Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 59
  2. Doubting the Buddha
     … Try to stay with the sense of fullness, ease, and stillness, and let the mind soak in that for a while. That’s food for the mind. When you have this kind of food for the mind, you’re less and less hungry for other thoughts, other types of mental food. And when you’re less hungry, then you can look at those thoughts … 
  3. Pure Action
     … Ultimately, you can lead the mind to the deathless, which is a happiness that doesn’t have to depend on conditions at all. But even before you get there, the path is a blameless path. It’s all a matter of training the mind, and realizing that that’s the true source of happiness: a trained mind. So we’re sitting here training the … 
  4. Feeding on the Breath
     … In other words, if you can give yourself a good reason to be here, doing nothing but watching your breath, that kind of thinking can help the mind stay interested, because you’re looking for ways in which the breath energy can improve your physical condition and to give the mind a good place to settle down. When there finally is a sense of … 
  5. Potentials Past & Present
     … There’s a dimension that the mind can touch if you develop all the right qualities in mind—in particular, mindfulness, concentration, discernment: what we’re trying to develop right now. You get very clear about what’s going on in the mind, how the mind takes raw material from the past and can fashion it either in a skillful way or in an … 
  6. Worry vs. Heedfulness
     … It’s the normal way of the mind, and in everyday life it doesn’t seem like much is being hindered. But when you’re trying to lift the mind to a higher level, thoughts like this can really get in the way. Some of them are problems in daily life as well: Ill will is a problem. Restlessness, worry, uncertainty, sleepiness: These are … 
  7. How to Listen
     … When you first get the mind to settle down, your thought is, “How can I make this last?” There’s nothing wrong with that thought. Learning how to appreciate the pleasure of getting the mind into oneness, finding pleasure apart from sensuality, is an important skill—one that should be cultivated, one that should be appreciated. But you have to realize that it’s … 
  8. Right Resolve, Right Concentration
     … So the mind needs to rest. And when you’ve been thinking skillful thoughts like that, it’s easy to get the mind to settle down, much more so than if you’ve been thinking unskillful thoughts and you try to jump straight to concentration. Your mind is going to resist. It’s got some unfinished business it’s got to take care of … 
  9. Defilements
     … We have a certain familiarity with them, and part of the mind is of the opinion that this is just the way the mind has to be. You’re not going to change anything. When you start changing it, it feels out of whack, like something’s wrong, unfamiliar. It’s like somebody who’s been leaning to the left for years and years … 
  10. Matters of Life & Death
     … The restrictions may be in the body, but the mind doesn’t have to be restricted. There are still areas in which the mind can find true happiness. You find it within. This is what the concentration provides, which is why it’s not a waste of time when you do find pleasure in the concentration, that you learn how to maintain it. It … 
  11. Goodwill, Gratitude, No Guilt
     … Where does that impact come from? It comes from the mind. The mind is making choices. If it doesn’t pay much attention to what it’s doing and it’s not really determined to change things, it just goes along in its own ways, forgetting that it’s creating all kinds of influences on people and things around you. The mind is an … 
  12. Conditions for Concentration
     … And because it’s unskillful, I don’t have to do it.” The mind may give you all kinds of reasons for why you’ve got to think in those unskillful ways: “You’ve been thinking in those ways for who knows how long, and that’s the way your mind is.” But one of the Buddha’s most important discoveries is that the … 
  13. To Discern Suffering
     … What is this added suffering? As it turns out, this is the only suffering that really weighs down the mind. There can be pain in the body, but if there’s no clinging around the pain, there’s not going to be any suffering in the mind. The good news is that the suffering in the mind is unnecessary. You don’t have to … 
  14. After the Fire
     … This is why, as things begin to settle down in the mind, you can’t just allow the mind to drift off anyway it wants, or to latch on to a feeling of pleasure and just take the pleasure as your object, because it begins to get fuzzy after a while, and the mind begins to get dull. So once the mind is still … 
  15. Your Territory
     … And that’s a lot of what perception is in the mind: You have an agreement that this means that, that means this, and once you’ve made those agreements, the mind can go surfing through all kinds of territories. X means y, y means z, z means a, a means b. It goes around and around and around, through all kinds of associations … 
  16. Heightening the Mind
  17. Healing the Mind
  18. Purifying the Mind
  19. Training the Mind
  20. Steady the Mind
  21. Training the Mind
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