Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. Investigative Work
    **Ajaan Chah once said that one of the first things you notice when you really look at the mind is how much it lies to you. It promises happiness through the way it thinks, the way it sees things, and then it doesn’t deliver. Actually, it delivers a lot of stress and suffering. Then it hopes you forget. Then it promises more happiness … 
  3. Self-starting
     … An important part of right mindfulness is ardency. In the last three factors of the path, you start with right effort, and then you go to right mindfulness. Right mindfulness includes the element of right effort in the quality of ardency. Then as your mindfulness develops, it moves into right concentration. As the Buddha said, the factors of the different establishings of mindfulness are … 
  4. Something to Stand On
     … We’re working on a skill that will protect us, and the skill requires that you be ardent, alert, and mindful. Those are the attitudes you want to develop: alert in noticing what you’re doing; ardent in wanting to do it well; and mindful, trying to keep in mind what you’ve learned from other people, from what you’ve read or heard … 
  5. An Enduring Cheerfulness
     … So keep that in mind as you practice. Whatever difficulties you’re facing—either because of the quarantine, or the pandemic, the heat, your mind’s unwillingness to settle down—try to approach the whole thing with good humor. Exasperation doesn’t help. Self-pity doesn’t help. Bitterness doesn’t help. Try to find some positive strengths and keep them going. After all … 
  6. Protecting Your Space
     … The less you clutter up your mind in this way, the less you give rein to your defilements in this way, then the easier it’s going to be to get the mind to settle down. Because a large part of getting the mind to settle down is exercising some restraint over it. But if you loosen all restraint during the day, then it … 
  7. Worry
     … The times when it doesn’t, what are you going to fall back on? Well, you fall back on the qualities of mind that you’ve developed, the qualities of heart, the qualities of the character, to help you figure out a solution. And those qualities are things we develop as we practice the Dhamma. When you’re facing uncertain situations, you need mindfulness … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. Learn from the Ants
     … So even when he was studying with the teachers who taught very high levels of concentration—the dimension of nothingness, the dimension of neither perception and non-perception—he saw that they’d developed conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. They devoted good qualities of the mind to this, but they rested content with something that wasn’t ultimate. He, however, wasn’t satisfied … 
  10. The Psychology of Harmlessness
     … So when the Buddha analyzes the mind, it’s all for the purpose of putting an end to suffering. When he’s analyzing suffering, he points out that it’s coming from within the mind. It’s caused by the mind, and is suffered by the mind. So a lot of his teachings about psychology—how to understand the mind—differs from Western psychology … 
  11. Doubt
     … The cure for doubt, he says, is to look into the mind and apply appropriate attention to the question of which events in the mind are skillful and which are not. This means watching what’s going on in the mind when you give rein to certain states of mind. Or if you think in terms of the committee of the mind, what happens … 
  12. The Purity of Your Intentions
     … The needs of the mind have to do with having something that’s interesting to observe. Here again, your intention is important. When you think about how the breath fabricates feeling, and feeling fabricates the mind, you realize how important it is to get to know the breath. Then you think about all the important things you’re going to learn about the mind … 
  13. Mindworms
     … As I said, this is where the image of the committee of the mind is useful. Not everybody in the mind has to be in that thought, and not every member of the mind *is *in that thought. It’s just that one ego-centric person has taken over and dominated things, but there are other Yous in the mind as well. So even … 
  14. Energy & Efficiency
     … And the Buddha then said, “In the same way, you should tune your energy to the point where it’s just right and then tune the rest of the strings of your practice.” In other words, conviction, mindfulness, concentration, discernment: Tune those to the level of your energy. In that way the practice will come out right. So keep this in mind as you … 
  15. The Pleasure Principle Made Noble
    After the Buddha-to-be had practiced austerities and realized he’d come to a dead end, he cast around in his mind for other possible ways of finding an end to suffering. He remembered the time when he was young when he’d spontaneously entered the first jhāna, and he asked himself, Could that be the way to awakening? And something inside said … 
  16. What’s Getting in the Way
     … Where is the potential for rapture? Where is the potential for ease? Where in the mind is the potential for stillness? What would happen if you developed those potentials and kept at it? When, say, sensual desire does come up in the mind, what would it be like not to give in? And what would the mind need to do to be in a … 
  17. The Buddha’s Letter
     … Where does suffering come from? It comes from within the mind. It’s an action in the mind that leads to suffering. So again, the dangers from outside are not nearly as bad as the dangers coming from inside. You’re the one who’s causing yourself to suffer. I’ve been reading several people saying that the Buddha wanted to get rid of … 
  18. Concentration Teamwork
    When you meditate, it’s important to have a clear sense of cause and effect around what’s going on in the mind. We’re trying to get a sense of ease, a sense of fullness and refreshment: That’s the result. In the Buddha’s terms, he says it’s born of seclusion. In other words, you’re secluding your mind from thoughts … 
  19. Stubborn Clinging
    Stubborn Clinging July 26, 2011 The term “becoming” refers to the mind’s habit of taking on an identity in a world of experience. This can refer to our sense of the world outside and our identity within that world, whether it’s the social world or the physical world. But “world” can also refer to worlds in the mind. As you meditate, you … 
  20. Patient & Inquisitive
    We all know that passage where the Buddha tells Rahula at the very beginning of his meditation to make his mind like earth. He’s basically teaching him patience, equanimity, but then he applies it to instructions on breath meditation. And his instructions on breath meditation are not just to be patient with the breath, be equanimous about the breath. You actively take an … 
  21. Circular Practice
     … people who actually have the right values, people who see the value of training the mind, the value of digging down into the mind and seeing why it’s still causing itself suffering. Even though everything we do is aimed at happiness, we still suffer. And if we don’t keep the question of suffering foremost in mind—and particularly the suffering the mind … 
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