Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 85
  2. How to Talk to Yourself
     … This can become a factor of jhāna, or mental absorption, when the mind gets really well-concentrated in the first stage. When we hear that it’s a factor of jhana, it sounds kind of exotic, but it’s actually simply a matter of learning how to talk to yourself well, in an effective way to get the mind to settle down. So much … 
  3. Unfabricated Happiness
     … one, simply out of the effort to put these things together, and two, you can come up with all kinds of ideas, perceptions, thoughts, feelings, that can wreak a lot of havoc in the mind. When the mind is punishing itself this way, it’s going to suffer, and the punishment doesn’t stop there. It spreads out to other people. So follow the … 
  4. When Ill Will Is in Fashion
     … Once the mind is clear like this, once it’s settled down like this with a sense of well-being, then it’s a lot easier to see your defilements, not only in your dealings with other people, but also in more subtle areas within the mind. So these are the two sides of goodwill: goodwill as a virtue, a part of mundane right … 
  5. Friends Inside & Out
     … There’s a lot you’re doing inside right now to cause it, which is why you have to train the mind. Without that training, the mind can just go blissfully on, thinking that it’s good and yet complaining about all the suffering—and not being willing to see where there’s the connection between what the mind is doing itself and the … 
  6. Remembering Ajaan Suwat
     … You want to see how stress arises and passes away in the mind. You want to see how its causes arise and pass away in the mind. You want to bring the framework of the four noble truths to your thoughts, your words, your deeds. What’s going on in the mind? What’s going on in your actions? Take the Buddha seriously. This … 
  7. More than Ordinary Heedfulness
     … The Buddha’s actually pointing out that the mind doesn’t have to stay on the “normal” human level. We meditate so that we can transform it. But how many people come to the meditation to be transformed? Most people simply want a nice place for the mind to hang out and don’t ask for much change beyond that. But the Buddha’s … 
  8. Renunciation
     … It comes down to the factors of the first jhana, the thinking and evaluating that go into getting the mind to settle down with a sense of well-being, a sense of fullness and ease that comes from seclusion: secluding yourself from all your sensual thoughts. You find that there are certain parts of the mind that really thrive when they can put those … 
  9. Single-minded
     … The Buddha once said that the mind is so quick to change direction that it’s hard to find a good analogy for how quick it is. Here he was, the master of analogies, and this was one point where he was brought up short. There’s nothing that changes as quickly as the mind. Yet this is what we’ve got to depend … 
  10. Your Quiet Corner
     … That makes the mind less hungry for other kinds of pleasure. This changes the balance of power on the mind. If you’re feeling tired and frazzled, it’s very easy to just jump at whatever sensual pleasure offers itself. But if you’ve got a sense of well-being and you know how to tap into it whenever you need it, then when … 
  11. Practicing on Your Own
     … They come from the mind in the way you look at things, and also they’re going to come back and have an impact on the mind. So it’s not just innocent things passing by your eyes or ears. There’s a causal process going on that comes out of the mind and then comes back into the mind, and then through your … 
  12. Fully Here
     … These things will happen of course, but when the mind is trained, it doesn’t have to suffer. And the mind doesn’t just naturally develop good qualities. When the Buddha talked about the basis for skillfulness, the basis for developing good qualities in the mind, he said that it’s not that there’s an innate goodness there that you’re trying to … 
  13. Respect for Heedfulness
     … And the way to find that something better is to focus on the way the mind reacts to pain. If you really want to understand the mind, that’s the place to understand it. There are all the issues in the mind that come thronging around the pain, whereas ordinary, everyday pleasures just tend to cover things up, so that they’re not as … 
  14. Don’t Believe Everything You Think
     … The breath is basically a physical phenomenon, but it’s very close to the mind and it’s your mind’s anchor in the present moment. When you’re with the breath, you know you’re in the present. When you’re with the breath, you can watch the thoughts coming into the mind and not get sucked into them—unless, of course, you … 
  15. An Inner Revolution
     … That way, you’re empowering the body in a healthy way, and disempowering its unskillful or unhealthy influence over the mind. Similarly in the mind: There are certain aspects you empower and others you disempower. You disempower the power of whatever thoughts come up. But you empower the mind in its ability to choose to think what it wants and not to think what … 
  16. Wandering Aimlessly
     … That, the Buddha said, contains a lot of the problem right there—not in the attempt to concentrate the mind, but in the fact of wandering. That’s all that samsara is. The mind wanders pretty aimlessly. It has its aims, but if you were to draw a map of its aims, the lines would head off in all sorts of different directions. This … 
  17. The Karma that Ends Karma
     … On the other, you keep track of how the mind is relating to it. Learn how to catch any warning signals that the mind is about to go. It may take a while for you to catch them because they’re subtle and quick. The only way to see them is to stick with your original intention and keep yourself warned: “Okay, the mind … 
  18. Choosing Freedom
     … Even though there are things in the world that are beyond our control, we can control where we’re focusing our attention and how we move the mind around, what we can adjust, what we have to accept. Knowing those things can take a huge burden off the mind right there. The meditation is largely an exercise in using your freedom of choice. The … 
  19. Cherish Your Friends
    Cherish Your Friends March 12, 2005 Try to make the mind quiet. Try to make the body quiet. There are lots of levels to that quietness. One means sitting quietly — but, of course, the body isn’t the only thing making noise and chattering away. The mind is, too. And just as when you want to hear something very subtle you have to sit … 
  20. Work with It
     … Why doe this thing arise in the mind? It’s going to be through one or more of those three kinds of fabrication. It may be through the way you’re breathing, or the way you’re talking to yourself, or a combination of the perceptions and feelings you have. You may notice that when the mind tends to go for lust, there’s … 
  21. Old Kamma & New
     … There’s not much we can do about it, except that we can change the state of mind in the present moment so that what comes in from the past, if it’s negative, doesn’t have to have a huge impact on the mind. To do that, the Buddha said to develop the mind in virtue—in other words, learning how to say … 
  22. Load next page...