Search results for: "The Mind"

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  2. Artillery All Around
    Artillery All Around August 16, 2011 The mind is such an old hand at fabrication that it doesn’t really notice all the fabrication it’s doing all the time. You sit here watching the breath and you think it’s just awareness with the breath, pure and simple. But the type of awareness you bring is already fabricated, and the breath itself is … 
  3. Appropriate Attention
     … noticing it every time it happens and bringing the mind back. Try to be quicker the next time in noticing when you’re distracted. See if you can sense the warning signals, the hints in the mind that let you know that the mind is about to go someplace else. Try to be very, very alert. The powers of mindfulness and alertness are things … 
  4. Coming into the Present
     … The Buddha picked out the concepts and perceptions that really are helpful and said that they should be developed because they do have an impact on the mind—a beneficial, salutary impact on the mind. The practice of concentration he calls a perception attainment. In other words, you gain concentration by holding onto a particular concept, perception, or label in the mind. Even though … 
  5. Actualizing Your Potentials
     … Even though things in the world can get pretty dire, the mind isn’t totally in there in that world of the dire. Your awareness can step back and look at it, realizing that the perceptions and feelings of that world, if you pull them into the mind, can cause you to suffer. But you don’t have to pull them into the mind … 
  6. Goodwill for the Breath
     … It’s by adjusting the breath, getting sensitive to how your mind interacts with the breath, and then learning to do it in a more and more friendly way, more sensitive way, so the mind and the breath get along together: That’s how you come to know both the breath and the mind. So, notice how the breathing feels as it comes in … 
  7. Just-Right Concentration
     … That means reading the body, reading the mind, getting a sense of what they need, learning to provide it, then learning to protect what you’ve got. Value what you’ve got. There’ll be a voice in the mind that says, “I want to move on faster.” Well, where are you going to go? Study what you have right here, right now. Settle … 
  8. Skills for Awakening
     … We learn how to breathe in a way that calms the body, calms the mind; we think in ways that calm the body, calm the mind. And these are skills we can develop to benefit the mind. But they’re not the whole story. In spite of what you may have heard, we cannot relax our way to awakening or decree that awakening means … 
  9. Marshalling the Emotions
     … What can be done with the mind as you focus it on the breath? What can be done with the breath? How can you learn to relate to the breath in a way that allows you to settle down and see what’s going on in the mind? Be curious. Find out. When you meet up with obstacles, you need the sort of inquisitive … 
  10. Genuine Satisfaction
     … All these things feed into the brain first and then feed into the mind. And they shape the mind, as the Buddha said, with feelings and perceptions. Feeling and perceptions are the things that shape our mind. It’s how you manage a feeling of hunger that’s going to determine what you see. How you identify the hunger, how you label the hunger … 
  11. Evaluation
     … Instead of tying your hands, he gives you lots of tools in meditation, lots of topics that you can meditate on for different ailments of the mind. In his instructions on right concentration, he starts out with directed thought and evaluation. One of the factors of awakening is analysis of qualities, which is a skill of looking at events in the mind to see … 
  12. Befriending the Breath
     … This is a hindrance they call restlessness and anxiety, the part of the mind that says you’ve got to keep jumping around from here or there to make sure all the fronts are covered. Sometimes that’s a useful policy, but not always. Especially not right now. You want to train the mind in a new skill, the skill of staying with something … 
  13. Victory
     … We bring the mind to the present moment with the breath so that we can gain some strength from the breath and gain strength from getting the mind to settle down and be still. So gather your thoughts in right now. If you’re going to think about anything, think about the breath. Think about the mind being with the breath. Then pay attention … 
  14. Deconstructing Suffering
     … As the breath gets more and more refined, finally settles down, grows still, and you get a sense of still breath energy filling the body, the mind is still enough so the breath grows still as well. In other words, the mind is still, the brain is using less oxygen, and the need for in-and-out breathing grows less and less. When the … 
  15. Delusion Concentration
     … The primary thought in people’s minds is: “How can I get through these hours as pleasantly as possible?” The mind finds a little place—it’s called delusion concentration—where there’s a sense of ease, and the mind’s not doing any work at all. It’s just very, very still. You go to hide out there, but you don’t really … 
  16. The Hedgefox
     … It’s actually one of the ways in which the mind communicates with itself or different parts of the brain communicate with one another. Little images go out and they immediately affect things, often on a subconscious level, like the subliminal messages and images that they sometimes put on very quickly on TV if they want to influence you. Well, the mind does that … 
  17. Meditating When You’re Sick
     … And do everything you can to keep the mind in a good mood. The Buddha advises that even when you’re dying, keep the mind in a good mood. So illness gives you good preparation. If you’re worried about things you’re not getting done or pleasures you’re not able to indulge in, just put those thoughts aside. They’re not going … 
  18. Mindfulness Defined
     … The same holds true with the mind. You can’t just sit around radically accepting everything. If you’re going to learn about the mind, you have to be willing to play—to play with qualities in the mind, to play with sensations in the body. That’s when you begin to understand cause and effect. You begin to understand the principle of intention … 
  19. To Be Worthy of the Dhamma
     … The same with the tetrad on the mind. First you get sensitive to the state of the mind, and then you figure out how to use perception and feeling to gladden the mind if it’s been depressed or lacking in energy. Then you concentrate it, steady it. That calms it down. Then you release it stage by stage. You release it from gross … 
  20. The Reflective Self
     … It’s also the case that you can make a lot of progress in one area of the mind and then you have to wait for the rest of the mind to catch up. So you have to learn how to read the ups and downs of the mind, to know when it needs to be pushed a little bit, when it needs to … 
  21. Breath Meditation: The First Tetrad
     … At the same time, as you’re working on this issue of bodily fabrication and calming it down, you learn a lot about how the mind relates to the body and how the body relates to the mind. That’s the beginning of the insight that will take you beyond ordinary resting into a dimension that really is deathless. This fourth jhana, where the … 
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