Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 72
  2. It’s Good to Talk to Yourself
     … So when we sit down to focus on the breath, we get frustrated when we see that the mind is still talking to itself about the breath. Then it wanders off and talks to itself about something else. Then it comes back and talks about the breath. It’s important to realize that talking to yourself is a necessary part of getting the mind … 
  3. Dhamma is Timeless
     … But there’s a part of the mind that realizes that not practicing goes very strongly against another grain, which is the part of the mind that really wants to be free, that’s tired of the ways in which it has been making itself suffer. That’s the side of the mind you want to encourage. You want to make sure that it … 
  4. To Comprehend Suffering
     … So try to get the mind into a good solid place. As the Buddha said, it’s when the mind is in concentration that it can see things as they’ve come into being, i.e., before you’ve manipulated them and dressed them up into something else. Just see the raw materials as they are. The mind in concentration can see them. The … 
  5. Sticking with an Intention
     … The insights are not nearly as important as the ability to put the mind in a position where it can produce insights and evaluate them in terms of what they do in the present. That’s why we’re trying to get the mind in concentration. Try to be very, very alert to cause and effect here in the present moment. When you can … 
  6. Fence Me In
    One of the Thai ajahans has spoken of virtue as a fence for your actions and concentration practice as a fence for the mind, something that keeps you within bounds. And of course, here in America, we don’t like fences. The old song, “Don’t Fence Me In,” seems to typify most of our attitudes. But the purpose of having that fence is … 
  7. To Be Sure
     … So this quality of the mind that’s so unreliable is really scary. You can make up your mind to do a lot of good because you want to help the world. But if the mind switches on you, what are you going to do then? We see this with a lot of people who are very corrupt, and yet they seem to have … 
  8. The Roles of Equanimity
     … What this means is that sometimes you make up your mind you want the mind to do this, you want the mind to do that, and it’s just not working. So you get as still as you can and watch whatever is unstill in the mind. And you begin to see little things you didn’t see before. That’s where the equanimity … 
  9. Approaching the four noble truths
     … You find that as the mind stays really solidly still, it begins to shed, shed, shed different activities. And you see that because you notice that certain activities add a little extra stress to the quietness of the mind. The important thing is seeing that they’re unnecessary. As long as they’re necessary—in other words, if you drop them and the mind … 
  10. The Dhamma Eye
     … Then toward morning, he realized that the real problem in the mind wasn’t things outside, it was the mind’s own misunderstandings of what’s going on inside. In particular, not understanding why there is suffering, what the mind does to create suffering, and if there’s a way to practice that puts an end to it. These were what he called the … 
  11. Alert
    The purpose of getting the mind into concentration is so that it can see itself, both in the sense that it’s quiet enough that it’s not creating disturbances, so anything subtle that shows up in the mind will be very clear, and also in the sense that there should be a feeling of well-being so that it’s willing to observe … 
  12. The Easy Way Out
     … easy for the good side of the mind. It’s asking you to do things that are honorable, things that are noble, things that feel really good deep down inside when you do them. So ask yourself, “What obstacles are you putting in your own way?” And be patient but persistent in learning how to put them aside. The difficulty, of course, is that … 
  13. Caring Without Clinging
     … We can sort out the various emotions in the mind, but it does require the skill of learning to get the mind to be centered and still, really centered, really stilled—feeding first on its concentration, on that equanimity based on singleness, then finally getting the mind to the place where doesn’t need to feed at all. That really is liberating. As Ajaan … 
  14. Breath Energy
     … being with the breath, being with the body, having a sense that the mind and the body fit together snugly and with a sense of ease. When the mind has a sense of ease, it can look at things with a lot more dispassion, a lot more objectivity. If everything in the body feels frazzled, your thoughts will get frazzled, too. And if you … 
  15. Timeless
     … When your discernment gets really strong, then even when the body is weak, the mind can maintain its determination: It’s not going to go there. When you see this happening in the mind—something that would ordinarily spark lust, or anger, or greed, or fear, jealousy, resentment, whatever, but it doesn’t spark the emotion it used to spark—then you can say … 
  16. The Joy of Growing
     … What part of the mind wanted to forget—wanted to go out and travel around? You’re dealing with a lot of minds in here, a lot of voices. We talk about training the mind, but it’s more like training the minds. So on the one hand, you have to be strict with anything that wanders away, and you have to encourage the … 
  17. All for the Sake of Freedom
     … And where do our actions come from? They come from the mind. So we’re going to train the mind. The emphasis on suffering is meant to keep reminding us that there’s work to be done. We’re here meditating because there are things that need to be done in the mind. If we don’t do them, the mind’s just going … 
  18. Pushing the Three Characteristics
     … A good way of testing the principle of stress is to see how much ease you can get as you focus the mind. And the way of testing the principle of not-self is to see how much control you can exert over the breath and the mind. The Buddha often brings up the issue of control as a central part of your sense … 
  19. To Know the Noble Truths
     … And you’re alert to make sure that you actually are doing it. “Is the mind with the breath? Is the breath with the mind?” As long as the answer is yes, you’re fine; you keep that up. That’s the beginning of the third quality, which is ardency: You try to do this well. If you find that the mind and the … 
  20. Everything Gathers Around the Breath
     … We look at it from the point of view of the body, the point of view of the feelings, the point of view of the mind, and of the qualities of the mind that are involved. The connections that are arising and passing away are events in the mind and the body. All these things are happening here, and they’re all things that … 
  21. A Refuge in Mindfulness
     … What’s skillful? What’s not skillful? How you recognize unskillful things when they start in the mind; how you recognize skillful things when they start in the mind; remembering what the duties are with regard to them; remembering what’s worked in the past. You don’t run these things through the mind all the time, but you try to have them near … 
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