Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. Becomings
     … In this case, we’re trying to develop qualities of mindfulness, alertness, and ardency, to get the mind into concentration. You’re mindful of the breath coming in going out. You keep remembering to stay here. Try your best not to go someplace else. And then you’re alert. On the one hand, you’re alert to the breath itself: what it’s doing … 
  3. The Dualistic Path
     … And watch for the mind’s tendency to jump away. Usually it’s avoiding boredom or a little bit of tension. Sometimes even the slightest thing can send the mind off. Learn how to resist that habit. When you resist it, you can stay here. You begin to see, “Oh, there was that little bit of dis-ease that set the mind off, and … 
  4. All Four Tetrads at Once
     … It starts with being sensitive to the mind. If you haven’t been sensitive to the mind up to this point, you’re not going to get anywhere. As the Buddha said, the mind is right there all along: It has to be mindful and alert for you to stay with the breath from the very beginning. But sometimes the mind is the problem … 
  5. Samatha, Vipassanā, Jhāna
     … As for samatha and vipassanā, he explained those as qualities in the mind. He didn’t have a specific samatha technique or vipassanā technique. He said you needed both qualities to get the mind to settle down, depending on what the problem is. Sometimes you can lull the mind into a sense of comfort just by staying with one thing. That’s the samatha … 
  6. Peace of Mind
     … To begin with, it helps develop all kinds of useful qualities of mind, like mindfulness and alertness. You stick with the breath: That requires mindfulness. You watch the breath, you’re sensitive to the breath: That requires alertness. These are the two qualities you really need for any endeavor. In this way, meditation is like exercising your mind in the same way you exercise … 
  7. Develop Your Inner Observer
    “The mind is luminous”—that’s what the Buddha said one time—“and it’s defiled by incoming defilements,” which means the defilements don’t have to stay there. He says it’s because the mind is luminous that it can be developed. That means that when he’s talking about the luminous mind, he’s not talking about the awakened mind. He’s … 
  8. Dissolving Distress
    In the Buddha’s description of right mindfulness, he’s telling us how to get the mind into right concentration. The formula is this: You remain focused on the body in and of itself, ardent, alert, and mindful, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. That covers two activities. Keeping focused on, say, the breath, in and of itself: That’s … 
  9. Suffering is an Addiction
     … You have to hold that possibility in mind, and talk to all the members of your mind’s committee, because some are very fearful. Some are very close-minded. Some are very impatient. You tell them to try something new, and they try it for two or three breaths and say, “This is not working,” and they go back to their old ways. So … 
  10. Persistence
     … right view, right mindfulness, and right effort. They go together. We tend to think of mindfulness as simply being with whatever comes up, but the Buddha never defined it that way or used it in that sense. Mindfulness is a faculty of keeping something in mind that you’re applying to what you’re doing. It’s the active use of your memory. There … 
  11. An Island above the Flood
     … Where do your actions come from? They come from the mind, and when you’re dealing with the mind you want to look at things simply on the level of name and form: mental events and physical properties. So you’ve got ardency, alertness, mindfulness; then you’ve got the property of the breath, and you bring all those together. That forms your island … 
  12. Genuine Goodness
     … What are the best ways to bring the mind to stillness? What are best ways to gain a sense of well-being in the mind? Focus on the breath, see how it feels. What kind of breathing feels best? In focusing on the breath, you’re also learning about the mind. As Ajaan Lee says, the breath is like a mirror for the mind … 
  13. Guardian Meditations
     … So you look at the object of the lust, then you look at the fact of lust in the mind itself. When you can develop dispassion for both, then the mind can become more free. When the Buddha talks about dispassion, he often pairs it with the fact that the mind becomes unfettered, the mind escapes from its prisons that it builds for itself … 
  14. Dwelling in Emptiness
     … As we’re working on bringing the mind to stillness, it’s pretty obvious when you’re struggling with it, that the inability to get the mind to settle down is suffering. Once the mind does get settled down, there’s going to be a sense of ease. But that phase of being unable to get the mind to settle down: It’s good … 
  15. In Charge of Your Moods
     … If your mind is like sails on a sailboat, the breeze comes, the sails catch the breeze, and the boat goes wherever the breeze will take it. So, take down your sails. Let the wind blow right through—but you stay right here. You’re trying to develop a special quality of the mind: the mind when it’s still, at ease, solidly here … 
  16. The Skills of Truth & Calm
     … Well, you’re talking to yourself about the breath, about the mind settling down with the breath, trying to get them snugly together. Then you’ve got perceptions and feelings. You’re trying to create a feeling of ease, well-being. And you’ve got certain perceptions about how the body relates to the mind, the mind relates to the body. Where is your … 
  17. Anxiety
     … And then there are the perceptions, the images you have in your mind: the image of the breath, the image of the energy flowing. Actually, there are a lot of images running through the mind. If you dig around inside, you’ll find lots of ways in which your mind communicates with itself through the images and words that it sends back and forth … 
  18. Simple & Basic
     … The mind wanders off: Bring it back. Wanders off again, bring it back again. Make the breath comfortable. See if making the breath comfortable makes it easier to stay. This is all pretty basic stuff, but there’s a lot there. When the mind wanders off and you’re bringing it back, all the factors of dependent co-arising are in there—if you … 
  19. The Body In & Of Itself
     … That’s why the Buddha talks about giving your mindfulness a place to get established. This is your frame of reference right here. Mindfulness means the ability to keep something in mind. Right now you’re going to remember the breath, keep the breath in mind, keep the body right here in mind—in other words, keep reminding yourself that this is the world … 
  20. Evaluating Your Practice
    Evaluating Your Practice January 12, 2012 When you try to bring the mind into concentration, there are two mental faculties that do most of the work. One is directed thought, and the other is evaluation. You bring your mind to the object, or as they say in Thai, you lift the mind to the object, you lift the object to the mind. This means … 
  21. Good Heart, Good Mind
     … When Ajaan Lee explains the different factors of mindfulness, for him the discernment faculty is ardency, which is another word for persistence, realizing that the ability to get your mind to settle down is so important that you should keep at it regardless of how long it takes. And also find ways of making the mind want to settle down. That’s discernment in … 
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