Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. Discernment
     … The discernment has to be there to inform them all, all the way along, because you’re looking at, “What are your actions? What are you doing right now?” Right now, you say, “I’m watching my breath.” “Why are you watching your breath?” “To get the mind into concentration.” “Why would you want to get the mind into concentration?” “Because the mind in … 
  15. Fourth Truth, First Duty
     … Sensuality in the Buddha’s terminology deals not so much with the actual sensual pleasures themselves, but more with the mind’s fascination with thinking about them. You begin to realize that that fascination is one of the big enemies as you’re trying to get the mind into concentration. But getting the mind into concentration helps you separate yourself out from that kind … 
  16. The Heart of the Teachings
     … We try to fully develop our skills because we learn about the mind in the process. We learn about how the breath has an effect on the mind, and then how that effect can be used to train the mind. We’re getting more and more sensitive to what’s going on in the mind, and that allows us to purify it, to see … 
  17. Measuring Progress
     … At the same time, as you develop your powers of mindfulness and alertness, you get more sensitive to what’s going on in the mind, so that in your measurement of what’s skillful or what’s quiet in the mind, what counts as good concentration, what counts as a good insight, your standards are going to change. Like that old issue in relativity … 
  18. Straightening the Arrow
     … The way you direct the mind, the perceptions you hold in mind as to what’s worthwhile and what’s not: Those things are under your control. Use that fact to nurture the development of your mind. This is a practice you can do anywhere. Here in the monastery, it’s easier because our basic values are different from those of the world outside … 
  19. Doing Meditation
    One of the Buddha’s major insights is that the mind spends its time doing. We’re always doing something: thinking about this, getting the body to move and do that, getting your mouth to move to say those things. There’s always a doing, there’s always a choice going on in the mind. This is what lies at the essence of karma … 
  20. Advice for a New Monk
     … This kind of awareness, once it settles down and is very still, is a healing awareness for the mind. So give the mind a chance to settle down and be by itself. You don’t have to listen to the Dhamma talk. Just focus on the sensation of the breathing. Allow the breathing to be comfortable. Think of good breath energy filling every cell … 
  21. Training Wheels
     … It’s the pleasure of having the mind settle down and be still and have some peace inside. The pleasure also comes from having some control over what the mind is going to do, because these topics of concentration, the component factors of concentration, are also the things that we have cravings for—craving for the body; craving for feelings; craving for certain mind … 
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