Search results for: "Mindfulness"

  1. Page 46
  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. Ups & Downs
     … So, when the meditation goes up, your mind doesn’t have to go up with it. When the meditation goes down, the mind doesn’t have to go down with it. Keep your mind—the observer, the quality of alertness—on an even keel. That’s how you see things that you never saw before. When Ajaan Maha Boowa talks about singleness of mind … 
  12. To Delight in the Path
     … As you gladden the mind, it keeps you going. It also helps develop your powers of concentration. That’s the next step. As the Buddha said, when you’ve worked on gladdening the mind, the next step is to concentrate the mind. And the mind is a lot easier to concentrate when it’s been gladdened by good things. When it’s concentrated, it … 
  13. Cut the Currents
    When you practice concentration, you have to gather the mind around one object—all the various strands, all the various wanderings around, trying to bring them together right here. The good thing when you’re focusing on the breath is that the breath is quite large. It has space for all the movements of your mind because it’s a whole-body process. When … 
  14. Effort against the Hindrances
     … It’s simply caused by a lack of mindfulness. Your mindfulness has slipped, you’re off someplace else. Well, you re-establish mindfulness back where you were before and then you try to make it extra strong. But there are a lot of hindrances that are not quite so innocent. They come with an agenda. They tell you how important they are, that you … 
  15. Moral Intelligence
     … We use mindfulness to remind ourselves that this is where we want to stay. We’re not going to wander off. Why? Because we know that if we wander off, there’s going to be trouble. If we allow the mind to wander into thoughts of greed, aversion, delusion or sensuality, ill will, harmfulness, then we’re going to suffer—and eventually other people … 
  16. An Island of Certainty
     … The mind, the state of the mind, is what we have to preserve. And that’s something we can know directly—as long as we don’t lie to ourselves. As Ajaan Chah said, one of the first things you learn as you watch the mind is how quickly it lies to itself. So as you look around and realize you can’t depend … 
  17. Enjoying the Path
     … For example, the directed thought and evaluation that are necessary to get the mind to settle down: Part of you says, “Why should we be doing this? This is thinking, and we’re not supposed to be thinking on the path.” Or, “This is the discriminating mind. We’re not supposed to have the discriminating mind.” There’s no way the mind can settle … 
  18. Admit Your Stupidity
     … I think I’ll stop having attachment.” The mind doesn’t work that way, because we’ll be seeing, as we get to know the mind, that it tends to feed. To think that you can simply give up feeding by realizing that food is impermanent is not very realistic. You have to understand why the mind is feeding on things that are unhealthy … 
  19. Impatience
     … Ajaan Maha Boowa has a favorite saying, “Wherever there’s mindfulness, there’s practice. Wherever there’s no mindfulness, there’s no practice.” You can be sitting here with your eyes closed and in the meditation posture for hours and hours, but if you’re not mindful, it doesn’t count as practice. On the other hand, you can be out walking around doing … 
  20. Worlds to Watch Out For
     … And the mindfulness you bring here: It’s important to understand that mindfulness is not just bare awareness. It’s the ability to hold something in mind; to keep something in mind. And one of the things you want to keep in mind is that you do have the power of choice. We had these chants just now, reflecting on the Buddha, the Dhamma … 
  21. Disposable Worlds
     … You’re creating a special place for the mind to settle in, so that it can be at ease in the present moment, so that it can be stable in the present moment. Once it’s stable and at ease in the present moment, then it can see things a lot more clearly, especially what’s going on inside the mind itself. The problem … 
  22. Load next page...