Search results for: "The Mind"

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  2. A Refuge from Karma
     … If you make your mind unlimited here in the present moment, then no matter how bad the karma is from the past, it doesn’t have to have an impact on the mind. In other words, you may be experiencing the physical results of past actions that were unskillful, but the mind doesn’t have to suffer from them. As you enlarge your mind … 
  3. Resistance
     … People often believe that we’re trying to learn how not to think, or trying to get the mind away from its conditioning simply by stopping any language from going through the mind. But the Buddha’s instructions on meditation involve a lot of thinking, training the mind to think in skillful ways. But unlike psychotherapy — which tries to trace your thoughts back to … 
  4. Developing Discernment
     … being mindful to stick with it consistently, so that you begin to see things in the mind that you didn’t see before. A lot of the mind’s subterfuges lie in the gaps. As Ajaan Lee once said, there comes a point when the mind just passes out and suddenly you find yourself in a different world. What happened in the moment of … 
  5. Questions of Skill
     … Well, here you’re fabricating a big fabrication—the fabrication of the mind in concentration. As Ajaan Fuang used to say, “Don’t go looking at things outside. The big problem is inside.” When the mind says that things are inconstant, stressful, not-self, the problem is not the things. It’s in the mind that’s making these comments. That’s what you … 
  6. Start with Yourself
     … So when you’re training the mind, you’re not just training it in terms of ideas. You’re training it with the raw material of emotions. The first set of raw materials is your breath. When an emotion takes over in the mind, it’s going to have an effect on the breath, the breath will have an effect on the body, and … 
  7. Neither Here nor There
     … It requires mindfulness, ardency, alertness to hold the mind in this one spot. Then we can see what it means to stay here. But of course, once you make up your mind to stay right here, there will be movements in the mind to go someplace else, but you have to say No. And it’s in your ability to notice them as you … 
  8. Two Eyes, Not Just One
     … You look at your feelings and perceptions as mental fabrications to see what influence they’re having on the mind. And then in both cases, you try to calm the effect. Try to fabricate more tranquil states in the body; try to fabricate more tranquil states in the mind. That’s tranquility. So you’re developing insight and tranquility at the same time. This … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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