Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. The Path of Questions
    The Path of Questions July, 2001 Let the mind settle down comfortably on the breath. Don’t push it too hard and don’t let it float away. Try to find just the right amount of pressure for staying with the breath. Let there be just that one question in the mind right now: how heavily to focus on the breath. Other questions you … 
  3. Rites of Passage
     … What kind of mind state do they come from, what kind of mind state do they encourage? Are those the kind of mind states you want to identify with? This is essentially how the Buddha’s teaching on not-self works: seeing the things that have control over our lives, that have power over our minds, and in the course of the meditation stepping … 
  4. Goodwill Without Limits
     … After all, this, too, is a kind of mindfulness. It doesn’t come under the four establishings of mindfulness but it’s an important form of mindfulness to inform the entirety of your practice. You want the entire heart and the entire mind to gain freedom, so both sides of the *citta *have to be trained. Of course, there’s not just goodwill in … 
  5. Respect for the Breath
     … Always try to be mindful, always try to be alert. “Mindful” here means that you always keep the breath in mind. It might help to think of the idea the whole body is breathing. Because “breath” means not only the process of breathing, but also the energy flow in the body. It’s through the energy flow that you actually sense your body. Sometimes … 
  6. Three More Recollections
    There are times when you make up your mind to stay with the breath and it’s easy. The breath is right there. You think of making it long, it goes long. You think of making it short, it goes short. You can adjust it and think of the comfortable breath sensations spreading throughout the body. You find it pleasant. You find it interesting … 
  7. Battling Darkness
    Battling Darkness August 6, 2005 One of the standard analogies for meditation is that you’re going into battle with all the habits of the mind that create suffering. They’re called defilements because they darken the mind. As the Buddha once said, the mind is luminous, but these defilements come creeping in. If the mind didn’t have some luminosity, you wouldn’t … 
  8. Endurance
     … It’s the fact that your mind isn’t silent; that’s driving you crazy. The mind is talking to itself in all kinds of ways that just makes the situation worse.” After all, here you have the opportunity to meditate, to look at your mind, to understand your mind. If it seems like a mess right now, well, all the more reason to … 
  9. Choose Your Actions Wisely
     … Turn around and look inside your own mind. That’s where the real problem is.” This is a perspective we have to keep in mind all the time. We’re not just passive recipients of things. The mind is active. It goes out looking for happiness in all kinds of things. Now, the search for happiness is not the problem, it’s that we … 
  10. Fear of the Truth
     … Ultimately, the Buddha says the highest noble truth—the truth of liberation, the truth of nibbana—is the ultimate protection for the mind, the ultimate place of security and safety. That, too, is a possibility in the mind, a potential in the mind—in your mind. So don’t let all the unskillful potentials scare you off. There are plenty of good things to … 
  11. Transparent Becoming
    Transparent Becoming December 8, 2007 The mind is used to wandering around. That’s what the word samsara means. It’s not a place; it’s an activity. It’s something you do. For most of us, it’s a matter of going from one desire to another desire. Then either you get what you want and then you say, “Okay, enough of that … 
  12. Don’t Practice in a Row
    One of the favorite teachings of the ajaans is that things in the mind don’t come lined up the way they do in the texts. This applies both to your defilements and to the factors of the path. It’s not the case that you first have gross defilements and then subtler ones. They come in a mixture, willy-nilly. It’s not … 
  13. For the Survival of True Happiness
     … In particular, train the mind through meditation. We use the breath as a way of anchoring our attention in the present moment so that we can observe the mind. We work with the breath both because it provides us with a comfortable place to stay as we’re watching the mind and because the breath is the part of the body most intimately connected … 
  14. Everything Gathers Around the Breath
     … They’re different ways of looking at what’s going on in the process of learning to be mindful and then trying to deal skillfully with what you’re aware of, as you’re mindful and alert. Those are the first steps in the factors for awakening: mindfulness, analysis of qualities, and persistence. In other words, you remember to stay on topic and you … 
  15. Victory over Death
     … One of our strengths, of course, is meditation, training the mind, based on generosity, based on virtue. You develop good qualities of the heart and mind. It’s good to remember when training the mind that the Pali word for “mind,” citta, also means “heart.” So we’re not just training the thinking side of the mind. We’re also training the part of … 
  16. To Stay the Course
     … He focuses on the suffering that the mind creates for itself when it’s clinging. And where does that come from? It comes from the mind’s own actions. It comes from its cravings. That’s the suffering that’s weighing the mind down. Without that suffering, outside sufferings wouldn’t bother the mind at all. As you learn how to develop equanimity for … 
  17. Discernment Performs
     … He’s also interested in seeing the impact that they have on the mind: on the minds of the people who listen, the mind of the person speaking, and the mind of the person thinking. That moves on to a third quality, which is that speech be timely. You want your thoughts to be timely as well. Certain truths are useful at certain times … 
  18. Consistently on the Path
     … Right mindfulness is what keeps that view in mind. This can be the governor of your practice, in the same way that a machine has a governor: the part of the machine that makes sure it doesn’t run too slow, it doesn’t run too fast, that it runs consistently just right. The Buddha defines this as the duty of mindfulness, that when … 
  19. The Resolve to Let Go
     … If you’re going to get the mind into right concentration, think about the first part of the definition: “secluded from sensuality.” This doesn’t mean that you have to go to a place where there are no sensual pleasures at all, simply that you seclude the mind, withdraw the mind from that sensual kind of thinking. You have to learn how to let … 
  20. Abandoning Effluents (3)
     … You start with mindfulness, and mindfulness leads to analysis of qualities. In other words, you’re mindful to stick with your frame of reference. Then whatever comes up in the context of that frame of reference—whether it’s the body or your feelings or the mind or mental qualities—you try to figure out which mental events are skillful and which are not … 
  21. Mindfulness Immersed in the Breath
     … In this way, as you get absorbed in the breath, you’re not even thinking about trying to make the mind concentrated. The concentration comes from your interest in the breath. If the mind is not interested in the breath and keeps wandering off, ask yourself: What is it that’s attracting the mind away? Sometimes it’s random stuff. In that case, you … 
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