Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. Friends with Pain
     … That’s why the pain gets to the mind. The more you understand the pain, the more you can relate to it in a skillful way so that it doesn’t make inroads on the mind. The pain can be there in the knee but it doesn’t have an impact on the mind. The mind is perfectly fine because it’s quick enough … 
  3. A Concentration Diet
     … Our mind feeds off of these things. This is why when people go into sensory deprivation tanks, the mind starts getting really weird. It’s starved for food. And just as food outside can be either healthy or unhealthy, there’s also healthy and unhealthy food for the mind. Especially with intentions: Our mind has a tendency to feed off of unskillful intentions, and … 
  4. Anchored by Skillful Roots
     … They did survive, but at a huge cost, the cost of the skillful roots in the mind. It’s by nourishing the skillful roots that the health of the mind survives. Even if we have to leave this particular body, at least the mind has the potential for sending out skillful roots wherever it finds itself the next time around. It’s nourished with … 
  5. To Be Sure
    The Buddha had lots of names for the state of mind free from passion, aversion, and delusion. Nibbana, “unbinding,” is only one of them. Its meaning is freedom. That’s one of the attributes of that state of mind. Another attribute is one of safety. Refuge, harbor, the secure: These are some other names of that same state. That’s what we’re looking … 
  6. Complexities of the Mind
    We’ve come here to train our minds, and the human mind is the most difficult thing to train. There’s a passage in the Canon where an elephant trainer is talking to the Buddha. He comments on how elephants are very easy to understand. He says within a week after he started training an elephant, he would have learned all of that elephant … 
  7. Doing the Right Thing
     … Then to help the mind see clearly, we practice concentration and get the mind to settle down and be still for a while. You do whatever it takes to get the mind to settle down. This involves some discernment in noticing where the mind is obstreperous, or what it’s hanging on to so that it won’t settle down. You can figure out … 
  8. Like an Athlete in Training
    The mind is like the body in that it needs its food. The difference is that the mind doesn’t feed off of physical food. It feeds off of contact, consciousness, and intentions. Like right now, we’re meditating. We’ve set the intention that we’re going to stay with the breath. That’s our food right now, and it’s good food … 
  9. Letting Go
     … There’s a part of the mind that looks after the body, a part of the mind that looks after your social obligations, work obligations, family obligations; another part of the mind that’s dealing with your own desire for pleasure and entertainment. Any of these can come in. As soon as the mind settles down with the breath, part of the mind will … 
  10. Training Your Moods
    Remember while you’re meditating that you’re training the mind. You’re giving it a task to do and making sure it sticks with it. We call it training for two reasons. One is that it is a skill that you’re working on here: the skill of staying with one object with a sense of well-being, developing skillful qualities in the … 
  11. A Position of Strength
     … When the Buddha taught mindfulness, say, of feelings or mindfulness of mind states, he didn’t stop simply with recognizing that a particular feeling or mind state is present. The next question that comes up is: “What do you do with it? If you stick with this mind state, where is it going to take you? Is it going to be skillful or unskillful … 
  12. Assumptions
    The mind is a lot like the weather. There are some days when it’s calm, pleasant, a good person to be around. Other days when it’s stormy, erratic. And it’s important that you learn how to deal with the stormy and erratic days. If you wait until everything is nice and calm before you meditate, you don’t get really much … 
  13. Rhythms of the Mind
    Ajaan Fuang liked to say that the mind has its own rhythms, and you have to allow your practice to develop following the rhythms of your mind. This means several things. One is that each of us has a different rhythm. Another is that each person’s mind will have different rhythms at different times. Either way, we can’t force things if we … 
  14. Truth as Medicine
     … When he talks about mindfulness on its own, he usually means mindfulness coupled with alertness. He said it regarding mindfulness as a factor of awakening —he was talking basically about the four establishings of mindfulness—and that’s not just the ability to keep things in mind. It also includes having a sense of what’s skillful, what’s not skillful, watching what you … 
  15. Well-armed Efforts
    When the Buddha describes the different factors of the path and their role in the practice, he says that mindfulness should be the governing principle. And he explains that by saying that you’re mindful to give rise to skillful qualities, and when they’re there you’re mindful to keep them going so they can develop. In other words, you don’t simply … 
  16. The Goldsmith
     … That’s why, when the Buddha gives instructions on the factors for awakening, he says the factor that’s always useful is mindfulness: keeping in mind what you’re supposed to be doing. One of the things you want to keep in mind is that you’re trying to bring the mind into a balanced state of concentration. You have to figure out first … 
  17. The Dhamma Eye
     … Then toward morning, he realized that the real problem in the mind wasn’t things outside, it was the mind’s own misunderstandings of what’s going on inside. In particular, not understanding why there is suffering, what the mind does to create suffering, and if there’s a way to practice that puts an end to it. These were what he called the … 
  18. Vows
     … You’re trying to develop qualities of the mind. So you can ask yourself: What kind of qualities would you like to see? More patience? More circumspection? More restraint? More energy in the practice? More mindfulness in your daily life? Looking at your mind in this way is one of the first qualities of a good determination, which is discernment: seeing what needs to … 
  19. Doing, Maintaining, Using
     … You’re here to get the mind to learn how to stay with one thing consistently. This is going to require that you develop your mindfulness, your alertness, and your ardency. These are three qualities mentioned in the Sutta on the Establishing of Mindfulness. Mindfulness means keeping something in mind, in this case, remembering the breath, remembering that you want to stay with the … 
  20. The Complexity of Pain
     … Because the mind’s tendency to dissolve into the pleasure—through lack of alertness, basically, and lack of mindfulness—is what makes it easier to be overcome by pain. Then the Buddha also says you should try to make your mind unlimited. That can be interpreted in a lot of ways. One is just realizing that you’re not the only one who’s … 
  21. Mindfulness of Death
     … The heedless are as if already dead.” There is a deathless element in the mind that can be found if you work on your meditation. If you develop good thoughts in the mind, good qualities in the mind, they can lead you to something beyond death. So make the most of them.
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