Search results for: "Mindfulness"

  1. Page 82
  2. Shame Yes, Guilt No
     … After all, the things that happen purely in your mind are a lot quicker than that—and they can be pretty devastating. Think of someone on his or her deathbed, whose mind starts thinking about this, thinking about that—all sorts of thoughts are swirling through the mind. If you’re not really clear about what’s going on in the mind, what the … 
  3. Questions of Skill
     … When the Buddha teaches mindfulness, it’s not just a matter of accepting whatever comes up. It means keeping certain things in mind as to what’s skillful, what’s not skillful. When unskillful attitudes come up in the mind, what do you do? You’ve had some experience in chasing them out. You’ve had some experience in maintaining your frame of reference … 
  4. Endurance & Contentment
     … Technically, it’s defined as directed thought and evaluation, but it basically comes down to the chatter going on in the mind. When you invest that chatter with your identity, it makes it hard to step back from it. So instead, you can look at it as the committee of the mind, or the corporation of the mind. Or try Ajaan Lee’s image … 
  5. Fighting off Ignorance
    The Pali word for meditation, *bhavana, *means development, because when you’re meditating, you’re developing good qualities of mind. For instance, while you’re focusing on the breath, to stay with the breath you have to keep it in mind. You can’t let yourself forget. Otherwise, you’ll go wandering off in your old ways. That ability to keep this one thing … 
  6. Fear of Death
     … The same thing applies to the thought worlds that appear in the mind as death approaches. And particularly if it’s an unpleasant thought world that’s appearing, you want to be able to stay away from it. So realize that this is just a construction of the mind, because at that point when the mind is in a position where it’s about … 
  7. Commit, Reflect, Discern
     … But he reflected also that if you think skillful thoughts all day and all night, they don’t lead to any harm, but they do tire the mind and tire the body. When the body and mind are tired, then they’re harder to control. So he realized the best thing to do was to get his mind into concentration. Again: commitment, reflection, and … 
  8. The Skill of Not Suffering
     … In other words, a thought or an idea or an emotion comes into the mind and all of a sudden it possesses the whole mind. That’s a habit that you’ve got to unlearn. A thought can be there but it doesn’t have to have an impact on the mind. Your first step in that direction is to stay with the breath … 
  9. The Wisdom of Ardency
    When Ajaan Lee discusses the establishing of mindfulness, he focuses on three qualities: mindfulness, alertness, ardency. Mindfulness means keeping something in mind. Like right now, you’re keeping the breath in mind—and keeping in mind the fact that you want to stay with the breath. Mindfulness also means remembering to recognize what’s coming up in the mind. In Thai, they use the … 
  10. A Safe Space Inside
     … How do you develop that solidity? A lot of it has to do with what the Buddha said are the two requisites for getting the mind into right mindfulness and right concentration. You’re sitting here meditating, your mind settles down. How does it settle down well? How does it settle down so it’s really secure? You come at it with what the … 
  11. The Gift of Spiritual Materialism
     … After all, in a way, we’re giving our minds to everybody all the time. The state of our mind comes out in our actions, in our words, so people are seeing and receiving your state of mind all the time. So—without showing off—create inside yourself a really good state of mind. It’ll show itself both inside and out, and people … 
  12. To Discern Suffering
     … What is this added suffering? As it turns out, this is the only suffering that really weighs down the mind. There can be pain in the body, but if there’s no clinging around the pain, there’s not going to be any suffering in the mind. The good news is that the suffering in the mind is unnecessary. You don’t have to … 
  13. Alert
    The purpose of getting the mind into concentration is so that it can see itself, both in the sense that it’s quiet enough that it’s not creating disturbances, so anything subtle that shows up in the mind will be very clear, and also in the sense that there should be a feeling of well-being so that it’s willing to observe … 
  14. Alertness: What Are You Doing?
    Of the three qualities we bring to meditation practice—mindfulness, alertness, and ardency—alertness is the one that’s most exclusively concerned with the present moment. Mindfulness brings in memories of the past to bear on the present, memories that give useful guidance for what we’re doing. And ardency tries to shape the present with an eye also to the future, so that … 
  15. In Alignment
    In Alignment December 24, 2014 Ajaan Lee used to say that when you sit up straight in meditation—not leaning to the left or the right, forward or backward—you want to make that a symbol for your mind. The mind is sitting up straight, too. It’s not leaning forward toward the future, back toward the past, left to things you like, right … 
  16. Patience Is a Skill
     … You’re trying to get the mind still, and it won’t get still. You give yourself encouragement. Tell yourself: You focus on the causes, and you keep coming back to them, coming back to them, coming back to them, and after a while they will begin to have an imprint on the mind, an influence on the mind. We can’t tell beforehand … 
  17. Significance
     … What he taught about mindfulness is still true. All the teachings in the noble path are still true, always true, all down the line. These are the things you want to keep in mind. This is the duty of mindfulness. We were talking today about all the different things you keep in mind, or you could keep in mind. It’s good to start … 
  18. Jhāna & Discernment
     … Say a thought world begins to appear in your mind. There’ll be a little knot in your breath energy someplace, and the mind will start talking about that world. Then there’ll be perceptions that come up, images in the mind, or words in the mind. Sometimes you say No to them, and sometimes you say Yes. But for the time being, you … 
  19. The Meaning of Happiness
     … The Pali word here is bhavana, which means “developing”—developing good qualities in the mind. We primarily think of meditation in terms of developing mindfulness and alertness and other good qualities as we sit here and do formal meditation, but it applies to all areas where you see that your mind needs to train itself in noble qualities—in your thoughts, your words, and … 
  20. Defiant Like the Buddha
    With most unskilful mind states, the Buddha doesn’t have you sit and stew in them. He says you should try to get rid of them as quickly as you can, in the same way that a person who discovers that his head is on fire would immediately try to put the fire out. Greed, aversion, delusion: With these kinds of things, the Buddha … 
  21. Training Your Commentator
     … what’s going on with the breath, what’s going on with the mind. If you’re constantly commenting, it gets in the way of seeing what else is happening in the mind on a deeper level. There may be an issue left over from the day that you have to deal with first before the mind will be willing to settle down. And … 
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