Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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.
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. Training in Commitment & Reflection
     … If the mind wanders off again, you bring yourself back again. Try not to get discouraged. When you are with the breath, the question is, “Does the mind feel snug with the breath? Are you really sensitive to what’s going on?” Here again, you have to use some reflection. What kind of breathing would be easiest for the mind to stay with right … 
  14. A Path Under the Trees
     … In fact, the more you can find a sense of well-being by being quiet here in the present moment, the clearer things become in the mind. So you try to stay established on the breath coming in, going out. Then, as the Buddha says, you’re ardent alert, and mindful. Let’s take those in backward order. Mindful means you keep in mind … 
  15. Feeling & Intention
     … The word resolve here can also mean intention, a way of thinking that you set your mind on. In the second case, he talks about goodwill as a kind of mindfulness, something you determine to keep in mind. In neither case is it a feeling. In other words, we’re not asked necessarily to have feelings of warmth or love or even liking for … 
  16. Rhythms of the Mind
    Meditation practice is like medication for the mind. Just as there are a lot of different kinds of medicine, there are lots of different kinds of meditation. There’s a kind of meditation where the mind is soothed, where it’s nourished. And there’s a kind of meditation that cleans things out of the mind, just as there are medicines that nourish the … 
  17. A Meditation Karma Checklist
     … You begin to get a sense of the range of what kind of states the mind gets into and what you need to do to corral them back to get everything settled down. That’s the effort. Then there’s the perception. What perception of the breath are you holding in mind? What perception of the mind are you holding in mind? Where are … 
  18. Appropriate Attention
     … noticing it every time it happens and bringing the mind back. Try to be quicker the next time in noticing when you’re distracted. See if you can sense the warning signals, the hints in the mind that let you know that the mind is about to go someplace else. Try to be very, very alert. The powers of mindfulness and alertness are things … 
  19. Facing Pain Straight On
    When you give the mind an exercise to do—like focusing on the breath, contemplating the virtues of the Buddha, developing goodwill, or even some of practices that are said to be vipassana practice—they’re all actually concentration practices. You tell the mind to do something, you will the mind to do something—that’s the concentration—and then you observe it. That … 
  20. No Running Away
     … You want to run away from the issues of the mind: You find that when things are quiet, the issues have more space to come and confront you. So once you realize there’s no place to run away, what do you do? You have to turn around and learn how to deal with these things. If it’s something unskillful in the mind … 
  21. Lift Up Your Mind
     … And it’s in getting the mind concentrated that way that you can see things a lot more clearly. You can’t get the mind into jhana without at least some insight into how the mind fabricates things. Then as the mind settles down, it can see things more clearly—allowing you to settle down more deeply, more profoundly, and see things more clearly … 
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