Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. A Safe Home
    Once you’ve got the body in place to meditate, the real work lies in getting the mind in place. Actually, the getting in place is not that hard. You just focus on the breath. Know when the breath is coming in; know when it’s going out. If you’re going to think, think about the breath. It’s okay to think in … 
  3. Here Be Tigers
     … It’s the mind that makes the difference. So make up your mind that you’re going to stay with the breath, you’re going to get the mind to settle down. And any thoughts that are not related to the breath right now, you’re just not going to continue them. They may pop into the mind, but you don’t have to … 
  4. Hold on to Your Frame of Reference
    The Buddha defined mindfulness as the ability to hold something in mind for a long time. This is a really essential quality in the practice, because it’s easy to learn the teachings, but also easy to forget them. You sit and listen to them, they make sense. And the next day you find yourself doing the exact opposite of what made sense. Sometimes … 
  5. The Fortress
     … If you can take an interest in the breath, then you find that it’s easier and easier to keep both the body and the mind in position. Now, keeping the mind in position requires three qualities. The first is mindfulness, the ability to remember to keep something in mind. Mindfulness not simply watching things coming and going. You remember to give rise to … 
  6. What We’re Here to See
     … Part of the mind will feel lost: “What do I do with myself when the mind is in concentration?” Well, maintain the concentration. Learn what’s needed to do that, learn what’s needed to prevent it from wandering off into any of the hindrances. You’re learning about your own mind. You’re learning about the mind in action—and that should be … 
  7. Changing Your Mind
     … There’s nothing else in the world that can change and reverse direction as quickly as the mind. This is why we need a lot of mindfulness. We set yourselves the task of getting the mind to settle down, to be still, but it can flip around very easily. This is why concentration has to depend on mindfulness. And mindfulness has to depend on … 
  8. Refuge in the Dhamma
     … That’s what the establishings of mindfulness are for: to look at your mind states in a more impersonal way, to step back from them and ask yourself, “If this mind state were in somebody else’s mind, what would you recommend that they do?—especially, knowing the Buddha’s teachings about what we should do with unskillful states: how to abandon them; how … 
  9. Strong Through Mindfulness
    Most of us learn about mindfulness starting with mindfulness meditation, mindfulness of breathing, the four foundations or establishings of mindfulness. But in the time of the Buddha, mindfulness started much earlier in your practice—in the act of memorizing. You memorized passages of the Dhamma. You heard the Dhamma from the Buddha, tried to take it to heart, and then you maintained it, as … 
  10. Practice in Dying Well
     … How are you going to know that? By watching the mind and seeing what you’re doing that’s weighing the mind down. So even though we’re focused on the breath, we’re here at the breath so that we can see our mind. Think of the breath as a mirror for the mind. It keeps you anchored in the present moment. If … 
  11. The Gatekeeper Doesn’t Just Note
    The Gatekeeper Doesn’t Just Note September 4, 2019 The duty of mindfulness is to remember. What does it remember? It remembers what’s skillful and what’s unskillful, how to recognize different skillful qualities as they come up, how to recognize unskillful qualities as they come up. It also remembers what to do with them. It doesn’t stop with the recognition. The … 
  12. The Mind Comes First
    One of the basic principles of the Dhamma is that the mind comes first—in two senses of the term. One is that the state of your mind is the most important thing in your life. It has to come first in all your considerations. When you think about what you’re going to accomplish in life, the greatest accomplishment is, as the Buddha … 
  13. Mindreading
    Which states of mind you tend to trust? It’s an important question, because the ones you trust are the ones you spend a lot of time with, the ones you encourage, and by your encouraging them, they tend to grow. If you trust in your tendency to worry, that’s going to take over the mind. If you trust your tendency to be … 
  14. Genuine Happiness
     … You want to catch them as they try subvert your main decision, which is to be here and to learn about the mind in the present. Fortunately, as the mind does get more still, gets more centered, you can notice these voices more clearly. You can catch them in time. This is how you get more control over the mind. Because the mind can … 
  15. Limitless Thoughts
     … This is why meditation focuses so much on developing continual mindfulness and alertness. These are the two most helpful qualities in the mind. And they’re very basic: Mindfulness simply means keeping something in mind. That’s a basic, basic skill. Alertness means noticing what you’re going, and what’s happening around you. We already have these qualities to a certain extent, but … 
  16. Strength for Stillness
     … Just remembering enough to keep the mind with the breath and willing it just enough to keep it pointed in the right direction. You’re getting a higher use out of these three functions of mind, and this way you strengthen your practice again. This brings you to the strength of concentration. Mindfulness is not a state of mind free of agendas. It has … 
  17. Like a River Full of Water
     … And where do your efforts come from? They come from the mind, so the mind has to be trained. If it’s not trained, it has a habit of creating a lot of unnecessary suffering and stress. So this is our major responsibility right here: looking after the mind. If we take care of the mind, then other issues take care of themselves. Even … 
  18. May You Forever Be Well
     … After all, concentration is based on right mindfulness, so you need mindfulness, too. And as the Buddha said, right mindfulness in turn is based on virtue and right view. Right view is what you should be mindful of. It tells you how to recognize what’s coming up in the mind—whether it’s skillful or unskillful. Then right mindfulness picks up from there … 
  19. Gather Around the Breath
    We’re practicing mindfulness of breathing—and because it’s a mindfulness practice, some people think it means just following the breath wherever it’s going to go or following the mind wherever it’s going to go; being non-reactive; non-judgmental. But mindfulness means keeping something in mind. In this case, you keep in mind that you want to stay with the … 
  20. Learning from Sensual Desire
    Learning from Sensual Desire March 5, 2021 In Buddhist traditions, they tend not to make a sharp distinction between the heart and the mind—the heart being the part that wills and desires, has feelings, emotions; the mind being the part that thinks, calculates, and tries to reason things through. As they say, “The heart has its reasons.” And the mind has its desires … 
  21. The Opportunity to Be Quiet
    There’s a part of the mind that may sometimes tell you, “If only this task gets done, then I can really rest.” But then, how many tasks have you done and found that there are more tasks to be done? The work of the world is never done. When people retire, it’s not because their work is done. It’s because either … 
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