Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. Angry
     … In the second tetrad, you get sensitive to ways of breathing that give rise to pleasure and rapture, and then you notice how they have an impact on the mind. In other words, you’re sensitive to mental fabrication, seeing how those feelings and the perceptions affect the mind. Then you adjust the feelings and the perceptions so that they calm the mind down … 
  3. Oppressed by Old Kamma
     … In other words, just because a thought keeps coming into the mind doesn’t mean it’s true, doesn’t mean you have to believe it. After all, all kinds of random things can come in. The effect of past kamma is very evident. You’re sitting here determined to stay with the breath, and something else comes into the mind—completely unintended. Well … 
  4. A Sense of Time & Place
    When you focus on the breath, you’re creating a home base for the mind, a home base for your actions. This is the place where you’re going to take your stance: being with the breath all the way in and all the way out—being with the direct sensation of how it feels to breathe, and learning to relate to that in … 
  5. The Six Properties
     … You breathe in ways that gladden the mind. You breathe in ways that concentrate the mind, release the mind. That’s proactive. It’s a skill you’re developing, but you can’t develop the skill unless you have that ability to be non-reactive, so that you can be with mental states and physical states that you don’t like, and you can … 
  6. Four Noble Questions
     … Wherever there’s a disturbance in the mind, you want to look for what happens at the same time. When that disturbance passes away, what passes away at the same time? The two are connected. If you want to see the events of the mind, how they contribute to added stress, you need to have a firm baseline, getting the mind as still as … 
  7. Intelligence of the Heart
    A lot of Thai ajaans talk about using your mindfulness and your discernment to understand things. Now, it’s good to know that the combination mindfulness-discernment, when it’s put together as a compound in Thai, means intelligence. So the ajaans are saying that you have to use your intelligence. It’s also good to think about why that combination would mean intelligence … 
  8. A Poker Mind
    A Poker Mind May 29, 2017 When you settle down with the breath, you’re trying to bring three things together: your sense of the body, the feeling of pleasure, and your awareness. Those are the first three frames of reference that the Buddha talks about in establishing mindfulness. The fourth frame of reference, dhammas, is basically lists of qualities and other things to … 
  9. The No Common Sense Zone
     … Our goal is the mind. We want the mind to settle down. What kind of breathing will help? You try things out. You try chest breathing, you try abdominal breathing, you try breathing all the way down to your toes. Which feels good? Which do you find easiest to settle down on? How about longer or shorter breathing? Faster or slower? Think of the … 
  10. Look after Yourself Happily
     … So however long it takes for the mind to have enough rest, you have to let it rest. But it’s not wasted time. One, the mind does get healed in a lot of ways. And two, it does require a certain amount of insight and discernment in order to protect your concentration. Once the mind gets still, then you can see the other … 
  11. Question Your Defilements
     … That kind of doubt is encouraged—to recognize, Yes, there are defilements in the mind. There things that darken the mind that obscure it. You may not like the word “defilement,” but think of the fact that your mind is obscured. You don’t want it to be obscured. You’d like it to be clear, open, bright, full of awareness. It can happen … 
  12. A Memorial to Your Life
     … Give it all to the breath and the mind together. Then reflect on what you’re doing: That’s what circumspection is all about. You commit yourself to getting the mind with the breath, and then you watch it. This ability to watch your own mind is really central to the practice, because after all, how are you going to watch your cravings unless … 
  13. The Wisdom of Self-regulation
     … But the Buddha wants to take you further than that, to a point where there really is no suffering in the mind—the mind is totally free, totally without limits—and that requires work. We have to learn how to straighten out the mind, all the unskillful habits we have. This process of self-regulation is something that has to be learned. Think about … 
  14. Scribe Knowledge, Warrior Knowledge
     … But when he boiled down the basic teachings, the ones he said were really important, he focused on the wings to awakening, which are lists of qualities of the mind that are going to be needed as you take on your battle with your defilements—all the unskillful things going on in the mind. What this means is that warriors do need a certain … 
  15. Hindrances Based on Delusion
     … to see what kind of thinking leads to calming the mind, centering the mind, so that you can get past these obstacles and get the mind into a good, solid state of fixed penetration.
  16. Right View
     … This is where the mindfulness comes in. That’s one of the elements in the Canon’s definition of mindfulness: being very meticulous. The more meticulous you are, the better you remember things. You need to be very meticulous in keeping something in mind in order to maintain your concentration. This is one of the functions of right mindfulness. Once you’ve entered into … 
  17. The Perfection of Freedom
     … As you develop skills, in particular the skills of meditation, you develop qualities of mind that enable you to step back and look at what really needs to be done, to question your knee-jerk reactions, to ask yourself: Is there another, better way of dealing with these issues, whatever the issues may be? Mindfulness helps here as it keeps in mind the range … 
  18. Wisdom for Dummies Revisited
     … Part of the mind can train the rest of the mind. It’s simply a matter of getting the good part of the mind, the part that really does wish for your true well-being, to have more power. This is one of the reasons why, when we meditate, we work with the breath to gain a sense of well-being. The good part … 
  19. Best Friends
    When you read the Buddha’s descriptions of right concentration, you notice that the two activities that help the mind to settle down are directed thought and evaluation. In order to clear away unskillful thoughts in the mind, you have to direct your thoughts in the right direction, toward the breath. And you keep directing them there, Keep reminding yourself: “Stay with the breath … 
  20. Question Your Actions
     … There may be a habitual thought that goes through the mind when, say, the possibility of anger comes up. Another part of the mind says, “Yes, let’s go with it.” What is that? That’s something you want to uncover. So we meditate to understand what we’re doing while we’re meditating—to get more sensitive to the mind, the different processes … 
  21. Oneness is a Water Snake
     … We’re getting the mind ready to do something else, which is to let things fall apart in a natural way. Part of the falling away simply comes from the fact that, as you’re working with the mind in getting it to settle down, you begin to clearly see things—events, activities of the mind clearly—that you didn’t see clearly before … 
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