Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. Poison Your Fantasies
    Buried down among the many layers of voices in the mind is a voice that’s always asking a question: “What to do next? What to do next?” This is because the mind is active. It can’t just sit still. It keeps moving, moving, moving; planning this, planning that; trying to decide, when it realizes it has a choice, what the better choice … 
  3. Encouragement
     … The mastery you get over the mind in terms of being more mindful, being more alert—whether you can give your whole life to the meditation or have other responsibilities—all the time you spent on it is time well-spent, whether you get to the end of the path or not. So keep these points in mind, especially in the beginning stages where … 
  4. In the Details
     … What is getting results? A defilement comes up in the mind—greed comes up in the mind, lust comes up in the mind, aversion comes up in the mind—and if you can look at it and it just drops away, you know you’re making progress. But if you find that it comes up and just latches on, and you have trouble shaking … 
  5. The Language of the Breath
     … How do you read the language of the mind? How do you listen to the language of the mind, the language of the body? On the one hand, you can learn lessons from outside, as when you have a teacher who’s teaching you the foreign language. But it’s not simply a matter of mastering the grammar. You also have to master how … 
  6. Breath Meditation: The Fourth Tetrad
     … The same with obstructive mind states. When a hindrance comes up, the Buddha says in the section dealing with the mind that you should try to gladden the mind, steady the mind, and release the mind. In gladdening the mind, what kind of obstruction is getting in the way of your feeling glad about the fact you’re here? Is doubt getting in the … 
  7. Conserving Your Strength
     … This is why we work on concentration to build up strength of the mind. The Buddha compares concentration to food for the mind. In other places, he compares it to a home for the mind—in other words, a place where you can rest, gather your strength, and nourish the mind. But simply having strength is not enough. You have to learn how to … 
  8. Today Is Better than Yesterday
     … This is why mindfulness and concentration have to go together. Mindfulness is what keeps reminding you to keep coming back, coming back. Concentration is the quality of solidity that comes when your mindfulness is good. In that way, you can start piercing through all the curtains of denial that the mind puts up, to see how it’s been causing itself suffering, and how … 
  9. In the Mood
     … This way the mind can be on good terms with the breath, the breath can be good, and it’s easier and easier to settle down. So always take stock of your mind before you meditate, to see what kind of shape it’s in. Don’t let thoughts of frustration or discouragement take charge of the mind. The Dalai Lama once said the … 
  10. Wearing the Breath
     … The same principle applies to the mind. Unexpected things can happen that, when you’ve created the conditions, can be unexpectedly good or unexpectedly bad. So let’s work on something unexpectedly good: getting the mind really quiet. We hear again and again, “Don’t get involved with your thoughts. Try to stay with the breath.” Really take that seriously. There’s the sensation … 
  11. Undefeated Goodwill
     … Actions come out of the mind, so the mind has to be trained. Again, it’s not innately skillful. There are a lot of voices in the mind that want to get a quick and easy happiness, with no concern for the consequences. There was a book of positive psychology I read a while back when I was asked to review it for a … 
  12. Not Crushed by the World
     … It develops the three qualities you bring to mindfulness practice: mindfulness, alertness, and ardency. The consistency helps you turn your mindfulness into concentration. And your ability to think strategically is going to help you deal wisely with the strategies of the defilements, because they’re pretty clever. They don’t sit down and argue with you reasonably. They get into your breath. They squeeze … 
  13. Encourage Yourself
    We live so much in a world of change that we don’t notice the changes in our own mind. Changes outside are so drastic sometimes, and so incessant, that the changes in our mind get shoved off into the background where we hardly notice them. It’s when we come out to a quiet place like this, where not much happens in the … 
  14. A Light in the Darkness
    A Light in the Darkness May, 2002 Let the mind settle down in the present. Sometimes you can use the word, “let.” Other times you have to force it because the mind sometimes has its moods where it’s not willing to settle down. It’s got all kinds of other issues to think about, all kinds of other agendas, and now it’s … 
  15. Paying Off Your Debts
     … None of those ideas have anything to do with the Buddha’s definition of mindfulness. Reading the suttas, you realize that mindfulness means keeping something in mind, or having something in mind. When you’re doing something, what do you have in mind? When you’re meditating, what do you have in mind? That’s mindfulness. When you know that, you can benefit from … 
  16. To Know the Noble Truths
     … You develop three qualities of mind as you do this. One is that you’re mindful; in other words, you keep in mind what you’re supposed to be doing. 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 … 
  17. Choosing Not to Suffer
     … So take this time to focus on the potentials of the breath and see what good qualities you can develop in the mind. There’s the potential for mindfulness, which is the ability to keep something useful in mind. In this case, keep in mind just the breath in and of itself. You don’t have to relate the breath to anything else outside … 
  18. The Precepts
     … So what you’re doing as you show respect for the training, or give weight to the training, is that you give the training of the mind priority in your life. You realise: This is the most important thing you can do, to straighten out the mind. Because if the mind isn’t trained, it’s going to create all kinds of problems. It … 
  19. Things as They’ve Come to Be
     … You can breathe in ways that give rise to pleasure, give rise to rapture, that can gladden the mind, steady the mind, release the mind. There’s a lot of potential just in the way you breathe. Then there’s verbal fabrication, the way you talk to yourself. Again, something very ordinary. We all know how to talk to ourselves. But the question is … 
  20. A Post by the Ocean
     … If you can develop more mindfulness, more alertness, more concentration, more discernment in the mind, you’ll be better prepared for handling things as they come up, even if you don’t know ahead of time what they will be. If you’ve got these qualities developed in the mind, you’ll be in a better position to handle anything, whatever comes your way … 
  21. Worlds
     … As you explore them, you find that you’re learning not only about the breath but also about the mind. You begin to see the mind a lot more clearly as you’re staying with the breath and you get more absorbed in this frame of reference: body, feelings, mind, and mental qualities in and of themselves, all present right here at the breath … 
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