Search results for: "Mindfulness"

  1. Page 68
  2. Turtle Mind
    Ajaan Suwat would occasionally comment on the paradoxical nature of the mind in concentration. On the one hand, it’s very tender, very sensitive. On the other, it’s tough and resilient. The image that comes to mind is a turtle. A turtle’s body is very, very weak and gentle, so it needs a hard shell to protect it. As meditators, we have … 
  3. Gratitude, Goodwill & Generosity
     … Then it’s easy for the mind to settle down without a lot of struggle. So before we empty our minds of thoughts, we have to fill them up with good thoughts. The Buddha once said that, for him, the beginning of getting on the right path was learning how to divide his thoughts into skillful and unskillful, and then to encourage the skillful … 
  4. How & Why We Meditate
     … Just notice that there are other thoughts in the mind, not connected with the breath, but you don’t have to follow them. That right there is an important insight. You don’t have to run after everything that comes up in the mind. Then stick with the breath as long as you can and see what impact it has on the mind and … 
  5. Persistence
     … Externally it doesn’t look like much at all—here we are sitting with our eyes closed, not doing much—but there’s a lot going on in the mind. At the same time, you’re giving the mind something really simple to do, and that should be easy—you might think. But then the mind makes things very complicated. It seems to be … 
  6. To Comprehend Pain
     … The mind can have an impact on the body. And it’s primarily through the breath. So if you want to comprehend how your mind reacts to the pain, get very sensitive to the way you breathe. And remember that ultimately, what you’re trying to comprehend is the mental side of the pain: What is it that weighs the mind down? With physical … 
  7. Experimental Intelligence
     … You start out by getting the mind to be still. Get it into strong states of concentration where everything is very, very still, so that you can observe, when a thought comes into the mind, what it does to the mind; or when you do an action, what it does to the mind. If things aren’t really still, you can’t see the … 
  8. Overcoming Obstacles
    The mind has an amazing ability to create obstacles for itself, even when it’s doing something that it knows—at least part of it knows—is really good for it: strengthening your powers of concentration, giving the mind a comfortable place to stay in the present moment, a place where it can stay at home, feel at home, gain nourishment. We got this … 
  9. Setbacks
    The mind is a complex thing. So it only stands to reason that the training of the mind is going to have to be complex as well, involving lots of different factors that you have to bring into balance. In broad terms, the training comes down to three things: virtue, concentration and discernment. They feed off one another. The standard explanation is that virtue … 
  10. The Right Focal Length
     … What’s the mind cooking up right now? What new issues is it creating to stab itself with? Try to take those four noble truths seriously. The cause of stress and suffering that’s weighing on the mind is what’s happening in the mind itself. The things outside that it brings in to aggravate its suffering are brought in through craving and clinging … 
  11. Nourishment from the Breath
     … He says mindfulness of breathing is like medicine for the body, medicine for the mind. The actual medicine is the mindfulness and alertness; the breath is—he uses the Thai word, krasai, which means the medium in which you mix the medicine so that it can spread out throughout the body. In other words, your mindfulness and alertness are the real medicine. The breath … 
  12. Housecleaning
    The mind’s real home is right in the here and now. One of the most natural places for it to settle is right at the breath, because that’s where the mind and the body meet. But the mind doesn’t spend much time at home. It’s usually off travelling around. It’ll occasionally come back home, run through for a bit … 
  13. Think Outside the Ruts
     … We have to learn to develop some dispassion for them, so that we can get out of them, because they tend to be like ruts in the mind. The Buddha uses the word “bending” the mind. You keep thinking in certain ways and the mind gets bent in those directions. Nowadays, we’d say they’re like ruts—like a rut in a road … 
  14. Appropriate Attention
     … Just keep in mind that while you’re meditating, you’re already doing something that the talk recommends, which is to develop the path—trying to bring the mind into a mindful state of concentration, where it’s still but very alert. It’s in that state that you can begin to see what the talk is talking about. We spend most of our … 
  15. Contemplating the World You Create
    We focus the mind first at the breath because as you get to know the breath, you begin to realize that the mind opens itself up there, right at its attention to the breath. And that’s what we’re trying to understand. Our primary task here is not trying to understand the world outside. It’s trying to understand the worlds of our … 
  16. The Essence of the Dhamma
     … Always keep that in mind. You look in your mind and you see what needs developing. Right now it’s mindfulness. Alertness. You want to be as consistent as possible in keeping your breath in mind, and in being alert to the breath, at the same time being alert to what’s going on in the mind. Anything that might pull you away from … 
  17. Battling Negativity
    The work of looking into the mind, ferreting out the causes of suffering and figuring out how to put an end to them, is very delicate work, very precise work. Which is why you have to get the mind very still in order to do it. It’s like threading a needle. You hold your breath, get the rest of the body still, and … 
  18. Beyond Natural Suffering
     … It’s the mind that doesn’t like the pain. As the Buddha said, beings are creations of the mind. If it weren’t for the mind entering into these physical elements, there wouldn’t be a being here. There wouldn’t be a body. It’s the mind that has all these desires. And if you think the mind is perfectly innocent, that … 
  19. Mind Control
     … He’s not the sort of teacher who says, “Just be mindful,” or, “Just be fully present, and everything else will take care of itself.” You’ve got to look for where the suffering is, where there’s a cause of suffering, what events in the mind actually have the potential to become the path to the end of suffering. These are things you … 
  20. Sunrise, Sunset
     … Or things outside could happen.” What inside your mind would make you not ready to go? If you’re not sure, you don’t have to think in the abstract. Just look at yourself as you go through the day. What kind of thinking does the mind like to settle down in? When you’re trying to meditate and part of the mind wants … 
  21. Time to Heal
    We come out to a place like this because it gives the mind a chance to look at itself without all of the distractions that get in the way when we’re living with other people. Even though there are other people around here, our main purpose in being here is to take care of whatever duties we have to do in the course … 
  22. Load next page...