Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 53
  2. Non-Verbal Discernment
     … If the pressure isn’t right, the mind won’t settle down. If there’s too much pressure on the breath, you feel confined. If there’s too little, you float away. So, how can you stay with the breath consistently? And how can you keep the mind happy to be there consistently? The mind likes a lot of variety, and you have to … 
  3. Practicing from Gratitude
     … These are things that come flowing out of the mind: greed, aversion, delusion, flowing out of the mind. Our desire to be this or that: That comes flowing out of the mind. Discernment, when it’s fully developed, as the Buddha says, can cut these things, cut the flow, and the mind is no longer flooded by suffering. This, too, is a gift you … 
  4. Persistence
     … Another use is that when you get really sensitive to the breath energy, you begin to notice that when a thought forms in the mind—especially when it takes hold—there’s going to be a little bit of tension in the body. It’s the mind’s way of using the body to anchor a thought so that you can look at it … 
  5. Happy to Be Here
     … That can overwhelm the mind. In a lot of ways, the mind lies to itself. The pleasure wasn’t all that much after all. Maybe there were some karmic consequences. You ended up doing some unskillful things to get it. And then with each of the sensual pleasures: It’s not pleasant all the way through. It can last only for a brief time … 
  6. Gratification
     … When you try to enjoy a nice sound or a nice sight, the mind embroiders an awful lot around the sound and sight in order to enjoy it, because those things are pretty fleeting. The mind has a tendency to advertise the sound and sight to itself, telling itself that this is really something special. This is something you really ought to pay attention … 
  7. Home Schooling Your Inner Children
     … Okay, this is for the mind. All the good things in life, all the good things in the world, come from the mind, and the mind needs to be trained. Otherwise, its greed, aversion, delusion, and ignorance will just take over, along with all the other members of the committee, and there will be nothing left of your meditation. Notice that not all of … 
  8. Delight
     … And as the mind begins to settle down, learn to appreciate the mind when it’s still. You can think back on times when the mind was weighed down, hemmed in by the affairs of the world, and how much better off you are here being quiet, just breathing—finding contentment in the skills that you can develop sitting with your eyes closed. At … 
  9. The Language of the Breath
     … How do you read the language of the mind? How do you listen to the language of the mind, the language of the body? On the one hand, you can learn lessons from outside, as when you have a teacher who’s teaching you the foreign language. But it’s not simply a matter of mastering the grammar. You also have to master how … 
  10. Discernment Is in the Doing
     … In the same way, when you get the mind really still, you can hear a lot of things in the mind, see a lot of things in the mind, that you wouldn’t have seen when it was running around. So it’s not just work, work, work in terms of right effort. After all, when right resolve becomes noble, it turns into right … 
  11. Virtues Bright & Neither Dark nor Bright
     … That attitude, the sense of well-being that comes from being principled, is really conducive to concentration because, as you’re going to get to settle the mind down, you let go of your ordinary thinking. The mind gets into a state where it’s more tender than normal as it’s beginning to get snug with its object but it’s not quite … 
  12. Choosing Not to Suffer
     … And you’ll find that once you put down the unnecessary burdens, there’s nothing to burden the mind. All the things that cause suffering to the mind are unnecessary. There may be pains in the body, there will be aging, illness, and death, but the mind doesn’t have to create suffering out of them. The first lesson in how not to create … 
  13. No-Tech Meditation
     … Usually when the Buddha uses that word, he’s talking about causes coming out of the mind. Craving comes out of the mind. Clinging comes out of the mind. That’s what we’ve got to look out for. We’re going to see these things in action as we fabricate craving and clinging, and ideally we get to the point where we don … 
  14. Firmly Intent
     … The Thai phrase for being firmly intent literally means to set up the mind firmly. You don’t want it to fall down. So set your mind on the breath. Set your mind on getting the mind to stay here, because we want more than just concentration. We want the discernment that comes from concentration and the release that comes from discernment. But you … 
  15. Balancing Effort & Patience
     … See what else arises every time there’s suffering in the mind, every time there’s stress in the mind. You can see this most clearly when the mind is most still. So you try to develop concentration and the other factors of the path. Then watch for suffering until you can see the cause that goes along with it, and then you can … 
  16. The Buddha’s Qualities
    The chants we just had are designed to get the mind in the right mood for meditating. We chant about the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha to remind ourselves of the values behind the practice. Some people have characterized Buddhism as a religion no need for faith. Well, there is an element of faith, an element of belief, believing that the Buddha was … 
  17. An Island in the Flood
     … If you have any doubts about that, you can talk to yourself a bit about why the mind needs training, and how all the big problems of the world come down to the fact that the mind is creating a lot of unnecessary suffering for itself, but it can learn how not to do that. This is how you do it. So whatever problems … 
  18. Mindful of Karma
     … What’s going on here? Why does the mind go for this garbage? You’re here meditating and all of a sudden the mind is off planning something else, remembering something else. Why? What’s the appeal? What can you do to think in new ways, to see that this particular line of thinking is not as much fun or as attractive as you … 
  19. Seeing Danger in Birth
     … Heedful in your concentration means trying to be as careful as possible in your efforts to get the mind to settle down: being alert, mindful, ardent; not just getting the mind to be still, but also watching the mind as it settles down. This way you can begin to understand when the mind does leave the topic of concentration, even if just for a … 
  20. Potentials
    As you survey the body sitting here right now, the mind right now, you’ll notice that there are lots of potentials: There’s a breath potential—the energy that can flow in different places. There’s a fire potential—the warmth. There’s a potential for coolness—which is water. A potential for solidity—earth. A potential for space. The mind has potentials … 
  21. 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 … 
  22. Load next page...