Search results for: "The Mind"

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  2. The True Cause of Suffering
     … What are the right places? The right places are in developing good qualities of mind, so that the mind can be trained to handle whatever comes up and not suffer from it. When good things happen, we don’t suffer from the good things. When bad things happen, we don’t suffer from the bad things—because the mind has its own independent source … 
  3. There’s Work to Be Done
     … It starts with the directed thought and evaluation, and it continues as you get the mind into deeper and deeper states of concentration. It’s going to involve noticing what the mind is doing that’s excessive, ferreting it out, and then dropping just that, without dropping everything. Some things you have to hold on to. Even in the state of nothingness, you have … 
  4. Dealing with Confusion
     … What’s going to develop the mind? Well, the mind’s going to develop the mind—but it’s only through this constant process of settling in and watching what your intentions are, what your actions are, what the results are. That’s how you develop the quality of learning how to be more and more reliable to yourself, more and more your own … 
  5. Protest Your Virtue & Right View
     … Well, here you’re trying to find out the skill—or the “skill”—with which the mind fools itself. Here we are, creating all these images inside, and then we give them reality. We ignore all the work that goes into creating a thought. We hide it behind curtains. That means there’s a huge part of the mind that’s a stranger to … 
  6. Undefeatism
     … We develop skillful qualities in the mind. Yet sometimes the teachings on inconstancy seem to undermine the developing side. You think about developing something in the mind, and something inside you says, “Well, it’s going to be inconstant anyhow. No matter what you do, the results will be inconstant, so why bother?” That’s a wrong use of the teaching. It’s like … 
  7. In Alignment
     … So when you try to bring the mind to settle down with the breath, to simply be here with the body in the present moment, it’s going to take a fair amount of adjusting so you can bring things into balance, bring things into alignment, because the mind finds it so easy to shift its shape again—or to get waylaid. You’ve … 
  8. Sensuality
     … In fact, the mind gets a lot clearer, and it’s through the clarity of the mind experiencing this kind of pleasure that you can begin to see what’s actually going on in the mind. So he decided not to be afraid of that, and actually to pursued it. It’s ironic, how often we read about the dangers of getting attached to … 
  9. The Desire to Be Free from Desire
     … The thinking of the mind doesn’t destroy the breath. It’s still here. All you have to do is remember to stay focused here. You begin to notice, when you’re really sensitive to the breath energy in the body, that when a thought comes into the mind, there will be a little pattern of tension associated with that thought someplace in the … 
  10. No Foolproofing
     … After all, the mind is very subtle. There are lots of things going on in the mind. There are lots of issues you’re going to have to deal with as you bring the mind to concentration. In the beginning, you don’t want to think about those issues too much; you want to focus on the breath. But you’ll find that some … 
  11. Freedom & Security
     … So in the midst of all the ups and downs of outside wealth, it’s good to remind ourselves that genuine wealth is a quality the mind. It starts with contentment with external things and moves on from there. This means that it’s in the mind where you find the best place to invest. The more time you invest in training the mind … 
  12. Training Wheels
     … Bring them all together in a way that feels balanced, strong, and refreshing, so that the mind will like to stay here. Because the real pleasure that comes from concentration is not so much pleasure from the body, or from the physical feelings. It’s the pleasure of having the mind settle down and be still and have some peace inside. The pleasure also … 
  13. Suppressed Emotions
     … You want to be very clear about what’s going on in the mind, but at the same time you want to learn how to use the mind wisely, to approach your emotions wisely. When fear, greed, anger, or delusion come up in the mind, it’s not necessarily helpful to express them outside because sometimes that makes it difficult to observe what’s … 
  14. Timeless Dhamma
     … This turns your awareness more and more inward, to the way the mind moves, to the way the mind’s intentions and perceptions, i.e., the labels it puts on things, have an impact on how you experience things, in particular your experience of pleasure and pain, freedom and bondage. The Buddha’s breath meditation instructions are divided into 16 steps, arranged in four … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. True Freedom of Speech
     … It comes from what you’re choosing to do, starting with the thoughts of the mind. Then you realize that from the thoughts in the mind, it comes out your mouth. This means that that’s the first place you should check to see that you actually are on the path: through the things that you say, the type of speech you engage in … 
  17. The Forerunner of All Things
    There’s a passage at the beginning of the Dhammapada, that the mind is the forerunner of all things. Everything you experience, everything you do, is shaped first by the mind. Usually people read that and say it’s a nice idea, but they don’t realize how deeply it goes into the Dhamma. When the Buddha explains the very complex causes for suffering … 
  18. The Spider on the Web
     … One of the reasons we get the mind really, really still—as still as we can get it—and then try to keep it there, is so that we can see the process by which the mind will slip away from its stillness, by which a distracting thought will arise. A lot of times there will be thoughts you say are perfectly innocent. As … 
  19. The Flow of Time
     … What’s the best use of those things? The Buddha said the best use lies in training the mind, because everything you do and say and think comes out of the mind. And you don’t want your mind to be run by impulses. You want it to think of the long term. This is the beginning of wisdom and discernment, when you ask … 
  20. Rightly Directed
     … And if in the meantime you’ve developed good qualities of the mind—you’ve made your mind more expansive, you’ve developed virtue, discernment, you’ve trained the mind so it’s not easily overcome by pleasure or pain—then when the results of that past bad action come, you’re hardly going to feel them. So the important thing is that you … 
  21. Holding on Strategically
    There are a lot of passages in Ajaan Maha Boowa’s teachings where he talks about learning how to see the distinction between yourself and a pain—say it’s in the body—and he identifies your self with the mind for that purpose. And there are people who will jump on that and accuse him of saying that there is a self. They … 
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