Search results for: "The Mind"

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  2. Truthful & Observant
    One of the Thai idioms for meditation is “making an effort,” and of course it means making an effort with the mind. There’s the physical effort to do walking meditation, the effort that goes through sitting long periods of time and dealing with the pain that comes up when you sit for long periods of time. But primarily it’s an effort with … 
  3. There’s Work to Be Done
     … First, physical pleasure, then breathe in a way that allows you to gladden the mind, concentrate the mind, release the mind. So you’re training yourself. You’re exploring the possibilities of this breath element in the body, and if you do it properly, it should keep you awake. If you start drifting off again, it’s a sign that your range of awareness … 
  4. The Dhamma Wheel in the Heart
     … But if there’s a part of the mind that’s blocking a thought, and you don’t know what the thought is or why you’re blocking it, then you approach it in a different way, because the reason the mind doesn’t know is because it’s hiding something from itself and it’s also feeling threatened by the thought. So as … 
  5. Subduing Greed & Distress
    The Buddha’s instructions on mindfulness are basically instructions on how to get the mind into concentration. They describe two activities: One is remaining focused on a particular frame of reference in and of itself. Like right now we’re focused on the breath: That’s the body in and of itself. The second activity is subduing greed and distress with reference to the … 
  6. Stand Your Ground
     … Either way, it’s not good for getting the mind to settle down in the present and see itself, because when we hit the wound, the mind recoils. If you run into scar tissue, you don’t really know what’s there, because it’s all hardened. So for the mind to be open to itself—particularly for your mindfulness to be able to … 
  7. Intent
     … There are large parts of the mind that don’t want you to see them. There are areas we’ve all blocked off. If we’re really going to understand the mind, we have to see through those blockades. And to do that requires that you have a sense, one, of a place where you can settle down and not feel threatened by what … 
  8. How to Straighten Out the World
     … It’s the mind that’s going places. Actually, the mind doesn’t really go any place, it stays right here as well, but it creates little worlds for itself here inside and then it gets into the worlds and loses its bearings. So as soon as you find yourself in a little world like that, just come back to this world: the world … 
  9. An Island above the Flood
     … Where do your actions come from? They come from the mind, and when you’re dealing with the mind you want to look at things simply on the level of name and form: mental events and physical properties. So you’ve got ardency, alertness, mindfulness; then you’ve got the property of the breath, and you bring all those together. That forms your island … 
  10. Stay with the Knowing
     … You’re trying to retrain the mind. And the hardest parts of the mind to retrain are the ones where you think you know what to say, you know what to do, and it’s going to be unskillful. And you don’t care. You’ve just got to stop the mind there and say, “Nope, not going to go there.” And watch it … 
  11. Agreements to Perceive
     … Another is the whole issue of thoughts coming into the mind. When a thought comes into the mind, a part of the mind will say, “I’ve got to look into this, to see what this is all about. Maybe there’s entertainment. Maybe there’s something important.” Learn to switch that perception around. Look at the thought as an energy that’s simply … 
  12. All Fabrications Are Stressful
     … Only then can you do the real therapy, analyzing what’s going on in the mind so that you can come to some resolution—finding out, “Where in the mind is the mind telling itself stories that are harmful, hurtful? Why is the mind so rough with itself?” It’s got lots of assumptions, and many of these assumptions go *way *back: back to … 
  13. Delight in the Path
     … Delight in the fact that you’re able to get the mind in a place where it’s no longer fooled by the false, dark values of the world. Delight in the fact that you’re able to develop skills in the mind that you never anticipated before. Seeing through a lot of the ways of the mind, gaining some mastery over them: That … 
  14. This Fathom-Long Body
     … how the mind relates to the body. All the unskillful things the mind does around its experience, it’s going to do first to the body. And most consistently with the body. So if you want to understand the movements of the mind, if you want to understand how the mind creates a sense of self, how it can begin to let go of … 
  15. A Rare Gift
     … Everything else you do comes out of the mind. Whether it’s things you do with the body, words you say with your speech, it all has to come from the mind. Your interactions with other people are going to be skillful or unskillful based on how well your mind is trained. So this should be the prime focus, your first priority when you … 
  16. The Current News
     … What’s going on in the mind? Don’t try to stir things up, just keep an eye out for it. This is what alertness is for, to be not only with the breath but also with the mind. That way, if anything’s going to come in and invade, you see it. And you begin to see the stages by which you get … 
  17. Staying True
    Focus the mind on the breath. Notice where you feel the breath in the body. Any spot where the sensation is very clear that now the breath is coming in, now the breath is going out: Focus on that spot. It doesn’t have to be at the nose. It might be in the chest. You can feel the rising of the chest as … 
  18. Your Hair Is on Fire
     … Still, how are you going to see which movements in the mind are going to be unskillful unless you have a skillful, still place to stay. This is one of the reasons why we stay with the breath. It’s a good place to stay so that when the mind moves away from the breath, you can recognize that something’s wrong and that … 
  19. The Complexity of Pain
     … The pain that really weighs down the mind comes from a lack of skill in our understanding. It comes from acts of the mind in the present moment. We learn this by trying to find a way in which we don’t have to suffer so much from the pain. Someplace in the back of the mind is the desire for the pain to … 
  20. Knowing the Body from Within
     … This is important, because the more things come to balance and stillness like this, the more clearly you’ll be able to see what the mind is doing right here—and particularly the very peculiar activity that the mind has of taking a sensation in the body and using it as a kernel for a thought. It becomes a little symbol in the mind … 
  21. At Home with the Breath
    One of the traditional terms for concentration practice is vihāra-dhamma, a home for the mind, a dwelling for the mind. The verbs for different states of jhāna show what you do: You enter and dwell. You make yourself at home. So here’s the breath, coming in and going out. That’s going to be your home for the next hour. And as … 
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