Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 77
  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. Deconstruction
     … You breathe in and out gladdening the mind, concentrating the mind, releasing the mind. There’s a lot of constructive work you have to do. So you’re not just settling in and being really quiet—because that can be another wrong extreme of letting go. Some people say, “Well, who cares about discernment, just reject everything.” The mind rejects, rejects, rejects, and it … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. Breath Energies
     … They talk about perceptions being mental fabrications, having an effect on the mind, but they also have an impact on the body, too. This way, you begin to see cause and effect as the causal influences goes back and forth. Certain causes in the body have an effect in the mind. Certain causes in the mind have an effect in the body. One of … 
  16. The Wounded Warrior
     … The solution to whatever problem there is in life starts primarily with looking at your own mind, admitting the fact you may have acted in unskillful ways in the past, but you can also train the mind to be more skillful now and on into the future. If you find that you’re not ready for the other ways of strengthening the mind, you … 
  17. Solid Inside
     … Wherever inside the mind is causing itself to suffer, you realize you don’t really have to make yourself suffer, you know. It’s all unnecessary. It’s simply because you’re not observant, you’re not watching the mind carefully enough to see where it’s picking up a thought that’s unnecessary. One way of developing this attitude of compassion is to … 
  18. Looking Off to the Side
     … first the four jhanas, then the four formlessnesses that you can develop based on the fourth jhana, as interim goals that you can actually focus on in making the mind more sensitive. This is the important part of the practice: making the mind more sensitive to what’s going on. All the things you need to know about awakening are right here. Even the … 
  19. Training Your Cynical Voices
    Training Your Cynical Voices March 18, 2014 Training the mind is work. Greed, aversion, and delusion have gotten very well ensconced in the mind, and it’s going to take a lot of digging to get them out. The reason we’re sitting here meditating is because at least some of the voices in the mind say, “Yes, you can do this,” or, “Yes … 
  20. Truth in Action
     … And part of the mind says, “Well, when will I be able to let go of this and not have to worry about what I’m doing?” But it turns out the whole practice is about watching what you’re doing. It simply gets more and more refined. To get the mind to settle down is an activity, it’s something you develop, it … 
  21. Stepping Out of the Waves
     … We’re walking on a middle path, trying to get the mind to settle down and be clear. There is a pleasure that comes when the mind settles down, and that’s actually part of the concentration. You don’t want to let that go quite yet, but the excitement that comes when the meditation is going well, and the opposite mood that comes … 
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