Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 92
  2. Imagine
     … You use some of the eggs to eat, while the others you crack open and take apart.” In other words, part of the role of concentration is to keep the mind nourished on the path. The other part is to give you something to take apart, while at the same time putting the mind in a position where it can take these present states … 
  3. A Load of Straw
    A Load of Straw April 8, 2004 The mind has a habit of loading itself down with all sorts of unnecessary garbage. It’s like a phrase they have in Thai, “the old woman loading herself down with straw.” The story goes that she thought that someday she might find herself in need of some straw, so everywhere she went she carried a huge … 
  4. Focus on the Doing
     … In doing this, you’re developing all the various skills that are required to get the mind staying solidly with the breath. You’re learning a lot about the mind and how to deal with issues in the mind a lot more skillfully. This is where insight comes. It’s the insight of someone mastering a skill, not of someone who’s memorized a … 
  5. Prevention
     … It was an issue of perception, the images we have that we hold in the mind. And why does the mind go for these perceptions? What makes it create perceptions that it knows deep down inside are going to create trouble? It was by doing this process over and over again that he was able to see very clearly the process of how the … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. More than a Slice of Mindfulness
     … When you question origination—that was what sparked Sāriputta’s gaining the Dhamma eye, just that much of an insight—you’re looking for the cause of something in the mind and how it can be made to cease. That’s what you’re learning as you’re sitting here, experimenting with the breath, experimenting with the mind, experimenting with your perceptions. So when … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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