Search results for: "The Mind"

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  2. Skills to Make You Free
     … These attitudes enlarge the mind. The next two skills are that you train yourself in virtue and train yourself in discernment: your ability to see what’s going on in the mind, what choices you’re making, which ones are skillful, which ones are not. The final two skills are the ability not to let the mind be overcome by pain and not to … 
  3. Goodwill All Around
     … And then train the mind so it’s more and more careful all the time, more mindful all the time. This is why we use the breath or use the word buddho , or 32 parts of the body, whatever object we find is easy to keep in mind as a way of getting the mind to settle down. Once the mind settles down, it … 
  4. Encouragement
     … Without this basic skill, all the understanding you might have about the mind, your psychology, the Buddha’s teachings, is all just concepts. You can reason about it and you can argue about it, but it doesn’t really accomplish the purpose of the Buddha’s teachings, which is to get the mind beyond suffering. And in the course of gaining release from suffering … 
  5. How the Breath Helps You to Die Well
     … How you perceive the breath, how you perceive the mind, how you perceive the things that are coming in to disturb you will have a huge impact on where your mind goes: where it goes while you’re meditating and also where it goes when you leave the body. So you want to be sensitive to the way the mind creates pictures to represent … 
  6. Heedfulness
     … Even as you try to get the mind as still as possible, there are different things happening with the breath, different things happening in the mind that you have to get sensitive to first, and then you calm them down. In doing that, you learn two lessons: One, the Buddha was right—this state of concentration is one of the best things that you … 
  7. The Power of Present Karma
     … So, what are you putting in? Try to put in the intention to understand the mind, to understand its actions. The best way to do that is to get the mind still, so that it can watch and see what you can make out of the potentials that are here. There’s that passage where the Buddha talks about the potentials for the different … 
  8. A Good-natured Attitude
     … This is where the mind becomes really one. And you didn’t have to think about when you were going to stop evaluating the breath, it just seemed like the right thing to do. This comes from learning to listen both to the body and to the mind. That pulley that Ajaan Lee talks about as checking the mind, checking the body, now doesn … 
  9. All-around Alertness
     … Then, from the sense of well-being in the body, it begins to spread into the mind. Partly because the mind likes being with comfortable sensations, and partly because you realize you’re developing a skill. That’s part of the sense of well-being, part of the pleasure that comes with the meditation. As you’re learning how to figure out your own … 
  10. Tranquility & Insight Together
     … Stillness is getting the mind to settle down, to be at home here in the present moment with a sense of ease and well-being. As the Buddha says, when you settle down, you want to indulge in that sense of well-being, because the mind has a tendency to wander off in search of pleasure in other places. So you’ve got to … 
  11. Samsara
     … The mental label you keep repeating—“Keep the mind on the breath, mind on the breath, mind on the breath, breath, breath”: Take that faculty of the mind that’s always labeling things and learn to use it skillfully. Label things that allow the mind to settle down. Once the mind has settled down, then you use the perception of inconstancy or impermanence, the … 
  12. Unskillful Habits
     … As you stay here, you get to see a lot of things going on in the mind, a lot of things going on in the body. Yet, while you’re with both the mind and the body, you’re able to step back from both a bit. You can sense the mind as you get grounded in the breath. You get out of your … 
  13. Strength in Humor
    One of the reasons we meditate is because we have to strengthen the mind. If we don’t strengthen the mind, it gets wounded—and not just wounded. When it’s wounded by the pains of aging, illness, death, separation, meeting up with things we don’t like, being separated from things and people we do like, then we end up doing really harmful … 
  14. The Origination of Suffering
     … In other words, any thought world that would arise in the mind right now that has nothing to do with the breath, nothing to do with the mind focused on the breath—you’ve got to let it go. This is going to be good practice, because when you die, that’s what’s going to happen. A thought world will appear, and at … 
  15. Refuge
     … So when things come bubbling up in the mind, you have to ask yourself, “Is that really so?” You might put a “Really?” next to every thought that comes up and see what reasons the mind tries to give you to persuade you that, yes, this really is so. Learn how to take a detached, somewhat skeptical attitude toward what they have to say … 
  16. Solid in the Face of Death
     … That’s why death is one thing you might want to think about, to help the mind settle down and get to work right now. Ajaan Lee often talks about getting the mind to settle down not so much with a sense of ease but from what the Buddha calls *samvega, *which can mean a sense of urgency or a sense of terror. When … 
  17. One Person
     … That’s how the mind works. You could be thinking suddenly of Siberia or Australia, the South Pole, Ethiopia. Recipes for tomorrow’s meal. All kinds of random bits and pieces, like a packrat’s nest: lots of random stuff in there. The mind can go very fast and switch directions very quickly. That’s precisely what we’ve got to learn how to … 
  18. Understanding Contentment
     … But this doesn’t mean that you’re content with whatever comes up in the mind. This is the first misunderstanding: Some people think that you have to be content with whatever comes up in the mind as well. If the mind is full of hindrances, full of defilements, well, you just accept that fact and live with it. But that’s not what … 
  19. Endurance
     … Instead of getting yourself upset and worked up, perceive things in a way that helps you to calm the mind and keep its focus on what really is important. Calming the mind doesn’t mean you simply say, “Well, I’m just not going to do anything at all.” You get the mind calm so that you can do the work that needs to … 
  20. Wealth Worth Holding Onto
     … That gives you strength, it gives you an extra argument to use against the more unskillful voices in the mind. That, of course, develops your discernment. So in sticking with the precepts, you’re getting the mind ready to settle into concentration complete with mindfulness, alertness, and ardency. Those are the kind of precepts that are pleasing to the noble ones, that incline the … 
  21. Inconstancy
     … So why is it that when it’s all put back together, you can see it as attractive? The mind can easily lie to itself. When you realize the mind can lie to itself—and how much it does lie to itself—that’s good protection against distracting thoughts. The same with thoughts of inconstancy: Whatever you can think of that would pull you … 
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