Search results for: "The Mind"
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- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- Chew Your Food Well… But the feeding of the mind is much more complex than the feeding of the body. The mind tries to feed on sensual things, but they don’t give any satisfaction. It tries to feed on becoming this or becoming that, and whatever it becomes doesn’t last very long. Then it gets all disgusted with the whole thing and wants to destroy everything …
- Safety… getting the mind settled in right here. It’s not totally safe yet. This island is still subject to flooding. And the floods can sometimes get really bad. But for the time being, it’s a safe place. And this is where you find your safety—in the mind—because, based on this island, you can start gaining discernment into what the mind is …
- A Trained Observer… Where does the passion and desire come from? It comes out of the mind. So whatever comes up, you want to learn how to keep the observer in control as you just watch. You don’t act on it, but you see it: “This is an event in the mind.” When you can see the events in the mind simply as that—as events …
- The Buddha’s Tools… But here again, you look inside the mind, and you see that a lot of us come with a lot of baggage. We talk about the baggage that Buddhism brings from Asia, but we have our cultural baggage as well: the way Western psychology looks at the mind, its teachings about the ego, whether the ego is a good thing, a bad thing, or …
- Pleasure Has a Price… The price, of course, is not the money that you pay for the pleasure; it’s what the pleasure does to the mind, along with its karmic consequences. So, with each pleasure, you have to ask yourself what you do in order to gain and maintain the pleasure, and what happens to your mind as a result. A lot of pleasures actually weaken the …
- A Refuge in Quiescence… You get the mind still. When the mind is still like this, it can see itself a lot more clearly, with a sense of balance—and this lies at the heart of your refuge. I was talking with a botanist a while back. He was telling me about how plants have to have a part that’s in a state of quiescence, unaffected by …
- The Noble Path to Happiness… When the mind holds onto certain things because of the craving, there’s suffering. So you learn how to let the craving go. You pursue this into more and more subtle levels in the mind. What you see as a result is what you did to cause suffering. You see how deeply this goes when you finally to get to the point where the …
- Good Eating… You can think back, “Well, I do have these good things in my background, these good actions that I’ve developed in the past.” That right there is food for the mind. It strengthens you. It gives you the conviction that you can do this, that you are a worthy person. Virtue is also a good form of food for the mind. When you …
- Mental Balance… Once the mind has that sense of stability, there’s a good place where it could rest, a sense of fullness and rapture that comes along with it as well. That rapture, the Buddha said, is food for the mind. When the mind is well fed like that, you don’t have to go out feeding on other things outside. Your mind doesn’t …
- Expand Your Expectations… Maybe the mind can go deeper than you thought. And when the mind is going really well, it might suddenly flip and start wandering all over the place. So all kinds of things can happen. This means you have to be watchful. Be heedful: Look after what you’re doing, make sure you stick with it. Then try to push yourself a little bit …
- Work & Play… If it’s just in, out, in, out, in, out, the mind is just going to go out wandering away, out of sheer boredom. Then the concentration becomes an exercise in sheer will power: How long can you force the mind to stay here in spite of its impulses to wander away? But if you can see that by staying with the breath, working …
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