Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. Reading Your Meditation
     … It wasn’t because they were focusing so much on what he said, but they were using his words as pointers to what was going on inside their minds. They saw what he was talking about as it appeared in the actions of the mind. Instead of focusing on the arrows that were pointing to the mind, they focused on the mind itself. That … 
  16. The Wear & Tear of Life
     … And it strengthens the mind, so that it can continue looking for happiness in the right way and avoid the things that it knows are going to lead to harm—and a lot of things that you don’t yet really know are going to lead to harm. But you begin to realize, as the mind gets more and more sensitive to this sense … 
  17. Hedgehog Knowledge
     … The mind really has to settle in. Discernment here—in that heightened sense—means transcendent discernment. The mind has to be really still for you to see things clearly. The more still it is, the more sensitive you can be. The more sensitive you are, the more still the mind can become. These two qualities work together. So we go over the same spot … 
  18. Training Your Cynical Voices
    Training Your Cynical Voices March 18, 2014 Training the mind is work. Greed, aversion, and delusion have gotten very well ensconced in the mind, and it’s going to take a lot of digging to get them out. The reason we’re sitting here meditating is because at least some of the voices in the mind say, “Yes, you can do this,” or, “Yes … 
  19. Why the Breath
    Introduction Why the Breath January 9, 2004 We watch the breath so we can watch the mind. The breath is like a mirror for the mind. When you look at the way you breathe, you can get a good sense of what’s going on in the mind. If you get really familiar with the breath, you can begin to detect things that are … 
  20. An Examined Life
     … The people who’d been meditating approached death with a lot more mindfulness, a lot more alertness, and a lot less fear. They were much more in charge of the situation than those who hadn’t meditated, because they’d learned to allow the mind to grow quiet and to be comfortable with the quietness of the mind. People like this don’t keep … 
  21. Anupassana
     … When you’re doing mindfulness practice—trying to get the mind to settle down with the breath and stay with the breath so as to get into concentration—that’s called anupassana. You’re keeping track of the breath. It’s like keeping track of a thread going through a carpet. There are lots of other threads in the carpet, but you’re not … 
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