Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. Right Effort
     … Hold that perception in mind. That’s one way of using perception to put yourself in the right mind state for dealing with whatever the defilement may be. That’s called exerting a fabrication. So again you’ve got to use your discernment to see when the issue in the mind will go away simply by watching it and when you’ve got to … 
  3. Look after Yourself with Ease
     … It’s cooling for the mind, refreshing for the mind. Or think of the person sitting, covered by a white cloth: Your mind is filled with a bright awareness. These are all images of the mind being at ease right here in the body. You’re not going after sensual pleasures, i.e., the pleasures of contact with the body. You’re going for … 
  4. Set Your Heart on the Breath
    Set your heart on the breath, as that’s essentially what concentration means—to have your mind set on something, to have your heart set on something. In the Buddha’s vocabulary, the word citta means both heart and mind. They don’t draw a clear distinction or a line between the two. This knowing faculty includes both knowing and willing. The two inform … 
  5. The Form of the Body
     … In other words, get the mind to really engage in this aspect of having a body. In that way, the mind can get to know itself a lot better. Its exploration of cause and effect in the way the mind relates to this sense of form gets more and more continuous. When it’s continuous, you see more, especially in terms of connections, cause … 
  6. The Skill of Renunciation
    The Buddha’s description of concentration is that you seclude your mind from sensuality and unskillful thoughts. For most of us, when we hear that you’re going to drop sensuality, it sounds like a deprivation. But actually it’s not. You’re going to be trading one form of happiness for another: the sense of well-being that comes when the mind can … 
  7. Part II : Common Problems
     … This is one of the reasons why we get the mind into concentration, so that we can put it in a position where we can watch the pain and not feel threatened by it. As you watch it, you learn about it. You come to comprehend it. So, focus on the breath. Get it really comfortable. Give the mind the energy it needs in … 
  8. Appropriate Attention
     … This is why we try to get the mind into the present moment. This is why we come to a quiet place like this, so that we cut down on the number of people in our mind. We cut down the number of people first by giving the mind something good to play with in the present moment (the breath), so you can get … 
  9. The Buddha’s Investment Strategy
    As you focus on the breath and stay with the breath, you’re developing good qualities of mind: mindfulness, alertness. As you apply these qualities to the process of breathing, you’ll see that it’s a kind of fabrication. There’s a willed and intentional element in there. And because there’s an element of will, you can change it. You can find … 
  10. Thoughts, Wanted and Unwanted
     … What would be an obstruction in the mind? Then focus on training the mind to get rid of that obstruction. This is what contemplation of death is all about – getting you focused back on realizing that there’s work to be done in your mind, and that meditation is the best way to do it. So this training in learning how to gain control … 
  11. Feeding on Right Resolve
    Just as the body needs food and nourishment, the mind needs nourishment as well. The Buddha identifies three different kinds of food for consciousness. One of them is sensory contact: sights, sounds, smells, taste, tactile sensations making contact at your eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind. Then there’s the act of consciousness itself as those things make contact: We’re constantly looking, listening … 
  12. Cooking Skills
     … After all, this is the duty of mindfulness when it becomes a governing principle. All too often we’re told that mindfulness is all about simply seeing things arising and passing away. But actually, when you have mindfulness as a governing principle, when you see that something good hasn’t arisen, you want to be mindful to make it arise. Once it’s there … 
  13. Passion for Nostalgia
     … If you create this as a habit, then this is where the mind is going to go as life comes to an end. At that point, you’re not going to want to be thinking about the future very much. It doesn’t present much in terms of hope, so the mind will cast back to the past because the mind is really good … 
  14. Your Secret Foundation
     … The breath is as close as you can get to focusing on the mind without actually focusing directly on the mind itself. It’s right next door. And because it’s the part of the body that’s most sensitive to the movements of the mind, it’s a really good mirror for the mind. So it serves a lot of functions. When you … 
  15. Groundwork
    When you meditate, it’s like building a home for the mind, and whenever you build a home, you have to do the groundwork. Here our groundwork is thinking about the breath and observing the breath. So take a couple good long, deep in-and-out breaths, and notice where you feel the breathing process in the body. When we talk about breath here … 
  16. The Wisdom of Equanimity
    Every evening, before the sit, we spread thoughts of goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity to set the stage for the meditation, to put us in the right frame of mind, to remind ourselves of our motivation and why we’re carrying that motivation out in precisely the way we are. The first three—good will, compassion, and empathetic joy—are of a piece … 
  17. Mindful to Be Skillful
     … These are the teachings you want to keep in mind at all times. When the Buddha talks about right mindfulness, he talks about being mindful of the body, feelings, mind states, and mental qualities in and of themselves. But there’s more to it than just that. You’re mindful, which means that you keep these things in mind. You’re alert, which means … 
  18. Protect Your Inner Center
     … One is mindfulness: You remember to stay with the breath. Two, alertness: You watch what’s actually happening both in the breath and with the mind, so that you can get a sense of how well they’re getting along. And then three, ardency: You really try to do this well. In other words, you see that the activity of training the mind is … 
  19. Fabricating against Defilement
     … This is one of the reasons why we develop mindfulness—keeping the breath in mind, keeping the Four Noble Truths in mind. It means just this: remembering what led to suffering in the past is probably going to lead to suffering again, no matter how attractive it may seem right now. Other practices that did lead the mind to clarity in the past will … 
  20. The Steadiness of Your Gaze
     … Then you get your mind into position: Just focus it on the breath. The breath is right here. You don’t have to search around too much to find it. The difficult part lies in keeping the mind in position, trying to maintain a steady awareness. That takes some doing because the mind is used to not being steady. It’s used to jumping … 
  21. Strong Through Commitment
     … That’s another reason why we get the mind into concentration: You want to have a sense of well-being to give some strength to the mind. If you simply force new habits on the mind without a sense of well-being, the mind rebels. But if it comes from a sense of inner wealth, inner health, it’s more likely to stick—this … 
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