Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. Transparent Becoming
     … So you do what you can to keep the mind here. In some ways you can force it by being strict with it, not allowing it to go wandering off. But that kind of strict parenting, if it’s not tempered with love and understanding, is going to create a problem child. You want to be more understanding, understand what your mind is interested … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. Dhamma Medicine
    The Dhamma is medicine for diseases of the mind. These diseases are not the ones that would send you to an insane asylum necessarily. They’re the basic everyday diseases: greed, anger, and delusion. These are big troublemakers in the mind because they cause you to see things wrongly. We think something may be in our best interest, but it’s not. Greed may … 
  17. Cleansing the Mind
     … And as I mentioned, water doesn’t clean the mind. Good actions clean the mind: words, deeds, and particularly the three teachings the Buddha has on right mental conduct. It’s good to keep these in mind. They’re a foundation for the meditation, a foundation for the practice. They’re mentioned in a sutta where a brahman comes to see the Buddha and … 
  18. How to Be Happy
     … So you’ve got to train the mind. And because you’ve been building this on virtue, there are no walls in the mind that bar things off. In other words, there’s not a lot of denial about what’s going on, because mindfulness is the basis of concentration. Mindfulness is an ability to remember things for a long time so that you … 
  19. Joyous Endurance
     … So right now we’re trying to create a state of concentration in the mind. Direct your thoughts to the breath, part of the body in and of itself. Be ardent, alert, mindful. Put aside greed and distress with reference to the world. That’s the basic formula. That’s how you get into concentration, where the mind can settle in but still maintain … 
  20. A Unified Committee
    Each person’s mind is like a committee, and each person brings a different committee to the meditation. This is why we have such different issues as we try to get the mind to settle down. Some members of the committee are willing to settle down; others are a little bit more resistant. And the politics within each person’s committee is extremely individual … 
  21. How to Fall
     … When the mind slips off its object, you get faster and faster at bringing it back. Notice, the answer isn’t: The mind doesn’t slip off at all. It’s: You’re expected to slip off; it’s a normal part of the practice, a normal part of the training. The point lies in being more alert to what’s going on and … 
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