Search results for: "Mindfulness"

  1. Page 57
  2. Negotiating with Death
     … The other two, mind and mental qualities: Again, this may seem an arbitrary way of dividing up the pie. But it’s useful. The mind, you could think of as the entire committee of the mind that has made a decision. It’s on the side of greed or on the side of anger—or on the opposite side. Or you’re trying to … 
  3. An Island in the Flood
     … The texts talk about how mindfulness and concentration are dependent on virtue. As the Buddha said, the things that foster mindfulness are views made straight and careful virtue. But mindfulness and concentration help with your virtue as well, because they give you this center of strength, this island you can stand on, where you feel secure, where you feel well established. When you’re … 
  4. The Buddha’s Safe Space
     … The description of mindfulness that we chanted just now—staying focused on the body in and of itself, ardent, alert, and mindful, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world—describes what you’re doing as you’re trying to get the mind into concentration. You stay with the breath, remembering to keep the breath in mind: That’s mindfulness. You see … 
  5. Vitakka & Vicara
     … Is this going the way you want, or is it not? You have to apply these fabrications not only to the breath, but also to the mind. What is your mind doing right now? If it’s slipping off, is the problem with the breath or with the mind itself? Where is it slipping out to feed? If you find the mind feeding on … 
  6. Glad to Be Here
    The Buddha’s instructions on how to get the mind in concentration start, on the one hand, with the reminder that you have to get past sensuality—your fascination with thinking thoughts about sensual pleasures. You can’t let the mind wander off in those areas. The Buddha says you should have a definite sense of the dangers of those places. That’s why … 
  7. The Mind Set Tall
     … There’s a very important part of the mind that would really flourish if it weren’t subject to lust, weren’t constantly hankering after nice smells, sounds, tastes, and things to look at. This is why these defilements flourish: because of delusion, the things that the mind hides from itself. And the reason it hides them from itself is because it really is … 
  8. What Are You Doing?
     … So we have to turn around and look at this problem inside: “What is your mind doing?” No matter what the problem is, the problem that makes the mind suffer is something the mind is doing. This is why, in the practice of mindfulness, alertness means that you’re in the present moment not watching just whatever comes up but specifically what you’re … 
  9. A Meditator’s Environment
     … But it’s important for the sake of your mind, the goodness of your mind, the survival of your mind: the skill with which you can extract yourself from the entanglements of the world. This relates to another quality—seclusion. Try to find some time just to be by yourself, so that you’re not taking on the concerns of other people. You look … 
  10. Reclaiming the Breath
     … Any unskillful quality coming up in the mind that moves into the body does so by means of the breath. Then it exerts extra power over the mind, because even though anger or fear may come and go, the uncomfortable breathing lasts, and we’ve learned to associate that uncomfortable breathing with that state of mind. As long as it’s there, we think … 
  11. Success on the Path
     … He says that when you’re focusing on one of the frames of reference, or establishing mindfulness based on the body, feelings, mind, mental qualities, there may come times when the practice starts getting difficult. As he says, there may be a fever in the body, or a fever in the mind. That, he says, is when it’s good to put that topic … 
  12. The Need for Evaluation
    When you focus on the breath, when you try to bring the mind to a state of concentration, you’re trying to do two things at once. One is to give the mind a place where it can rest, gather its strength, heal its wounds, and in general develop a sense of ease and well-being. The second purpose is to be able to … 
  13. Single-minded
     … What does matter is that your mind is in good shape so that you can depend on it even as aging, illness, and death come—because at those times, there’s nothing else you can depend on. So you’ve got to be single-minded in your practice. The ability to be single-minded is really important. Otherwise, the mind wanders off in to … 
  14. Inner Worlds
     … Notice the feelings you’re focusing on and the perceptions you’re holding in mind. Try to bring these things together in a good way: Breathe in a way that’s nourishing. Talk to yourself in a way that’s nourishing. If the chatter in the mind weighs you down, pulls you down, blames everything on things outside, you’ve got to counteract it … 
  15. Perception
     … This is one of the reasons why we have to meditate — to get the mind still enough so you can see these subconscious thoughts in action. You have to understand that the mind’s not divided into two sections: the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. It’s just that there’s conscious behavior in the mind and unconscious behavior, conscious events and unconscious … 
  16. Sitting & Walking
     … You begin to see how the mind lies to itself. You’re innocently looking at the end of the path but another part of the mind says, “I have another agenda.” As you ignore that, that’s how the mind normally lies to itself. You’ve got to catch it as it’s going out. And the trick is to watch it go out … 
  17. How to Leave Meditation
    We hear so much about how to get the mind into concentration that we tend to forget the skill of how to leave it. Because these talks come at the beginning of the period, the skill in how to leave doesn’t often get mentioned, although how you leave concentration is relevant to how you get back into it. This talk basically is about … 
  18. Meditation as a Skill
     … It also presents challenges in learning how to get the mind to settle down and stay here as you try to figure out, when the mind is not here, how you can bring it back. That’s the beginning of the discernment you’re going to need in order to see through problems of the mind. The big problem, as the Buddha said, is … 
  19. Confident, Steadfast, Resolute
     … Yet you do know that you’ll need some good qualities in the mind, like mindfulness, concentration, discernment. So you keep reminding yourself that by meditating, you’re not running away from problems, you’re actually developing the qualities that you’ll need to solve unexpected problems. No matter what happens—good or bad—you’ll need mindfulness to handle it well, concentration to … 
  20. Honesty
     … We may like to think that our minds are pure. But wait a minute. There are these problems. If the mind were pure, it wouldn’t have any problems. So maybe there is something wrong in there, something unskillful. The fortunate thing about it is if you *really *open the mind to the light of day, you begin to see that the unskillful motives … 
  21. Many I’s, Many Eyes
     … Also notice when the breath is comfortable, when it’s not, and at the same time notice whether your mind is here or it’s suddenly taken a mind of its own and gone off someplace else. If you catch the fact that it’s gone off, your mindfulness will tell you, “Just come right back to the breath.” Be as sensitive as possible … 
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