Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 68
  2. Goodness Comes from Heedfulness
     … You make up the mind you’re going to stay with the breath, and five minutes later you find yourself someplace else, thinking about the past, thinking about the future, anything but the breath. If you try to trace it back, it’s hard to remember the point where the mind left the breath and got involved in something else. The mind does have … 
  3. Don’t Be Afraid of Jhana
     … In fact, this is where discernment arises, in this power of concentration that allows the mind to settle down, be still, and have a sense of well-being. If the mind lacks a sense of well-being, then whatever insights it gains are going to be distorted through aversion. But when the mind has a sense of pleasure, it’s like a person who … 
  4. The Raft of Jhana
    There’s a tendency when you hear the word “jhana” to think of some otherworldly state, something far removed from the mind as you’re experiencing it right now. But what is jhana made out of? In the passage we chanted just now, from the Analysis of the Path, it says that in the first jhana there’s directed thought, evaluation, pleasure, and rapture … 
  5. The Train Trestle
     … As for the mind, is it willing to stay here right now? Sometimes, if it’s not staying, the problem is with the breath or with the feelings. Sometimes it’s with the thoughts going on in the mind: things left over from the day. If you find a lot of left-over stuff, sort through it a bit. Imagine the Buddha’s point … 
  6. Staying, Moving, & Neither
     … Simply open and allow, and once you’re there with that kind of energy, it’s a lot easier for the mind to settle down in a way that doesn’t require a lot of effort, a lot of exertion. This is one of the problems with reading the texts too much. We get a lot of preconceived ideas of what the mind should … 
  7. Refuge
     … In the same way with the breath and the mind, you keep rewarding the mind with a really gratifying breath each time it comes back. After a while, the mind will be happy to come back on its own. Then when you’re here, you try to figure out a way to make it like staying here. After all, one rewarding breath: If you … 
  8. Patience & Endurance
     … What’s skillful right now? Try to get the mind to settle down. We want to get the mind in a position where it doesn’t get worked up over pleasure or pain, where it can see things clearly for what they are. To do that, you’ve got to give the mind a sense of well-being right now. It does need some … 
  9. One Point, Two Points, Many Points
     … Just by exploring these issues, you can learn an awful lot about the mind — and make a big change in the mind as well.
  10. Skills to Take Home
     … It’s good to have the mind in that space as often as possible so that it can really turn around and look at itself—so that you can realize the extent to which you’re still carrying something around is right there in the mind. If you’re busy with other people’s issues, it’s very hard to look at your own … 
  11. Patience Is a Skill
     … You’re trying to get the mind still, and it won’t get still. You give yourself encouragement. Tell yourself: You focus on the causes, and you keep coming back to them, coming back to them, coming back to them, and after a while they will begin to have an imprint on the mind, an influence on the mind. We can’t tell beforehand … 
  12. Single-minded
     … And the activities are an essential part of getting the mind to even deeper states of oneness, more solid states of oneness. Sometimes you hear them described as a wavering or wobbling of the mind because it hasn’t settled in solidly yet. But if it is a wavering and a wobbling, it’s wavering and wobbling with a purpose: putting the mind and … 
  13. Subduing Greed & Distress
     … These are the stages in how the mind wanders off. You learn them by thwarting them, by just bringing the mind right back. And then you get to see not only the arising of the hindrance, but also the fact that it’s got several causes, or causes in several stages. Something was wrong, there was something lacking in the mind, and then part … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. False Friends
     … Remind yourself that if it’s something important to think through, it’s best to think it through when the mind is clear. So wait until you’ve had a good long hour just to be very still, to get the mind in good shape. Then, if you have to use it to think through some difficult problem, you’ll be in proper shape … 
  16. Scribe Knowledge, Warrior Knowledge
     … But when he boiled down the basic teachings, the ones he said were really important, he focused on the wings to awakening, which are lists of qualities of the mind that are going to be needed as you take on your battle with your defilements—all the unskillful things going on in the mind. What this means is that warriors do need a certain … 
  17. Virtue, Concentration, Discernment
     … After a while, you get more, and more interested in, “Who is this commentator? Who’s talking to whom in here? Why does the mind need to be sending messages like this?” That’s when things get really interesting. It’s when you get this inner commentator on friendly terms with everybody else in the mind that you can really look into it—not … 
  18. The Power of Intention
     … We work on concentration so that we can see the mind more clearly. Why do we want to see the mind? We want to see what it’s doing as it forms an intention. All the qualities that are to be brought to bear on getting the mind into concentration—mindfulness, alertness, ardency—are focused on your actions, your intentional actions. Mindfulness keeps things … 
  19. Mindfulness of Death & the Deathless
     … That’s what the mindfulness part is. One is the fact that death could happen at any time. That’s to give rise to a sense of urgency, realizing there’s work to be done. The work, of course depends on the other thing you have to keep in mind, which is the Buddha’s explanation of what happens at death. The mind latches … 
  20. The Path is Fabricated
     … And in the same way, as you’re settling in, you try to take this ease and rapture and work it through the body, so that the body feels just right, giving the mind a really comfortable place to stay, a place where it can stay solidly, without any sense of hunger, any sense of lack All of this is something you do. The … 
  21. Make the Most of What You’ve Got
     … So we bring the mind into a state of concentration, which is the best sort of becoming for observing the processes of becoming in the mind, and that’s for several reasons. It’s creating a state of stillness. You’re letting go of unskillful qualities. You got the mind to a point where it’s not interested in sensuality. It’s not interested … 
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