Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. Conspiracies in the Mind
    Conspiracies in the Mind September 11, 2012 The world is enthralled with conspiracy theories—political conspiracies, religious conspiracies. I’ve even read books commenting on the Buddha’s teachings, saying that he couldn’t possibly have meant what he said, this business about going beyond desire. Sometimes they point out the paradox: If you want to put an end to desire, there you are … 
  3. Peace of Mind
     … It has to involve peace of mind, because if the mind is agitated, if the mind is worked up, then no matter how good things may be otherwise, you can’t really be happy. So this is the essential ingredient. That’s why we’re meditating: to find peace of mind. So how do you make your mind peaceful? Remind yourself that its well … 
  4. Nuts & Bolts
     … For the person who has passed away, one of the best things you can do is to get the mind into good concentration and think thoughts of goodwill toward that person, because the mind, when it’s steady, is sending off a good energy. When it’s concentrated like this, it’s a good gift to be sending out. You think of Shōtai: Wherever … 
  5. Take Down Your Sails
     … But you also have to learn how to teach the mind just to strip down any thoughts that come through, and not react to anything that comes in, because you’ve got work you’ve got to do here: working on your own mind. You need your mind to be in good shape for whatever comes up. How much time do you actually get … 
  6. Strength Training
     … The Buddha talks of the path as a path of strength, and the strengths of the mind are conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. The Buddha has one way of formulating the path in these five terms. He himself often compares the path of practice to various skills, and some of them have to do with strength. The skillful meditator is one who can … 
  7. Read the Breath
     … That’s an inherent part of right mindfulness. It’s what makes it right. The same with right concentration: having abandoned unskillful qualities in the mind, you can settle down until you develop pure equanimity and mindfulness. As the Buddha said, there’s no right concentration without a certain amount of insight, a certain amount of understanding. You can’t get the mind to … 
  8. Perfections as Priorities
    Perfections as Priorities August 21, 2008 We sit here focused on the breath, mindful of the breath, alert. We want to make sure we’re not just mindful and alert for a few breaths and then off someplace else. We want to stay mindful and alert for the whole hour. And then at the end of the hour when you get up, you want … 
  9. Step Back & Watch
     … But with Ajaan Suwat, he had trained his mind to step back from his thoughts, to step back from his thought worlds. And that’s what saved him from a lot of suffering. This is one of the reasons why we develop mindfulness, why we practice concentration: to keep in mind the possibility that sometimes our perceptions are off. The concentration gives us a … 
  10. Focus on What You’re Doing
    You probably notice that as soon as you focus on the breath, the chattering classes in your mind start in, commenting on the breath, commenting on how well things are going, or commenting on whether you should continue meditating. Some of the comments are useful; a lot of them are not. An important part of the meditation is learning how to sort these things … 
  11. On Being Non-reactive
     … In other passages, the Buddha gives analogies for the state of mind you’re trying to develop. When you’re working on mindfulness, he says you’re trying to work on getting the mind into concentration. We’re not just here to be noting things coming and going. We’re directing the mind in the right direction, to concentration—because, after all, the path … 
  12. Get Out of Yourself
     … Now, if you interpret mindfulness simply as being aware, that sounds very strange: You’re supposed to sit next to someone else and hear them breathe? How are you going to feel their feelings or be aware of their mind-states? But when you remember that mindfulness is a faculty of the memory, something you keep in mind, then you can see what the … 
  13. Focused on the Breath
     … And two, notice the little movements of your mind, little thoughts that you tend not to see, that you tend to take for granted as just background noise in the mind. This means that the more quiet you can get the mind, the more quiet you can get the breath, then the more you’re going to see. So one of the aims of … 
  14. For the Sake of the Deathless
     … Have that purpose in the back of your mind. In the front of your mind, have the breath, have the mind focusing its attention on the breath, its alertness on what’s going on right now with the breath. Bring that mindfulness to the fore, as the Buddha would say. Dogen once said that the duties with regard to the third and the fourth … 
  15. Expanding Your Skill Set
     … All these qualities working together—mindfulness, alertness, and ardency—help to establish mindfulness. The act of establishing mindfulness: That’s the basic theme of your concentration. Actually, mindfulness and concentration work together. While you’re with the breath, ardency means trying to be as sensitive as possible to how the breathing feels. Once it feels good in the spot you’ve chosen as your … 
  16. Generating Energy
     … Another is in the context of the seven factors for awakening, where persistence builds on mindfulness: keeping something in mind. So what are the ways of giving rise to conviction that are going to energize you, and what are the things you have to keep in mind that will give rise to more energy? In the seven factors for awakening, the Buddha talks about … 
  17. Responsible
     … You’re training the mind; you’re taking responsibility in an area where only you can be responsible. You’re responsible for your actions, and where do your actions come from? They come from the mind. So, if you want to act in a responsible way, the mind has to be trained, because it has lots of unruly thoughts, unruly cravings. You’ve got … 
  18. Scramble the Image
     … Well, try that with every image that comes up in the mind, once you’re well established and there’s a sense of well-being inside, so that you can step back from the movements of the mind and just watch them as processes. Instead of thinking about how you’re going to gain some pleasure out of this thought or that perception, simply … 
  19. Right View Tells You What to Do
     … Then there’s mindfulness, which basically is keeping something in mind. In this case you’re trying to keep in mind the fact that you’re trying to stay with the breath—you don’t want to forget that. If something unskillful comes up in the mind, anything that would pull you away from the breath, you want to remember how to recognize it … 
  20. A Trained Observer
     … Things don’t have to make inroads into the mind. We let our minds get colored by its objects, but they don’t have to be. Yet we take it so much for granted: Something sad happens and the whole mind gets sad. Something pleasant happens and the whole mind gets happy. This may be one of the reasons why the Buddha uses the … 
  21. The Best Place to Practice
     … Our tools in getting the mind concentrated are not to make these things just simply go away by making the mind quiet. We make the mind quiet so that we can see these things in action more clearly. And then you want to use that foundation of concentration—or whatever shred of it you may have when the defilements are roaring in your ears … 
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