Search results for: "The Mind"

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  2. Blowing Bubbles
     … That’s when you begin to understand, “This is what made that thought so interesting or attractive.” You don’t have to stay with the thought to understand the process of why the mind is getting involved with these things. You actually learn a lot by cutting things away as quickly as possible. When the mind is churning out thoughts, it’s like a … 
  3. Motivation
     … Everything you can do that can get you here, training the mind, is part of the training. Other people can give you ideas, but you’re the one who has to figure out your own mind to see: What is it about the mind that resists? Or what is it about the mind that gets so easily distracted? Then come up with your own … 
  4. Recognizing Fools
     … One of the reasons why we meditate is to give the mind something wise to do. Get settled, get still, so that you can observe the mind more carefully. Any thoughts that don’t have to do with getting the mind still, you can—for the time being—label as fools. Even relatively good thoughts about fixing potatoes for tomorrow, or making merit in … 
  5. Karma-ism
     … What does it mean for things to be *going on? *How do things *go on? *And in particular, what are we contributing to the going on of things? This is why meditation focuses on the mind. Not just to get the mind into pleasant states: You attain the pleasant states so that you can understand, “Exactly what is the mind doing? How does it … 
  6. Remember This
     … If your energy level is down and the mind is getting depressed, what can you do to lift your spirits? When the mind is wired and scattered all over the place with lots of frenetic energy, what can you do to calm it down? If the mind isn’t concentrated, what can you do to get it concentrated? If the mind isn’t in … 
  7. Mistakes
     … If you punish yourself, the mind won’t want to stay. It’ll find even more reasons to get away. But if you reward yourself with some very pleasant breathing, then the mind will be more and more inclined to want to come back. This is an important principle in the meditation: learning how to deal with your mistakes, how to correct them without … 
  8. Stern Kindness
     … It’s especially true when the mind feels lazy or more inclined to wander off someplace else or not even meditate at all. That’s when you have to keep in mind the dangers of not meditating, and the rewards of meditating. Sometimes the mindfulness can cajole us into meditating, and other times it has to use threats. The cajoling is when you remind … 
  9. Pitching Your Tent in the Present
     … Your actions come from where? They come from the mind. So if you want to find happiness, you’ve got to train the mind. As for anyone who you were angry at in the course of the day or even irritated, just spread thoughts of goodwill, both to yourself and to the other person, realizing that goodwill for yourself means you’re not going … 
  10. Focused on Your Duties
     … What was the appeal of that thought? What was the appeal of this thought? Why does the mind go for these things? Here you are sitting, and everything is perfectly still, perfectly calm, and yet you can still fall for random cravings. Why is that? Which part of the mind is lying to another part of the mind? You want the mind to be … 
  11. Emptiness
     … They’re events in the mind. As far as the meditation is concerned, they’re distractions, so you can put them aside. This is one of the meanings of the word emptiness. In other words, you empty the mind of all of its philosophical speculations, you empty the mind of its narratives, leaving just the narrative of what you’re doing right now: You … 
  12. The Treasure Hunt
     … When you focus the mind, you know you’re focusing the mind. When the mind settles down, you know it’s settling down. When the mind wanders off, you know it’s wandering off. These are things you really know here and now. When you experience suffering, you know. When you experience a lack of suffering, you know. So those are the two issues … 
  13. Give Before You Get
     … You step back from it and say, “Okay, there must be part of the mind that doesn’t like this. Is this a part of the mind I want to continue identifying with? Or is this something I need to give up—that I’d be better off giving up?” Try to develop the attitude that this is a practice where you give. You … 
  14. How to Think about Death
     … As soon as we learn how to put words together, the mind just keeps churning out words. The mind can churn out all kinds of words, words that are helpful to us, words that destroy us, words that make us happy, words that make us miserable. One of the most important skills we need to learn is how to turn off thoughts, or at … 
  15. Accepting the Buddha’s Standards
     … There has to be at least part of the mind that’s standing very still and watching whatever is happening, not the least bit stirred by those things. Otherwise you just slip along with them, accepting this as the normal way of the mind. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Part of the practice is learning that the mind at normalcy … 
  16. Training Your Intentions
     … The texts often talk about how you have to get rid of the five hindrances first and then get the mind concentrated. Actually, it’s in the process of trying to get the mind to settle down that you run into these hindrances as hindrances. Otherwise, they just slosh around in the mind without seeming to be hindering you from anything. You’re hardly … 
  17. Perplexity
     … Once the mind is rested, you realize it still has work to do. And this is where the work lies, in learning how to check where you’re still uncertain about what really is skillful in life. It’s not easy work, but it’s good work. Because the mind that results—the mind with no perplexity—is a mind with no suffering.
  18. Rhythms of the Mind
    Ajaan Fuang liked to say that the mind has its own rhythms, and you have to allow your practice to develop following the rhythms of your mind. This means several things. One is that each of us has a different rhythm. Another is that each person’s mind will have different rhythms at different times. Either way, we can’t force things if we … 
  19. Cause & Effect
     … What you’re doing is opening up a dialog inside, but the mind already has its inner dialogue. A lot of times, one part of the mind yells at another part of the mind, gets its way simply through force; other times through subterfuge. But we’re now opening up the mind to a different kind of dialogue, where everything has to be related … 
  20. Making the Dhamma Your Own
     … For the monks, it means going out, finding another place, to see—when you’re alone, without your ordinary surroundings—what’s the state of the mind? And what can you do to strengthen that state of the mind? What are the qualities you’re lacking? Your ability to step back and watch yourself is really important here, so that you don’t get … 
  21. A Mind Bigger than Pain
     … Those are the arrows that cause extra suffering to the mind and also add pain to the body. So our responsibility when we’re sick or injured is to look after the body as much as necessary, but to look primarily after the mind, realizing that our experience right now is a combination of past karma and present karma. We can’t do much … 
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