Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. Goodwill for Free
     … Vihara means “dwelling place.” When you can develop this attitude, your mind is dwelling in a more spacious place. Brahmas live in extremely spacious places with no outside limitations. Their dwelling is an immeasurable dwelling. As long as there are restrictions on your goodwill, limitations on your goodwill, there will be restrictions and limitations in the sense of space within your mind. The mind … 
  3. From Heedfulness to Purity
     … This is why we work on mindfulness, why we work on alertness. The alertness is there to watch what’s actually happening. And the mindfulness is to remind ourselves, “Okay, we did this, and what were the results? What will they be if we do it again?” That way, you can actually connect the causes with the effects. We start on a crude level … 
  4. Arising & Passing Away
     … Otherwise, it wouldn’t be able to keep that theme in mind. It’s actually a form of concentration, watching the arising and passing away. There are stages of concentration—Ajaan Lee mentions them—in which you’re not with a solid or single object but there is a sense of singleness in the mind because the mind is taking the arising and passing … 
  5. Jhana & Insight
    The mind feeds, and it suffers because it feeds: That was the Buddha’s insight. And a further insight was that there actually is a dimension of the mind that doesn’t need to feed. When we can find that, we stop suffering. Without that other dimension, there would be no end to suffering. And that’s what we’re here to find. A … 
  6. Generating Power
     … We often think of it as a place for the mind to rest, and it is, but it’s even more a place for the mind to recharge its batteries. That requires energy, requires effort, requires work. In Thailand the idiom for meditation is “to make an effort.” And in meditating there very definitely are things we have to do. It’s not just … 
  7. Perceptions as Targets
    When you focus on the breath, try to be sensitive to the image you hold in mind of what the breath is doing, and of where you are when you focus on it. Use those images as your targets to help keep you with the breath. And notice the impact that those particular perceptions have on your breathing. If you find that the breathing … 
  8. Looking for Happiness Inside
     … It’s the same in your mind. When the breath is very, very still, you see movements in the mind that you didn’t notice before. You see how the mind’s perceptions, say, create a sense of where your body is right now and a sense of the shape of the body, and how those perceptions can be dropped. Then what have you … 
  9. One Hand Clapping
     … Sometimes it’ll switch to the mind. Is the mind steadily with the breath? Or is it beginning to waver a bit? And again, as long as you’re focused on how the mind relates to the breath and what can be done to make it relate in a better way, that’s fine as well. You’ll be going back and forth among … 
  10. Discernment Through Ardency & Evaluation
    When Ajaan Lee talks about mindfulness practice, he emphasizes the three qualities that we bring to the practice: mindfulness, alertness, and ardency. Mindfulness is keeping something in mind. Alertness is watching what’s actually going on, both with the breath, if that’s your object, and with the mind—making sure they stay connected. Ardency is the quality of doing it right, trying to … 
  11. The Dhamma Eye
     … And right mindfulness, keeping the proper object in mind. In this case, we’re focusing on the breath. Be mindful of the breath. In other words, keep the breath in mind. Be alert to it, what’s happening. And be ardent in trying to stay settled with it, concentrated on it. This combination of mindfulness, alertness, and ardency is what brings the mind into … 
  12. Making the Dhamma Your Own
     … The problem is that a lot of those unskillful mind states are not just mind states. You feel them in the body as well: the sense of irritation; the sense of dis-ease. And because they’re in the body, you’re going to be in that mind state too – that’s the normal way of thinking. So it’s important that you learn … 
  13. The Acrobat
     … establishing a frame of reference—such as the body in and of itself, or feelings, mind states, mental qualities in and of themselves—and learning to stay there, keeping those things in mind. That’s the concentration element in mindfulness practice: being ardent, alert, and mindful. Mindfulness means that you keep your frame of reference in mind, and you keep in mind the idea … 
  14. A Questioning Attitude
     … But for him, just sitting is asking questions about the just sitting. “Is your mind sitting in the body? Is your mind in the sitting? Is the body sitting in the mind? Who’s doing the sitting? What are your perceptions around the act of sitting?” Even with something as simple as that, you learn how to question it. You learn how to raise … 
  15. Directed Thoughts, Random Thoughts
     … The first step is admitting they’re there, then asking yourself, “Who in the mind likes them?” This is where it’s useful to have the image of the committee of the mind in the back of your mind, so that you don’t get quite so upset about seeing yourself going for those thoughts. It’s just one little part of yourself. There … 
  16. Determined on Goodwill
     … I’ve often said that the mind is like a committee. Sometimes the good members are working on something, and some unskillful members sneak in. All of a sudden, you find that the task you had assigned to the good member gets taken over by somebody else. This is why the Buddha says you have to be determined on this mindfulness, keeping in mind … 
  17. Skills to Take Home
     … Even though the seclusion isn’t total—we’re not living in silence—still the basic values are conducive to looking into your own mind, because that’s the bottom line here: Each of us is training his or her own mind, so we don’t feel strange or out of place. The values here point inward, and that set of values is as … 
  18. Breath, Tranquility, & Insight
     … Verbal fabrication is your directed thought and evaluation, as when you bring up a topic in the mind and then evaluate it. This is how we create sentences in the mind, ask questions in the mind. The third type of fabrication is mental fabrication, which is composed of feelings of pleasure, pain or neither pleasure nor pain, and then your perceptions. Those things—feelings … 
  19. A Sucker for Random Memories
    When the mind has long opportunities to be quiet, you find yourself in the same situation as a lot of older people as they approach death. There’s nothing much happening in the present moment, and old memories start barging in. Things dating back decades that you’d totally forgotten suddenly have an opportunity to come up to the surface. If your days are … 
  20. Strategies for Generosity
     … This is where meditation comes in, because simply the way the mind relates to itself uses up a lot of excess energy in a very unnecessary way. When you give in to greed, anger, and delusion, you’re destroying your energy. There’s a battle going on in the mind all the time. When the mind doesn’t know how to relate to the … 
  21. The Desire to Be Free from Desire
     … And this faculty of right effort, which includes skillful desire, underlies right mindfulness—like we’re practicing right now, trying to get the mind into concentration by being very mindful of the breath in and of itself. You have to want to focus on the breath and to put aside any thoughts that would pull you away. The Buddha recommends three qualities to help … 
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