen to, smell, taste, touch, think about. Then we complain that things are hot. We have to look around and see: Why are we … 
  13. WYSIWYG
     … And if you pay attention, you begin to realize that it reflects your mind state with a lot of sensitivity. At the same time, as you can learn how to control the breath, you see it has an effect on the mind state. The two are very closely associated, very closely connected. This is where you can get a handle on your mind, on … 
  14. Luminous
    There’s a passage where the Buddha says that the reason why we can train the mind is because it’s luminous. Now, luminous here doesn’t mean that it’s pure. If it were already pure, there’d be no need to train it. We can train it because it can observe itself. It can see what it’s doing, reflect on what … 
  15. Reflect
     … You have to keep those precepts in mind, and be alert to what you’re actually doing to make sure that your actions follow the precepts. This gives you training in mindfulness and alertness, which are the skills you’re going to need for concentration. When you practice concentration, you have to keep one object in mind, like the breath. And then you have … 
  16. More than Mindfulness
     … This, of course, is where the analogy breaks down, but you get to the point where the mind begins to really object to this “cutting off.” Look for that. That’s where the problem lies. So we’re practicing more than mindfulness here. And mindfulness itself has to be more than mindfulness: It has to be mindful and alert and ardent. The ardency is … 
  17. Maintenance Work
     … Right there is an important lesson in discernment, seeing how efficiently you can keep the mind in place. This is why, when they describe the levels of jhana, the deeper it goes, the fewer activities are involved, because you’re getting more efficient in keeping the mind in place, to the point where all you have to do is just be mindful and watching … 
  18. Bases for Success
     … When the mind goes out to an object, how does it go out? Or when there’s a lapse of mindfulness, what presages the lapse of mindfulness, tells you to look here, to watch out, something is going to happen? What choices does the mind make? You want to use your concentration to observe what’s going on. That’s the kind of concentration … 
  19. The Truth of Desires
    One of the reasons we try to get the mind in concentration is because it allows us to see the intentions that don’t want to be in concentration. If we don’t set up this intention that we’re going to stay here with a breath, one intention, one thought, one perception flows into another, and another, and another. The boundaries get very … 
  20. Abandoning & Developing
     … Other monks stay in monasteries and their minds are a mess. They have to go out and suffer some hardships in the forest before their minds will be willing to settle down. So you have to look at the pleasures you enjoy and ask yourself, “What do they do to me? What do they do to my mind?” That’s called having appropriate attention … 
  21. The Importance of Being Focused
    As you focus on the breath, it often helps to keep reminding yourself of how important the breath is, and why it’s important to be able to train the mind to stay with one thing. The breath is important, because after all it is the force of life. It’s what keeps the mind and the body together. And the quality of the … 
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