Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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.
  5. 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 … 
  6. The Ivory Intersection
     … Sometimes you think, “If I could only take care of everything else, if everything else got settled and tied down, tied up, then I could find some time for the mind.” But if you wait until that point, you’ll never get around to the mind, because there’s always going to be something that comes pressing on you. So you have to learn … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. Specifics
     … There is a part of the mind that doesn’t want to be angry, a part of the mind that doesn’t want to lust, yet it gets stunted because it’s given only a little corner of the mind in which to hide. So when one type of desire comes up, ask yourself: What about the desire for the opposite thing, the desire … 
  11. What Am I Becoming as Days & Nights Fly Past?
     … While you’re meditating, you need this same kind of mindfulness to look after you because, after all, no one else is looking into your mind right now, and even people who can read minds can’t be reading your mind all the time. You’ve got to be reading your own mind. When the story starts getting a little strange, you have to … 
  12. Breathing to Awakening
     … To begin with, you’re mindful of the breath—you keep it in mind that this is where you want to stay. You’re also mindful of all the things you’ve learned about dealing with the breath, and you try to bring them to bear on what you’re doing. This allows you to recognize, when thoughts come up: If it’s a … 
  13. A Complete Training
     … You’re trying to understand your mind. The best way to understand the mind is to realize it’s not just mind, it’s heart as well. The functions that we assign to the heart in English and the functions that we assign to mind all come under the one word citta in Pali. You find this also in many other languages in Asia … 
  14. At Home with the Breath
    One of the traditional terms for concentration practice is vihāra-dhamma, a home for the mind, a dwelling for the mind. The verbs for different states of jhāna show what you do: You enter and dwell. You make yourself at home. So here’s the breath, coming in and going out. That’s going to be your home for the next hour. And as … 
  15. Overwhelmed by Freedom
     … And my mind was overwhelmed at the prospect of that kind of freedom: overwhelmed in the sense that I didn’t know what to do with it, didn’t know if I could handle it—a whole afternoon with nothing to do—and I watched my mind as it was trying to find ways of filling up the time. This is a common problem … 
  16. Exploring the Basics
     … That helps with the staying power of the meditation because after all, the mind is a very complex organ. Training the mind is not a matter of forcing it into a few simple and draconian modes. To train the mind, you have to engage the whole mind. So remind yourself that when the body breathes in a healthy way, it’s healthier. The organs … 
  17. Virtue Contains the Practice
     … Try to be mindful; try to be alert. Mindfulness is what connects cause and effect. If you don’t have any mindfulness—i.e., if you can’t remember what you did—you’re not going to be able to figure out how this feeling of pain or this feeling of pleasure is related to actions you did a while back and have forgotten … 
  18. Look at Yourself
     … Sometimes we think that all we have to do is get the mind really, really still and see things arising and passing away, and the mind will automatically let go. Well, the Buddha had his mind very, very still, and there were still problems. You can have insight into things arising and passing away and then suddenly drop that because you think something’s … 
  19. People Who Think Too Much
     … Learn how to bring the mind to stillness in lots of different situations and learn how to maintain the stillness in lots of different situations. Then when you really begin to know the breath, you really begin to know the mind, because you can’t really see the movements of the mind unless you have one place of reference, so you want to get … 
  20. Strategic Wisdom
     … A second one is to fortify the mind in such a way that it doesn’t make those mistakes again. This is precisely what mindfulness, alertness, all the qualities that lead to concentration, and of course concentration itself: This is what they provide. You keep thorough watch on the mind to see when its desires are getting out of line, when its desires are … 
  21. Directing Yourself Rightly
     … The mind does have this quality. That old adage, you know, that work expands to fill the time allotted to it? Well, in the same way, disturbances expand to fill your mind’s capacity to look for them. That’s one of the things you’ve got to make up your mind about: You’re not going to go around looking for disturbances, letting … 
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