Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 57
  2. Scribe Knowledge, Warrior Knowledge
     … Find a source of food that, unlike most pleasures of the world, doesn’t involve any bad kamma and also doesn’t involve clouding the mind. When the mind gets concentrated, you can see things clearly, and in particular, see what’s going on inside the mind. That puts you in a position where you can see where and how the mind is causing … 
  3. An Inside Job
     … In the same way, when the breath gets really, really still, then the events in the mind come to the fore, sharp and clear. This allows you to look at the issue of why the mind creates suffering. Again, this might seem like a small issue to some people. They’d like bigger issues. But the fact of pain and suffering in the mind … 
  4. For a Routine That Isn’t Routine
     … He says you can simply take the body sitting here as your object, and ask questions about it: “Is the mind sitting in the body? Is the body sitting in the mind? Who’s doing the sitting? Does the mind sit? Or is it just the body that sits?” You can ask all kinds of questions. You’ll find that, as you ask the … 
  5. Against the Stream
     … So there will be thoughts that come into the mind and they just don’t seem to want to go away, but this is what we have the breath for. Say, “Well, that thought can have that corner of the mind, but I’m going to stay with the breath,” and you identify with the part of the mind that wants to stay with … 
  6. Monotasking
     … The third step the Buddha gives in dealing with the mind is releasing the mind. In other words, if you find there’s something burdening the mind, a particular thought, try to locate where in the body there’s the physical sensation that corresponds to that thought. There will be a little hitch or a little spot of tension; see if you can breathe … 
  7. Going Out of Your Way
     … What makes it special is when you decide you’re going to focus in on one thing and get the mind to stay there. Now, in some forms of concentration there’s not much ingenuity involved. Simply repeat a word over and over again, and force the mind down, beat it down. But the way the Buddha teaches breath meditation requires that you think … 
  8. The Buddha’s Medicine
    The Dhamma is medicine—medicine for the ailments of the mind. And just as with medicine for the body, some Dhamma medicines are meant to be preventive and others are meant to treat illnesses you’ve already got. And although we have the Buddha as the primary doctor, and other people are more experienced on the path as doctors who can give us advice … 
  9. Change Your Mind
     … You also experiment with breathing in ways that have an effect on the mind, or gladdening the mind while you breathe in and breathe out, steadying the mind, releasing the mind, in response to what it needs. These are all things you do. You don’t hope that these things will simply happen on their own while you watch the TV show of your … 
  10. A Basis in Well-being
     … You work with the breath to make it comfortable, you want the mind to be comfortable with the breath, you want the mind to be comfortable here in the present moment. That’s your foundation, that’s one of the main factors of the path. It’s when the mind feels at ease in this way that there’s a good sense of well … 
  11. A Taste of Freedom
    When you meditate, you’re taking advantage of the fact that the mind can choose its objects, choose its preoccupations. It’s not the case that you have to go running with whatever comes floating up into the mind in the present moment, because a lot of thoughts come in from the past—your past kamma, your old habits. And the reason we’re … 
  12. Sowing Good Seeds
     … If you’re not comfortable with it, the mind is not going to want to stay. Like pushing an inflated ball down under some water: As soon as your grip relaxes just a little bit, the ball comes shooting up out of the water and into the air. The same with the mind: If the mind is uncomfortable with the breath, it’s going … 
  13. Outside of the Box
     … What are you doing right now that’s putting a burden on the mind? You’re making choices that are putting a burden on the mind totally unnecessarily. So get the mind quiet to see if you can watch that happening. Until you watch it happening, it sounds pretty abstract. But when you can actually see the movements of the mind, that’s when … 
  14. Doing
    One of the purposes of the meditation is to get to see what the mind is doing, because what the mind is doing can either create happiness or create suffering. In fact, as the Buddha pointed out, that’s the big problem in life: the fact that the mind usually acts for the purpose of creating happiness, but it ends up creating just the … 
  15. Concentration: A Balancing Act
     … That induces us to want to get the mind to settle down. So you focus on the breath. You try to get the mind in a state where it fills the body. Concentration is sometimes defined as cittass’ekaggata: singleness of mind. That ekaggata is a term with a lot of controversy around it—as is the term samadhi, which we translate as “concentration … 
  16. The Dhamma Eye
     … It gives the mind some rest, allows the mind to be stable. Only when the mind is really stable can it see things clearly for what they are. The quieter the mind, the subtler things you’re able to see happening in the mind. You begin to understand the way in which the mind begins to deceive itself. Because that’s the big problem … 
  17. The Desire to End All Desires
     … This is why, when we meditate, we focus on the mind in the present moment. Now, you can’t focus directly on the mind as you start out, so you focus on something that’s really close: the breath. You do what you can to get the mind to stay with the breath. Sometimes you need to use a meditation word; sometimes you use … 
  18. Protection
     … So you’ve got to be careful, you’ve got to be vigilant, not to pick up diseases from outside, and to watch out for any tendency in the mind to go for those diseases. Sometimes you hear that the problem of the mind is that we’re subject to social conditioning, and if it weren’t for that social conditioning, the mind would … 
  19. A Real Education
     … exerting some control over the mind. We don’t just let it follow wherever it wants to go. We give it something good to focus on, like the breath, because the breath can be comfortable. Not only that, it’s your guarantee that you’re staying in the present moment so that you can watch the mind in action. You’re not concerned with … 
  20. Respect
     … You’ve got the body and the breath, the feelings, and then the mind states. When the Buddha describes how you develop that third frame of reference, It’s not just watching whatever comes up. You actually try to notice: What does the mind need right now? If the mind has trouble settling down, what’s wrong? Is there something wrong with the breath … 
  21. Well-being Despite It All
     … And then you’ve got to find the way to train the mind so it can find a happiness that takes these things into account as well. This is what we’re doing as we meditate. Given that our hops lies in our actions, what is the source of our actions if not the mind? It’s through our intentions that we act. And … 
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