Search results for: "Mindfulness"

  1. Page 63
  2. Analysis of Dhammas
     … That’s one of the ways in which it manifests itself as you’re doing concentration practice, because these factors for awakening start with mindfulness and end with concentration. They basically show you how to use your discernment, when you start out being mindful, to get it into concentration. The key is basically learning to adjust the mind and the object of the mind … 
  3. How to Look, How to Listen
     … Then, as the issues of the breath get lighter and lighter, you’ll be able to see your own mind. That’s what we’re here for: to see the mind. We use the breath as bait to get the mind in the present moment, to clear things out in the body, so that they don’t interfere with your ability to observe your … 
  4. The Ennobling Path
     … This practice goes against a lot of the mind’s habits. After all, the mind is a creator. It keeps cooking things up. Once there’s craving, then there’s going to be clinging. Once there’s clinging, then there’s the creation of these worlds that the mind likes to inhabit. It keeps forgetting that as soon as you inhabit them, they start … 
  5. Taking the Long View
     … Because at the moment of death—when the body is weak, the mind is frustrated, the mind is distraught—cravings and clingings can bubble up inside. We latch on and we go. When the mind is distraught like that, it tends not to be very choosy. It just takes whatever comes. And who knows what’s going to come up bubbling up out of … 
  6. The Importance of Being Truthful
     … That’s why we’re here training the mind, because our actions do come out of the mind. Again, the Buddha never talks about what the mind is. And he certainly never says that the mind is basically good or basically bad. Ajaan Chah, in one of his finer turns of phrase, says, “What is the mind? The mind isn’t is anything.” That … 
  7. A Clear Agenda
     … If they come up in the mind, you put them aside. I’ve been reading different books on mindfulness and one of the strangest things I’ve found was in one book where the author said that the Buddha tells you never to interfere with anything that’s happening in the mind. But that right there conflicts with the basic formula: putting aside greed … 
  8. Discernment in Concentration
     … It’s not the case that when you’re practicing concentration you have to get the mind still and then sometime later use your discernment. You first have to use your discernment to get the mind to settle down to begin with. Only when you can get the mind to settle down can you really understand it. Because discernment is about understanding the mind … 
  9. Open Door Meditation
    There’s a good reason why we sit still with our eyes closed as we try to get the mind still: to teach the mind a lesson from the body. Not too much is coming in and particularly not nothing is coming in through your eyes, and there’s a lot less to distract you. Then you can tell yourself, that any thought that … 
  10. Attention to Your Potentials
     … And here again, there are certain dhatu in the mind, certain potentials in the mind. There are qualities that provide a foothold, as the Buddha said, to sustain mindfulness. There are qualities that sustain concentration, that sustain equanimity. You want to look for them. In some cases, he tells you outright. In terms of mindfulness, the sustaining qualities are what he calls purified virtue … 
  11. Your Territory
     … This connects with the fact that we’re trying to get the mind into concentration, and that’s one of the first things you’ve got to put aside to get rightly concentrated: thoughts of sensuality. You want to be secluded from them. The same applies to right mindfulness. When teaching right mindfulness, the Buddha gave the example monkeys. They live in the Himalayas … 
  12. Four Determinations in One
     … So you let it fade from your mind. Then you focus on water, and it’s the same sort of thing. The liquids in the body are no different from liquids outside. They’re no more stable, they’re no more reliable, they’re not really you or yours. So you let water fade from your mind. Then you go to fire: the warmth … 
  13. Dethinking Thinking
     … that mindfulness comes before concentration. In some cases, the relationship going from mindfulness to concentration seems to be automatic, although in the factors for awakening there are steps in between. You start with right mindfulness, and then the factors in the list show how you use discernment and effort to develop right mindfulness into right concentration. So you think about that, and then you … 
  14. You’ve Got Friends
     … If the mind resists, well, watch it for a while and see what the resistance is coming from. One of the peculiar things about the mind is that a lot of the painful things that we carry around have their allure. Part of the mind likes them. And again, that’s something we don’t normally want to see. But once the mind gets … 
  15. The Carpenter’s Adze
     … There was that one time when he was telling the monks to be mindful of the breath, and one monk spoke up and said, “Oh, I already do that.” The Buddha said, “Well, what kind of breath mindfulness do you practice?” And the monk said, “I put aside all thoughts of the past, all hankering after the future, and calming my mind in the … 
  16. The River Gauge
     … Of course, when the Buddha talks about the qualities of mind you need to get the mind into concentration and he talks about how to make equanimity really solid—and not small-minded or small-hearted equanimity—he mentions that you have to have some joy as well. So as you begin meditating, think about the things that make you happy to be here … 
  17. To Begin the Day
     … Then you remind yourself that this is why we’re meditating, so that we can strengthen the mind, center the mind, give the mind good nourishment inside so that it’s less likely to do things based on ill will, less likely to do unskillful things. Usually it’s out of fear or hunger that we do unskillful things. So remind yourself that your … 
  18. The Lightness of the Concentrated Mind
     … So you peel the perceptions off one by one by one—and yet you’re fully alert and fully mindful. You gain a sense of how light the mind can be. That way, you have concentration that gives you a pleasant abiding, you develop mindfulness and alertness, and you gain insight—all at once.
  19. The Riddle Tree
     … There’s a lot that even the most psychic teacher who can read minds cannot tell you. Ajaan Fuang, who I firmly believe could read my mind and the minds of many other people, said one time, “Even when you can read minds, you can’t tell what’s going to work for somebody: how they’ll respond to your words, what technique is … 
  20. Weathering Karma Storms
     … If you’re experiencing a mind storm right now, you can say, “Okay, this is my past bad karma, but I want to make sure I don’t make any bad karma now by the way I breathe, by the way I talk to myself, by the images that I hold in mind.” Hold in mind that image of the storm, and you’re … 
  21. Meaning in a Meaningless Universe
     … But the qualities you build into your mind: Nobody else can take those away. Someone once asked Ajaan Mun if virtue was somehow separate from your mind. He replied, “How could it be? Your virtue is in your intentions, and your intentions are definitely part of your own mind. And if your virtue could be separated from your mind, people would do just that … 
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