Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. Life in the Buddha’s Hospital
     … The events in the mind are the important issues. Those are the things causing your own illness. Do you want to cure your own illness or to aggravate it? Keep this question in mind as you practice. As we live together and practice together, we see each other a lot, but try to make that fact have the least possible impact on the mind … 
  17. Trust in Heedfulness
    The Buddha gives a list of five qualities that give strength to the mind. The list starts with conviction. And as the Buddha says frequently, the various members of the list—starting with conviction on through persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment—are developed through heedfulness. Now, this may seem a strange combination: Conviction, on the one hand, implies trust; and heedfulness implies wariness. But … 
  18. Restraint
     … In this case the Buddha says the stake is mindfulness immersed in the body—as when you’re focused on the breath. You breathe in and out in a way that gives rise to rapture, gives rise to pleasure, that gladdens the mind, concentrates the mind. You can breathe with a sense of the whole body breathing in, the whole body breathing out. This … 
  19. A Divine Seat
     … The Buddha talks about getting the mind into concentration as a divine seat. Get the mind into the first jhana, and there’s a sense of ease and rapture filling the body. You can work it through the body. When you’re sitting in that state, you’re in a divine seat. So create a divine seat for yourself tonight. Focus on the breath … 
  20. Get Out of Yourself
    When the mind’s narratives seem oppressive, it’s good to think about the Buddha on the night of his awakening. You think you have narratives. The first knowledge he gained consisted of many, many, many narratives, many, many eons of lifetimes. He could have dwelled on the details, but seeing the huge number, he began to reduce things to their common terms. With … 
  21. The True Cause of Suffering
     … What are the right places? The right places are in developing good qualities of mind, so that the mind can be trained to handle whatever comes up and not suffer from it. When good things happen, we don’t suffer from the good things. When bad things happen, we don’t suffer from the bad things—because the mind has its own independent source … 
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