Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 69
  2. Lift Your Mind
     … On the one hand, you’re alert to make sure that the mind actually does stay with the breath. And you’re alert to what’s going on in the breath, what’s going on in the mind that might pull them apart. And then you’re ardent. You try to do this well. The ardency is what makes the mindfulness right, makes the … 
  3. Not Getting What You Want
     … He has you break these things down into impersonal activities to help try to get* you* out of the way so you can see clearly: “Okay, there is this movement in the mind. And as soon as there’s this movement in the mind, there’s going to be suffering. When the movement stops, the stress and the suffering stop.” Then you’ve got … 
  4. Right Effort
     … In other words, when you see greed or anger or delusion arising in the mind, ask yourself, “How is the breath going right now?” See if you can change the mind state by changing the way you breathe. That, of course, will involve verbal fabrications: directed thought and evaluation. Instead of chattering on to yourself about how much you want something, how much you … 
  5. What’s Worth Doing?
     … Sensuality, of course, is the mind’s fascination with thinking about sensual pleasures—lustful thoughts or simply thoughts about food, clothing, shelter, how you’d like this to be that way or that to be this way. The amount of time we spend fantasizing about these things, dressing them up before and after, keeps pulling the mind in the wrong direction. It gives us … 
  6. Think Calmly about Death
     … Train the mind so that it’s not shaken by things. Every day, he said, when the sun sets, remind yourself, “This could be the last time you see the sun. Are you ready to go?” And usually the answer is No. So, okay, what’s going to get in the way? What unskillful qualities are going to be burdens on the mind? What … 
  7. Be Bigger Than Your Pains
     … It’s free; it’s going to be here as long as the body’s alive; and it’s something very intimate with the mind. It’s the part of your awareness or the part of the world that’s as close to the mind as you can get without actually being in the mind. And because there’s only the present breath that … 
  8. Desires Have Their Reasons
     … Well, here’s a desire to settle down, just be very still, so you can see these movements of the mind. The ajaans talk about them a lot. Luang Puu Dune talks about how the mind goes flowing out. That’s the cause of suffering. Ajaan Lee identifies these outflows with the effluents. There’s a desire that arises in the mind and then … 
  9. Cutting Through the Hype
     … This sensitivity to cause and effect is going to go deeper and deeper in the practice as you get more sensitive even to vagrant thoughts coming through the mind. When your sensitivity gets really focused, really subtle, you can see a little bit of craving coming and then going away. Or you can see a particular perception coming into the mind and going away … 
  10. Borrowed Wealth
     … What really is there of solid value? You’ve got the mind, and you’ve got the qualities of the mind, and these qualities can be of solid value not only for you, but also for people around you. So you want to invest in those. These are some things to keep in mind as you’re struggling with staying with the breath. It … 
  11. More than a Sliver of Mindfulness
     … That will lead the mind into right concentration. Seeing the larger context in this way gives you a sense of where the mindfulness should be going. It doesn’t just stay there, watching things coming and going. You use it as part of a training that gets you into right concentration. Seeing this context, you pay more attention to one of the lists inside … 
  12. Calm & Insight into Pain
     … We get very good at certain kinds of sketches, not realizing that they may be useful for some purposes but can actually create a lot of suffering for the mind in other situations. So look at how you sketch your pains to yourself and how you stitch them together. And ask yourself, “Could there be another way?” Here there’s a disturbance in the … 
  13. As Days & Nights Fly Past
     … We stash away certain ideas, and as they get brought up from the mind to reflect on, each time you put them back in the mind they get changed. After a while your memories get distorted and deformed. So what’s left? A lot of lies the mind is telling itself about the past. They may look like gold, but they’re fake. Years … 
  14. The Skill of Happiness
     … Then, if you have meditated before, you can remember the lessons you’ve learned as to what works and what doesn’t work in getting the mind to settle down and to be happy to stay here. Because the mind is like a committee. There are lots of views, lots of opinions, lots of strategies we’ve used in the past for finding happiness … 
  15. What Are You Doing Right Now?
     … The fullness that comes from this particular state of being makes it easier to watch, to see how you create a state of being in the mind, how you nurture it, and how you keep it going. Creating good states of being in the mind is like giving the mind good food to feed on. It can then start comparing this food with the … 
  16. Doubt vs. Questioning
     … But if you learn from your actions, then you’re developing good qualities in the mind. And in the process of developing, you come to your own understanding of what mindfulness really is about: What’s the difference between mindfulness and alertness? How do they relate? How do they do good things for the mind? How do they enable you to see things you … 
  17. The Range of Our Responsibility
     … Basically, it’s what we do with the body, what we say with our speech and what we think with the mind: That’s our responsibility. And all of this comes out of the mind in the present moment. That’s why we focus our meditation on being more and more clear about what’s going on in the mind in the present moment … 
  18. Training Your Minds
     … The trick is to stay, because the mind has a tendency to wander. That’s what the word samsara means: wandering-on. It’s not so much a place as an activity, something the mind keeps doing. It peeks in and looks around here for a while, and then drops that, and goes over and looks in that corner over there. If you were … 
  19. Nobility Through Inner Strength
    Get your body in position—in a posture you can try to maintain for the whole hour without putting too much strain on any part of the body—because the mind has work to do. Getting the mind into position is not all that hard, but keeping it there is going to be the work for the hour. Getting it in position simply means … 
  20. Why It’s Good to Know Why
     … Remember that the mind is a complex system. And the nature of complex systems is that they’re focused on some things, but then, in the areas where they’re not focused, they tend to be pretty random. When we get on the path, we’re focusing ourselves in a particular direction. We’re trying to get all those random threads of the mind … 
  21. Strength of Mindfulness
     … Now, you don’t memorize those lessons and run them through the mind all the time, but you have them at your fingertips. This is one of the reasons why we keep the mind still. When it’s still, it’s as if all the drawers of the mind where all your valuables are stored are available. You know where they are so that … 
  22. Load next page...