Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. Appropriate Attention
     … You see this in so many of the teachings, as when the Buddha talks about the qualities you bring to mindfulness and concentration: mindfulness—keeping something in mind; alertness—watching what you’re doing; and then ardency—putting your whole heart in doing it well. Notice that alertness here is not just being aware of the present moment. We’ve got consciousness in the … 
  3. The Pursuit of Happiness & Goodness
     … In other words, they blurred the mind, they obscured the mind, clouded the mind. And they could lead to some very unskillful states of mind, both in the pursuit of the pleasures and in enjoying them. He realized that that pursuit was a dead-end pursuit, so then he went to the opposite extreme: He pursued self torture and self affliction. But he came … 
  4. Wherever You Go, There You Aren’t
     … So one of the first things he said to Ajaan Mun was a complaint: “My mind is all over the place.” Ajaan Mun said, “At least you’re aware of it. This is actually one of the things you learn in mindfulness practice: learning how to watch a scattered mind, a distracted mind, and recognize it as a scattered mind, as a distracted mind … 
  5. Patience & Tenacity
     … The lesson here, of course, is that your perception of the pain has a lot to do with how much it’s going to weigh down the mind. So change your perception. If you notice that there are periods when the pain seems to be bothering the mind more than at other times, okay, what happened? What perception went through your mind that made … 
  6. Right Resolve & Right Speech
     … If the mind is settling down with the breath, fine. Keep it going. Try to breathe in a way that’s comfortable. But if the mind is not settling down, you have to look into why. This is where you want to hear more truthful speech inside. What’s the mind focused on? There will be times when it’ll be embarrassed to admit … 
  7. The Awful Truth
     … What are these things that pull you away? We build up this stillness inside so that we can use it as a foundation to look at these tendencies in the mind. In the Buddha’s terminology, they’re called asavas—effluents, things that flow out of the mind: sensual desires, states of becoming, views, ignorance. These things keep fermenting in the mind, bubbling up … 
  8. Good Work
     … So the meditation begins simply with the quest to find a place where the mind can rest and disentangle that stress debt and let it dissolve away. Then you can get down to work, seeing where the mind fools itself into going along with mind states that are really detrimental to it, fooling itself into actually liking them. The mind does a big propaganda … 
  9. Peace vs. Clinging
     … That’s because it’s peace of the mind that gives well-being. Even when we’re happy in the normal sense of smiling and cheerful, it’s because part of the mind is at peace. Things fit together. Of course, there are many levels of sukha, some of them worth pursuing, others not. But the really important ones are the ones that relate … 
  10. What Are You Doing in the Present?
    Try to bring your mind in harmony with the body, in harmony with the breath. Gently settle it down so that the breath can come in and go out with a sense of ease. You don’t squeeze it too much. You don’t force it too much. Notice, when you’re breathing out too long, if there’s a sense of squeezing it … 
  11. Perceptions & Potentials
     … The Buddha compares concentration to a home, a dwelling for the mind; he compares it to good food for the mind, medicine for the mind. Ajaan Lee makes a further comparison: He says that when the mind has this inner sense of virtue, it’s well clothed. So, you’ve got all the requisites: food, clothing, shelter, medicine for the mind. You’re going … 
  12. Invest in the Breath
     … Things you never even noticed you had in your mind before now begin to become clear. So we try to learn both from pleasure and from pain. They can be used to refine our understanding of what our minds are doing. We realize that even with the limitations that come to the body and to the mind, we can still do good with what … 
  13. One Person
     … That’s the function of mindfulness: remembering. Mindfulness and concentration go right together. Without the mindfulness, there can be no concentration, because when you make up your mind to stay with the breath, you have to keep remembering each time you breathe in that that’s what you’ve made up your mind to do. Then try to make being here as pleasant as … 
  14. In & of Themselves
    The basic frames of reference for getting the mind into concentration are three: body, feelings, mind. And the Buddha has you look at these things in and of themselves: the body in and of itself, feelings in and of themselves, mind states in and of themselves, because otherwise, we go and create them into becomings, acts of taking on identities in worlds of experience … 
  15. Hope
     … The same, of course, with the mind: The mind can be changed. It may seem to have a tendency to make up its mind to do one thing and then do something else. Learn how to notice that and not get frustrated but, of course, don’t give in. Simply just drop whatever it is that distracted you, come back, and if the thought … 
  16. Unskillful Voices
     … As I said, when you start to be mindful of your feelings, mindful of your thoughts and emotions, you start seeing things that you don’t like. Some of us try to put them out of mind, and in doing so we can create a little area of the mind where everything gets shoved away. Of course, those things are going to eventually come … 
  17. Obsessive Thinking
     … When you can get sine distance from it, that’s when the mind can settle down. There are two ways of getting the mind into concentration: directed and undirected. The undirected approach is when you see whatever the mind is holding on to that’s not an object of concentration that you want, and you let go of it. The mind settles down on … 
  18. Use Your Defilements
     … And you have to develop good qualities in the mind if you take on the precepts. You have to be mindful to keep the precepts in mind, alert to what you’re doing, and ardent in trying to overcome any intentions that would make you break the precepts. Ardent also in developing the goodwill that nurtures your virtue. As you get more and more … 
  19. Chopping Off Thoughts
     … Tell your mind it has no business thinking about anything else. In order to keep the mind with the breath, you have to make it interesting, so explore what kind of breathing feels good right now: long breathing or short, heavy or light, fast or slow. There are no set instructions on this part. This is what’s up to you. This is what … 
  20. The Story-telling Mind
    The Story-telling Mind June, 2001 We’ve all read how the practice of meditation can dismantle our sense of self as we take a good hard look at the things we identify as me or mine. When you meditate you’re supposed to come into the present moment and drop all reference to the future or the past and simply look at things … 
  21. Be Bigger Than Your Pains
     … developing those skills—the mindfulness, the concentration, and the discernment. This larger state of mind allows you to be bigger than your sufferings, bigger than your pains, so try to keep this enlarged perspective in mind. One of the Buddha’s terms for the mind in concentration is mahaggatam cittam, the expanded mind or the enlarged mind. You can see things from a larger … 
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