Search results for: "Mindfulness"

  1. Page 91
  2. Respect
     … It’s not simply by wishing or wanting that we can get there; we have to develop skillful qualities in the mind—like we’re doing right now: training the mind in mindfulness, training the mind in alertness. Keep the breath in mind—that’s mindfulness—and be alert to what the breath is doing. Know when it’s coming in, know when it … 
  3. Knowing & Acting
    The mind functions in two ways: It acts and it knows. Its acting starts out with a thinking. Then it gets the body to act in line with its thoughts. But it’s also aware of what’s going on. It’s because of the combination of these two things that we know anything at all, that we can understand anything at all. If … 
  4. A Connoisseur of Happiness
     … Intoxicating pleasure is the kind that dulls the mind so you can’t really see what you’re doing. The most obvious examples of this sort of pleasure are those that come from alcohol and drugs, but there are other intoxicating pleasures as well. Anything that excites a very strong addiction, that dulls the mind, dulls your perceptions: That’s a kind of pleasure … 
  5. The Easy Way Out
     … This mind-state is different from that one.” You want to be able to see when there’s more stress in the mind: Okay, what did you just do? Sometimes what you just did was a very subtle thing. This is why the path is gradual. The Buddha’s analogy is of the continental shelf off of India. It gradually, gradually, gradually slopes downward … 
  6. Strong Through Admirable Friendship
    We live by strength of body and strength of mind, and normally the two have to depend on each other. The problem is that strength of the body can go only so far and then it starts to deteriorate. But strength of mind, if you train it and develop it, doesn’t have to deteriorate. It can carry you all the way through death … 
  7. Cooking the Present Moment
     … It also has to do with your ability to get the mind into concentration despite the pain. Once the mind is in concentration, it’s not so easily overcome by pleasure or pain. If you learn to get the mind to settle down, it requires being with the breath, and being with the breath at the same time that there’s pleasure arising from … 
  8. Just-Right Concentration
     … It’s thinking focused on the breath, focused on the mind, trying to be with the breath. Sometimes the other thing you have to think about is: Is your mind ready to settle down? If it’s not, if it’s got issues that it won’t let go of, what ways of thinking can you devise so that you don’t spend the … 
  9. Strength to Be Good
     … Then there’s the strength of mindfulness. Sometimes we hear mindfulness defined as open awareness or open acceptance or bare awareness, a purely receptive state of mind. That’s not mindfulness, that’s equanimity. Mindfulness is keeping things in mind, particularly what’s skillful and what’s not skillful. You learn this either from listening to others or reading books, or from your own … 
  10. Generosity First
     … A spacious mind, not the narrow mind of a person who doesn’t have enough. It’s the spacious mind of a person who has more than enough to share, the mind of a person who has no regrets or denial over past actions. In short, it’s the mind of a person who realizes that true happiness doesn’t see a sharp dichotomy … 
  11. True Happiness Starts with Giving
     … You’re making a statement about the value of the mind and the pleasures of the mind and the integrity and character of the mind, as opposed to the mere taste of pleasure. From there, the Buddha would talk about the value of virtue, which is another kind of gift. You give safety to yourself and other beings: no killing, no stealing, no illicit … 
  12. When Ill Will Is in Fashion
     … You’ve got the four establishings of mindfulness: the body in and of itself, feelings, mind states, mental qualities in and of themselves—ardent, alert, and mindful, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. Here’s where he says, “you develop this concentration.” Mindfulness here is a concentration practice. This is one of the passages in the Canon that makes that … 
  13. Trustworthy Intentions
     … So when you’re meditating here and you notice the mind slipping off to other things, the first step is just not to follow it. Make it a rule that wherever the mind goes in the course of the hour, you’re going to bring it back to the breath. Immediately. As for the other currents in the mind, you just let them be … 
  14. Meditate Because You Have To
     … In the same way, when your mind is hungry, it needs training. It needs to be fed with good food, the food provided by the breath, by mindfulness and alertness, by all the qualities that count as causes in the meditation. This is one of the principles you hear again and again and again from the ajaans. They say you meditate when you feel … 
  15. Strength in Humor
    One of the reasons we meditate is because we have to strengthen the mind. If we don’t strengthen the mind, it gets wounded—and not just wounded. When it’s wounded by the pains of aging, illness, death, separation, meeting up with things we don’t like, being separated from things and people we do like, then we end up doing really harmful … 
  16. Love is Conditional, Goodwill Is Not
     … It requires mindfulness. It’s a form of mindfulness, as the Buddha said. You have to keep it in mind. But you want to learn how to make it second nature, particularly as you meditate. Whoever you see in your meditation, whatever you sense in the meditation, just “Goodwill, goodwill.” And then you can get back to work, because there is work to be … 
  17. Doubt vs. Questioning
     … But if you learn from your actions, then you’re developing good qualities in the mind. And in the process of developing, you come to your own understanding of what mindfulness really is about: What’s the difference between mindfulness and alertness? How do they relate? How do they do good things for the mind? How do they enable you to see things you … 
  18. What to Tolerate, What Not
     … Reading books helps, but the real education comes from looking at what’s going on in the mind, developing the skills you need in terms of concentration, mindfulness, and discernment to see these things clearly. Because they can be undercut, they can be uprooted. That way, even though there may be stress in your experience, it doesn’t weigh on the mind. The stress … 
  19. Customs of the Noble Ones
     … That’s what helps keep the Dhamma true—and helps keep your mind true as well. As the Buddha said, when you practice these traditions of the noble ones, you conquer your discontent. In whatever direction you go, you’re a conqueror in that direction. In other words, the traits of the mind that would make you give in to pressure to squeeze and … 
  20. Ingenuity
     … As a meditator, you want to develop a repertoire of skills so that on the days when the mind is frazzled, you have the right way of breathing for a frazzled mind. On days when it’s tired, you have the right way of breathing for a tired mind. On days when it’s scattered about, what way of breathing is best for a … 
  21. Inner Refuge Through Inner Strength
     … And then, building on this persistence, you develop the other three strengths, beginning with mindfulness: the ability to keep something in mind. In this case, you keep in mind all the instructions you’ve received—and the lessons you’ve learned from your own practice—that are helpful for whatever particular step of the practice you’re doing at that point. For instance, as … 
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