Search results for: "The Mind"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. Best Friends
    When you read the Buddha’s descriptions of right concentration, you notice that the two activities that help the mind to settle down are directed thought and evaluation. In order to clear away unskillful thoughts in the mind, you have to direct your thoughts in the right direction, toward the breath. And you keep directing them there, Keep reminding yourself: “Stay with the breath … 
  19. The Noble Truths of the Breath
    To get the mind to settle down, you need to give it a comfortable place to stay. That’s why we work with the breath. Or you can say we play with the breath. In other words, we experiment to see what kind of breathing feels good. You can try long breathing or shorter breathing. It’s good to start with long breathing to … 
  20. The Carpenter’s Adze
     … You want to steady the mind—make it more concentrated—or gladden the mind. How do you do that? You deal with mental fabrication. You look at your perceptions, you look at your feelings, and ask yourself, “Which ones can I change so that the mind does become more and more glad to be here, more and more steady, more and more concentrated?” So … 
  21. One Thing Clear Through
     … Or you hear there are types of meditation where they allow the mind simply to wander around, and all you have to do is follow its wanderings. Sounds good, the mind is free to go wherever it wants, but it doesn’t develop any real strength. So you have to let go of its wanderings, resist its wanderings. There are things you’ve got … 
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