Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 95
  2. Unskillful Voices
     … Lots of ideas come up in the mind. It’s like a committee discussing ideas: “How about doing this? Well, how about doing that?” You’ve heard about people with multiple personalities, the really extreme cases where they get schizoid and the multiple personalities refuse to recognize each other. That’s unhealthy. For most of us, though, there is a dialogue in the mind … 
  3. Action & the End of Action
    The Buddha’s teachings are basically instructions on how to train the mind to put an end to suffering and to find true happiness. It’s interesting that in that précis right there, a lot of the terms are undefined: In the Pali Canon mind is not defined; suffering is not defined; happiness is not defined. In fact, the Pali words for those things … 
  4. The Image of the Raft
     … You have to ask yourself, “What in the mind says that it’s okay to kill?” Because if it’s okay to kill a little something like that, then it can go to bigger and bigger things, and the mind becomes dishonest. When the mind is dishonest, whatever insights you gain from your concentration are going to be dishonest too. So hold on to … 
  5. Concentration Food
     … Remember that it does respond to words in the mind, to sentences in the mind. Sometimes it responds more easily to pictures that you create in the mind. So, we’re working with both: words and pictures. The Buddha calls this directed thought and evaluation. You direct your thoughts to the breath, and then you evaluate how it’s going. If it’s not … 
  6. A Leap of the Heart
     … And the Buddha says, “Even I myself, as I was trying to get the mind into concentration, realizing that to get the mind into concentration I had to give up thoughts of sensuality: My mind just did not leap up at the prospect.” So the Buddha, too, had to struggle with the issue of giving things up, letting go of things, sacrificing things. It … 
  7. Ups & Downs
     … getting the mind into stillness, into concentration, and in using your discernment to let go of your defilements. In both cases, you’ve got to learn how to develop a certain stamina, learn how to keep the mind on an even keel, and not be either excited by things going up or upset by things going down. Remind yourself: This is normal. This is … 
  8. A Handful of Leaves
     … It enables us to see that there’s an area of the mind that suffers and also an area of the mind that doesn’t: an area that can be aware of the suffering but doesn’t have to take it on. It’s not burdened by it. You need a lot of discernment to see that. The discernment, in turn, requires this concentration … 
  9. Directing Yourself Rightly
     … Just because the mind is focused doesn’t mean you’re going to see things clearly and rightly. You have to actively contemplate once the mind is still, because a mind that’s still can latch onto all kinds of things. The concentration can get suddenly focused on something that gets you irritated, something that gets you angry. And the stronger your concentration, sometimes … 
  10. A Post for the Heart
     … This is what we try to develop as we develop the mind in concentration and also with the practice of virtue and generosity—a good solid post in the mind. If the mind isn’t firmly planted like this, it’s like a post that’s just lying there on the beach. The water rises, and the post gets washed up with the water … 
  11. Nurturing Your Inner Adult
     … They speak to a different part of the mind: the lizard brain, the part whose emotions are really raw. If you find that you can’t catch hold of what the perception is, try inserting alternative perceptions and see how the mind reacts. Try skillful perceptions. If the mind says, “I can’t stand this, I can’t take this, I’m afraid I … 
  12. A Questioning Attitude
     … Let it be there and watch it to see what happens—and to see particularly where it’s coming from, what movement of the mind disturbs the pain, makes it worse, takes the physical pain and brings it into the mind. It’s usually a perception. Again it’s a perception we tend to take for granted about where the pain is, how it … 
  13. The Conditions for Goodwill
     … It’s not innate to the mind, any more innate than hatred can be. Hatred can be very easy to feel. Anger can be very easy to feel. Greed, aversion, jealousy: All of these things are just as natural as the good side of the mind. And the mind is something that can change very quickly. There are passages where the Buddha asks the … 
  14. Strength of Discernment
     … The way you breathe through the body is going to have an impact on the mind. And you can use the breath to undercut unskillful states. You can ask yourself, “If something’s coming through the mind and I’m focusing on something that’s not really worthy of attention, how can I give a karate chop to the mind?”—in other words, the … 
  15. No One Size Fits All
     … You become more and more sensitive to what the mind is doing, what the results are, and what you need to do in response. That’s the basis of insight. That’s the basis of discernment. As you’re trying to get the mind into concentration, the big questions are: “How do you get the mind to settle down? How do you get it … 
  16. A Diffuse Light
     … And the conception of the breath goes to either: “That’s the one spot where you’re inhaling,” or “That’s the one spot that’s doing the work of sucking in the air, sucking in a breath.” Then, as the mind settles down, you can move from that—the perception of the breath coming from the outside—to the perception of the breath … 
  17. Bring the Right Attitude
     … Then you let those comfortable physical sensations nourish the mind so that you can maintain the right attitude. They strengthen each other this way, to the point where it seems that the boundary between the body and the mind begins to dissolve. There’s just a sense of fullness, and it’s hard to say whether it’s physical or mental, because it’s … 
  18. Endurance Through Discernment
     … What makes them suffering that weighs down the mind is clinging—clinging to the aggregates. The point being that if you could stop the clinging, then aging, illness, and death would not be suffering, or you wouldn’t have to suffer from them. They would be painful, but the mind wouldn’t have to suffer from them. It’s somewhat ironic that you hear … 
  19. Prepare to Die
     … So in the process of overcoming our fear of death, we also find we can liberate ourselves from all the restrictions we tend to place on the body and the mind, particularly the restrictions we place on the mind. So here’s the paradox: The more you exercise restraint, the more unrestrictive the mind becomes. And that ultimately is what the teaching is all … 
  20. The Kamma of Self & Not-Self
     … The Buddha doesn’t have a term for it, but he does recommend that you develop concentration as a source of well-being in the mind that’s totally harmless. It doesn’t require that you do anything unskillful to develop it and it doesn’t have a bad impact on the mind. As he said, if you have this pleasure, the pleasure of … 
  21. Fear & Insecurity
     … So we train the mind. As we sit here and meditate, it’s probably the best way, the most direct way to train the mind. But all the aspects of the path, all the aspects of the practice, are training the mind to fear the right thing: to fear making unskillful choices—choices that are harmful for yourself, harmful for others, based on unskillful … 
  22. Load next page...