Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. The Shape of a Circle
     … As long as you have that much of an intention, that much of a mental note, kept in mind, this is what mindfulness means: You keep something in mind. So keep this in mind, the part of you that can always stand outside of your thought worlds, the part of you that can always stand outside whatever the situation you find yourself in, whether … 
  3. Change Your Habits
     … But if you realize that the mind meditating right now is the same mind that speaks to other people, that runs your body, makes plans for the future and thinks about the past—it’s all the same mind—then the question becomes: What habits of mind are you developing as you go through the day? The Thai word for habit, nisai, comes from … 
  4. Heedfulness All the Way Through
     … When the mind gets tired, it slips back into doing unskillful things. So if you’re really heedful, the next strength comes along, which is mindfulness. Here, again, there’s the duality between skillful and unskillful. The basic task of mindfulness is to keep something in mind continually. The formula says to keep focused, say, on the body in and of itself, ardent, alert … 
  5. In the Land of Wrong View
     … Then you can turn that same exploring attitude on the mind. You want to see the mind doing unusual things. The mind is like a face. It has its micro-expressions, its micro-thoughts. The more sensitive you are to the body in the present moment, the more you’re going to see the little micro-thoughts, the micro-voices that come flitting through … 
  6. Purity
     … Where do your actions come from? They come from the mind. Is your mind well-trained? If not yet, then you’ve got work to do. These are some ways of thinking that get the mind in the right mood to practice. You think about the mind, you think about the breath, you make adjustments. But there will come a point where the mind … 
  7. A Good Place to Stay
    Each time you meditate, survey your body and survey your mind. As for the body, are you sitting straight? Do you feel balanced? You don’t have to be ramrod straight, but at least try to have your spine in alignment. If you’re sitting cross-legged, sometimes have your right leg on top and sometimes your left. That way, you balance out the … 
  8. Caring Without Clinging
     … But he said he established mindfulness so that his mind was not overtaken by his sense of dissatisfaction. When the students did follow his teachings, and did gain awakening, it’s not that he didn’t like that. He did like it, but he didn’t allow the sense of satisfaction to overcome his mind. What this means is that the mind has to … 
  9. Worries & Regrets
     … He also taught attitudes to go along with the technique for training the mind: reasons for training the mind, ways to think so that unskillful thoughts don’t come in and take over. In this way, you’re not leaving the mind empty. You’re giving it work to do. One important thing to think about is the principle of kamma, along with the … 
  10. Make the Most of What You’ve Got
     … He said, “Make your mind like earth. When people throw disgusting things on the earth, throw trash on the earth, the earth doesn’t pull away in disgust. “Make your mind like water,” he said. “When people use water to wash away disgusting things, the water isn’t disgusted. Make your mind like fire. When fire is used to burn trash, it doesn’t … 
  11. Cooking Food for the Mind
    Just as the body needs nourishment, the mind needs nourishment as well. And just as there’s good and bad food for the body, there’s good and bad food for the mind. As meditators, we try to learn how to make good food, now to nourish the mind so that its good qualities get strengthened. So as you’re meditating, you can think … 
  12. Love Me, Love My Defilements
    Love Me, Love My Defilements May 3, 2010 A concept that many modern people find very hard to accept is that their minds have defilements. They think that their minds are perfectly fine, with nothing dirty or defiling in them. People can be especially sensitive about this issue because they grew up with the idea of original sin, that they were somehow inherently bad … 
  13. Freedom from Fear
    Part of the formula for right mindfulness, and the means for getting the mind into right concentration, is “putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world.” In times when that’s hard, when you have anxieties about what’s going on in the world, fear about what’s going to happen, you have to learn how to get that fear under control … 
  14. Thoughts About Thinking
     … But actually, their ignorance of what’s going on in the mind is just a sign that their minds have lots of walls inside. They’ve learned how to cover up a lot of things below the surface. But if you get the mind really quiet, you can start seeing when a decision is made way before it becomes obvious, before it comes to … 
  15. Wealth Worth Holding Onto
     … So in sticking with the precepts, you’re getting the mind ready to settle into concentration complete with mindfulness, alertness, and ardency. Those are the kind of precepts that are pleasing to the noble ones, that incline the mind to want to settle down. As the Buddha said, the two things that are important for mindfulness and concentration are views made straight—i.e … 
  16. Only Natural
    Only Natural May 16, 2020 One of the main reasons for suffering is the way the mind talks to itself. Now, the solution is not to just stop talking. You have to understand the process of what’s going on as the mind talks to itself. Who’s talking? Where does it come from? Where does it lead? When you understand it, then you … 
  17. Cook Your Mind
     … In fact, all the other factors of the path starting with right resolve through right mindfulness are aimed at getting the mind in right concentration. As you do that, you begin to see how the aggregates function in the mind. The aggregates aren’t things. It’d be good if there were a better translation in English—the word khandha in Pali means “heap … 
  18. Inner Voice Lessons
    Inner Voice Lessons August, 2002 One of the first things you notice as you try to quiet the mind is the lack of quiet — all the chattering going on, all the discussions, the dialogs, the committee discussions going on up in your head, and sometimes all over your body. There seems to be never-ending chatter. Often our first thought as we start to … 
  19. The Power of Perception
    When you’re concentrated on the breath, you’re trying to hold one perception in mind: just the label, “breath.” Think for a minute about what the breath can be. It can be the feeling of the air coming in and out through the nose; it can be the feeling of the energy coursing through your body. It’s all part of what they … 
  20. Countercultural Conditioning
     … Breathe in ways that gladden the mind, concentrate the mind, that are conducive to releasing the mind—things that we usually don’t think about. He says that if you pay attention to your breath, it has lots of potential, and it’s going to have an impact on the mind. Then there are new ways of talking to yourself—first, to get the … 
  21. To Comprehend Suffering
     … If you can keep that in mind, you can overcome your knee-jerk reaction of wanting to push it away or to run away from it. This is why you develop mindfulness, to remember these things. Then you want to develop your alertness so that you can see exactly how the mind is acting and reacting around the pain, so that you can catch … 
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