Search results for: "The Mind"

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  2. Training the Mind to Train the Mind
    We’ve come here to train the mind. The problem is that the mind has to train itself, which means that when you’re sitting down here, the mind is in at least two sections: the part that wants to do the training and the part that’s going to be trained. The part that’s going to be trained doesn’t necessarily want … 
  3. Watch the Mind at the Breath
    Take a couple of good long deep in-and-out breaths, both to refresh the body and to make it easy for the mind to stay with the breath, so that you notice where you feel the process of the breathing. Keep that up as long as deep breathing feels good. When it feels like it’s too much, then you can adjust it … 
  4. Bojjhanga: Discernment Fosters Concentration
     … You have to understand the mind to a certain extent to get it to settle down. And to see things really clearly, the mind needs to be still. So you use what discernment you’ve learned in the past or learned from Dhamma talks and apply it to stilling the mind. Then, once the mind is still, you can start seeing things for your … 
  5. Homage Through the Practice
     … In fact, it’s in changing those habits of the mind that you bring the mind to a point where the pains of the body and the pains of the outside world don’t matter—because you’re not bringing them in to burn the mind. This is why we have to practice. We have to train the mind. As the Buddha said, the … 
  6. Doing Aggregates
     … If you notice the mind has wandered off, you just bring it back. It wanders off again, bring it back again. Work with the breath to make it comfortable so that the mind likes to come back, and be on the lookout for when the mind is ready to go off. Notice how it does it. When you can begin to anticipate that the … 
  7. Saying No to Distraction
     … And having an all-around awareness in the body puts the mind in a position where it can see things from angles it didn’t look from before. The defilements like it when the mind has a spotlight attention—when it’s focused on one thing from one angle, and a lot of the mind is in the dark. Here we’re trying to … 
  8. A Mind Without Inertia
     … These things weigh the mind down if you hold on to them. This is the Buddha’s ultimate mode of attack when you see the mind holding onto something. The phrase, “holding on,” here, is metaphorical. The mind doesn’t have hands that grab things, but it has habits that it keeps repeating over and over again. The places it goes to for its … 
  9. The Fourth Noble Truth
     … something good or bad in the breath, or something good or bad in the mind—because it’s the mind together with the breath that makes the breath a path. The breath on its own is not a path. But the mind interacting with the breath: That’s the path. And it’s going to take us someplace. When the Buddha sets out the … 
  10. Mental Movements
     … Once the mind feels strong and well-fed like this, then you look at your old feeding places—the old garbage cans and other places where you used to pick around and find this and find that—and you realize, “I don’t have to do that anymore.” That’s when the mind is freed. So, work at keeping the mind well-focused, well … 
  11. Healing Breath
     … So there’s been a tradition that these teachings are healing both for the body and for the mind—especially for the mind, because the diseases of the mind are the most important. So as we meditate, it’s good to recall these qualities to use them to treat whatever disease we have in our minds. It’s especially important to bring them to … 
  12. The Uses of the Breath
     … If you need to calm the mind, breathe in a way that calms the mind down. If the mind is tired, breathe in a way that gives it energy. If you’re ready to start developing insight, look into the processes of how you’re doing this so that you can understand how the mind goes about shaping things, how it goes about fixing … 
  13. Strength of Mind
     … Where do your actions come from? They come from the mind. So you’ve got to train the mind so that your actions will be skillful. That means we’re doing good groundwork here. You remember to stay with the mind, that’s mindfulness. You’re alert to what the breath is doing, you’re alert to what the mind is doing. That’s … 
  14. Constant, Easeful, Self
     … Try to make the breath easeful and be on the lookout for the next time the mind is going to wander off. This morning I was talking to someone who was dealing with the issue of whether—when you’re sitting there, pulling the mind back, pulling the mind back, pulling the mind back—that really counts as meditation. Actually, it’s a crucial … 
  15. Staying in Position
     … Keeping the mind in position means that whatever else comes up in the mind, you don’t go after it. When a thought comes passing in, just let it go passing on. You don’t have to chase it down. You don’t have to complete it. All too often, a half-finished thought arises in the mind, and for some reason we feel … 
  16. At Home with the Breath
     … It’s the same with the mind. When you get the mind nourished and soothed, massaged by the breath, it’s going to have enough sense of self-confidence, self-esteem, and well-being that it’s going to be willing to admit, “Oh, yes, I do have that other habit.” But because you’re learning this new habit in the mind, you’re … 
  17. Let Pleasure & Pain Fall Off the Plow
    Let Pleasure & Pain Fall Off the Plow June 1, 2018 Ordinarily, the mind goes bouncing back and forth between pain and sensual pleasure. Even though we may realize that sensual pleasures have their drawbacks, we keep going back, going back anyhow because we don’t see any other alternative to pain. When the Buddha taught what he called the middle way, it was to … 
  18. Basic Meditation Instructions
     … That’s the basic technique for getting the mind to settle down in the present moment. In the course of getting it to settle down, you’ve already learned something about your intentions. If you stick with one intention, it really does work. It really does make a change in how you experience the body, what you notice in the mind. And when the … 
  19. Mind in & of Itself
     … But the mind is carrying lots of attitudes, lots of problems from the day, and you’ve got to work on it. In other words, what you’re doing is surveying the first three of the frames of reference under Right Mindfulness—body, feelings, and mind. And if the mind is the problem, you have to work on the mind “in and of itself … 
  20. The Lightened Mind
     … This is how you ultimately lighten the mind. That’s when the mind is brought to its highest state. That’s when it’s totally free. So these are the stages in how you get from just learning to teach the mind how to be solid, to the goal which is totally unlimited. We heighten the mind by lightening it, and we lighten it … 
  21. Concentration & Insight
     … The problem is the mind doesn’t always settle down in a very nice and cooperative way. So you need the stick—in other words, remembering that there are problems in the mind, dangers in the mind, and that you’re going to need to keep your tools at hand to fend them off. There’s a list of five ways of dealing with … 
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