Search results for: "Mindfulness"

  1. Page 72
  2. Taking Responsibility
    If the mind were basically good, there’d be no need to train it. You’d just follow whatever impulses come up, and you’d be guaranteed happiness. If the mind were basically bad, you couldn’t train it: It would resist training. What this means is that the mind has both good and bad impulses. And our duty is to learn how to … 
  3. Determination
     … If you think of the mind as a committee, when you make a determination like that, you’re basically putting out a warning to any members of the committee that might want to be traitorous that they would be recognized as traitors and shot. That gives the mind a strong impetus to carrying through. When the Buddha talked about determination, there were four qualities … 
  4. Choosing Freedom
     … As he said when he was old, the only time he found any comfort from his body was when his mind was totally in very deep concentration. Whenever he was ill—when he was attacked by Devadatta or when he had his last major illness—he stayed mindful and alert. His mind didn’t get fogged or confused. Even when he died, right up … 
  5. The Right to Repair Your Mind
     … The Buddha’s approach to the mind is that you have the right to repair your mind. There are a lot of people out there who say, No, somebody else has to do this for you. But he’s saying that you’ve got the wherewithal within yourself to solve the mind’s problems, particularly the problem of suffering. The four noble truths are … 
  6. Take Good Aim
     … You’ll find, of course, that some members of the committee of the mind have lots of other desires as well, most of which are based on very strange ideas of what’s possible in the world. Now, you can’t simply make up your mind about the way things are going to be. You can’t make up your mind, say, that you … 
  7. Sowing Good Seeds
     … If you’re not comfortable with it, the mind is not going to want to stay. Like pushing an inflated ball down under some water: As soon as your grip relaxes just a little bit, the ball comes shooting up out of the water and into the air. The same with the mind: If the mind is uncomfortable with the breath, it’s going … 
  8. The Intelligent Heart
     … The training of the mind, as the Buddha said, is the primary requisite for a happiness that lasts: both because it gives you the strength to give up the other pleasures that would leave wounds on the mind, and because it allows you to see more clearly into what your own mind is doing. When the mind feels an urge to go off someplace … 
  9. Training Your Intentions
     … The texts often talk about how you have to get rid of the five hindrances first and then get the mind concentrated. Actually, it’s in the process of trying to get the mind to settle down that you run into these hindrances as hindrances. Otherwise, they just slosh around in the mind without seeming to be hindering you from anything. You’re hardly … 
  10. Treasure Island
     … In his image, that’s the establishing of mindfulness. Focus on the body in and of itself, puttin aside all thoughts of greed and distress with reference to the world—just you right here with your body. Be ardent, alert, and mindful. Notice the order there in those three qualities: They start with ardent, Ardency is what makes everything skillful there, because mindfulness can … 
  11. Understanding Pain
     … Fortunately, the actions we’re doing right now are creating the kind of pain in the mind that’s causing the mind to suffer. If we change our present actions, the mind doesn’t have to suffer. So first we have to have this understanding: The fact that there’s pain in the body does not have to make us suffer. Then we can … 
  12. A Pervasive Well-being
    When we talk about practicing concentration, we often talk about bringing the mind to oneness, or a state of one-pointedness or singleness. It’s important that we understand what this means and how you do it because there are two ways of explaining the Pali term ekaggatā. One is that the mind is at one point. Eka means one, agga means point or … 
  13. Off the Continuum
     … There’s a special kind of pleasure that comes with that concentration, because part of what makes the concentration right is that it’s endowed with all the other factors of the path, starting from right view on through right mindfulness. This is why the Buddha said that right concentration is developed not only by emphasizing the tranquility or the serenity of the mind … 
  14. Judging Your Thoughts by What They Do
     … This principle applies not only to external actions but also to the actions of the mind—in other words, your thoughts. When we settle the mind down into meditation, it’s not simply to watch what’s going on in the present moment. We want to give the mind the solidity to remember lessons from the past when they are necessary, and also to … 
  15. Multi-Dimensional Dhamma
     … not only how you deal with your own mind, but also how dealing with your own mind affects your relationships to other people and to the things you depend on for life. When you want to gauge the practice and events in your mind, and to gain a sense of which teachings really are useful when applied in a particular way, you have to … 
  16. Locate Your Craving
     … You have to be alert, you have to be mindful to do what needs to be done, and let the pleasure take care of itself. Secondly, you’re learning some important lessons about craving and about how to understand your mind. You’ll notice this when the mind wanders off: An image will appear and you’ll go into it. In fact, it happens … 
  17. Cooking the Mind
    One of the more unusual images that the ajaans use for describing the practice is that you’re cooking your mind. It’s like cooking rice. Uncooked rice can still grow and turn into rice plants. If your mind is thoroughly cooked, though, it’s not going to give rise to any more rice plants. It’s not going to be reborn again. It … 
  18. One Point, Two Points, Many Points
     … That enabled her to get the mind into concentration really quickly. What all this shows is that concentration is an individual matter. Different people find that their minds settle down in different ways. And there’s room in the practice of concentration for you to experiment and see what works for you. There’s no one ideal method that’s going to suit everybody … 
  19. Guarding the Truth
     … So, as you mediate, you’re looking at the processes, you’re looking at the way the mind filters things and shapes things. This is why, when we meditate, we close our eyes. We’re not looking at the world outside. We’re looking at how our minds work—our hearts and minds. The Pali word citta covers both heart and mind. As we … 
  20. The Teacher Inside
     … You can get your mind around the idea that you’re actually doing them, and then you stick with it. So remember as you’re meditating, you’re not only training the mind, you’re also training the part of the mind that’s the teacher of the mind, that watches, evaluates. Of course, the teacher is sure to make mistakes, like teachers in … 
  21. Doubts
     … Why do you want to go over them again? If you were to think about them for 24 hours, where would they take you? Anywhere good? Remember, the Buddha said that when you allow your mind to go down certain avenues of thought, you’re bending the mind in that direction. Do you want your mind to be bent in the direction of lust … 
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