Search results for: "The Mind"

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  2. Sense Restraint
     … The mind goes running out to sensory objects, and if you encourage it to go running out after anything at all, the motivation for running out gets strengthened in the mind. If you’re used to running out after beautiful sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations as you’re going through the day—and a lot of us do that—then when you sit … 
  3. Many I’s, Many Eyes
     … If you have lots of different eyes in the mind, it actually strengthens your meditation. This is how discernment works. One part of the mind is acting and other parts of the mind are watching, so that you’re very clear about what’s being done, why it was done, and what it leads to. So even though having a committee may be difficult … 
  4. Succeeding at Happiness
     … Giving makes the mind serene; joy and gratification arise. The highest motivation is when it’s purely, as the Buddha said, an ornament of the mind. In other words, you’re no longer feeding off what you’re going to get out of the gift. It’s just a natural expression of the mind’s goodness. So try to do this well. Get your … 
  5. Set Your Heart on the Breath
     … being alert to what the breath is doing and also being alert to what the mind is doing. It’s inevitable that the mind is going to wander away. Be alert to the fact that it’s going to happen, and keep an eye out for it, so that as soon as you do catch sight of the mind wandering away, you can bring … 
  6. The Purpose of Empathetic Joy
     … We’re making it as pleasant as possible, to give the mind the food it needs in order to practice, to settle down, be still, and see things as they really are, to see the movements of the mind as they’re actually happening, to see the extent to which you’re fabricating your experience, and then the value of those fabrications: which ones … 
  7. Ups & Downs
     … Try to notice, okay, this is what the mind is like when it’s going well. When it’s not going well, this is how the mind is like when it’s not going well. Then figure out, “Well, what exactly is wrong?” Sometimes you’ll have to see it going not well for quite a while before you catch what you’re doing … 
  8. The Lessons of Equanimity
     … When the mind is ready, it can go in and ask questions about the pain, particularly, “Why is this pain having an effect on the mind?” The effect on the mind comes through your perceptions around the pain. How do you visualize the pain to yourself? What images come to the mind with the pain? This applies both to mental pain and to physical … 
  9. Guardian Meditations
     … So you look at the object of the lust, then you look at the fact of lust in the mind itself. When you can develop dispassion for both, then the mind can become more free. When the Buddha talks about dispassion, he often pairs it with the fact that the mind becomes unfettered, the mind escapes from its prisons that it builds for itself … 
  10. As Days & Nights Fly Past
     … So the mind will tend to go in that direction, especially when there’s pain. Most people don’t see any alternative to pain aside from sensuality. That’s where the mind tends to go to escape pain. Can you resist that pull? This is one of the reasons why we have the contemplation of the parts of the body, the contemplation of all … 
  11. To Comprehend Suffering
     … Every time you suffer, every time there’s a weight on the mind, a fire burning in the mind, darkness in the mind—it’s in the clinging. That’s what’s burning; that’s what’s dark. So, you try to put out the fire, try to bring some light to the darkness, by looking at the kinds of clinging and also understanding … 
  12. The Garden of Enlightenment
     … And even though we’re working with natural things in the mind, and there’s a natural quality of goodness in the mind, there’s also a natural quality of not-goodness in there. So we can’t be complacent. The practice is not just letting the mind go along with its own ordinary flow, because what’s the ordinary flow of the mind … 
  13. Mindful All Day Long
    The basic position when you get started in meditation is to sit with your eyes closed, because you want to give all your attention to what’s going on in the mind and don’t want to have any distractions. It’s like learning how to play the piano. You go off into a quiet room where you’re by yourself. Nobody else is … 
  14. Feeding Frenzy: Dependent Co-arising
     … Dependent Co-arising October 23, 2006 The Pali word for the worlds we create in the mind is bhava, which literally means becoming. We keep creating these worlds. If you look at dependent co-arising, you see that they’re based on two things. The immediate prerequisite is clinging, upadana; and clinging in turn is based on craving, tanha. But both of those words … 
  15. Right View, Right Attention
     … Because this is a state of mind that allows you to watch the mind and not feel hungry for jumping at whatever. If the mind is hungry, then anything that comes along looks like a good snack. If it’s been engaged in something unskillful, it’ll try to distract itself with whatever. But here you’re engaged in something skillful, with a sense … 
  16. Stubborn Clinging
    Stubborn Clinging July 26, 2011 The term “becoming” refers to the mind’s habit of taking on an identity in a world of experience. This can refer to our sense of the world outside and our identity within that world, whether it’s the social world or the physical world. But “world” can also refer to worlds in the mind. As you meditate, you … 
  17. The Practice of Right View
     … It may be idle in its intent, but it actually has an impact on the mind. It’s something you’re doing, and it leaves kammic traces. Just as the Buddha discouraged idle, aimless speech, he also discouraged idle, aimless thinking. So learn how to look at your thoughts in terms of what they do, the impact they have on the mind. The Buddha … 
  18. Trustworthy Intentions
     … So when you’re meditating here and you notice the mind slipping off to other things, the first step is just not to follow it. Make it a rule that wherever the mind goes in the course of the hour, you’re going to bring it back to the breath. Immediately. As for the other currents in the mind, you just let them be … 
  19. Your Inner Teacher
     … Subconscious events are events going on in the mind all the time when you’re not paying attention, or that you—consciously or subconsciously—willfully ignore. You go into denial. This is why it’s so difficult to train the mind. The mind has this tendency toward denial, to block things out. What we’re doing as we meditate is to put the mind … 
  20. Sophisticated Dhamma
     … This is a very important principle in learning about the mind and seeing exactly where your defilements are. If you don’t say No to the mind, everything seems to flow, and there’s no problem at all. “Who says there’s such a thing as defilement?” The part of the mind that even resists having any of its thoughts called defilement: That’s … 
  21. Your Game Leg
     … This is something you stamp with ‘like’; this is something you stamp with ‘dislike.’” The different parts of the mind agree on those labels. Well, learn how to question those agreements—these little pacts the mind has with itself—so that your looking and listening at the very least don’t damage the state of the mind and can actually can become part of … 
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