Search results for: "The Mind"

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  2. The Choice Not to Suffer
     … Those patterns of tension often become the burden that the mind actually feels. One of the Buddha’s insights is that pain comes in two forms. One is pain in the three characteristics: the fact that there is stress simply because things are put together and fabricated—and that’s everywhere. But the stress that weighs down the mind is a different kind of … 
  3. Ingenuity
     … As Ajaan Lee once said, “The ways of the mind are so many there’s no way any book could ever contain them all”—and that doesn’t apply to just one-volume books. In the Canon we’ve got forty-five books and they still don’t contain all the ways of the mind. So learn to appreciate this quality of ingenuity. It … 
  4. If at First You Don’t Succeed
     … Normally, when you hear about breath meditation, it’s just “in, out, in, out, in, out,” and the mind decides, “Well, I’m out of here.” But here you’re trying to make it interesting. Being with the breath allows you to learn how your body relates to the mind, how the mind has an impact on the body, how the way you breathe … 
  5. The View from the Mountaintop
     … See what answers come up in the mind, what kinds of insight arise. There’s no guarantee that everything that comes up in a still mind is going to be the truth, but you’re in a much better position because when the mind is still like this, it’s like opening all your drawers, or having access to all the drawers where you … 
  6. The Four Jhanas
     … In the foundations of mindfulness or the frames of reference, he talks about different ways of categorizing the mind. As you read through the list, you see that the categories get more and more refined as your concentration gets more and more refined. So which ways of breathing help the mind get more refined? In terms of mental qualities, which ways of breathing are … 
  7. Pain Is a Noble Truth
     … As it turns out, that’s the kind of pain that weighs the mind down. Without the clinging and craving, the pains in the body have no impact on the mind at all. They’re just there, a part of nature, but the mind doesn’t suffer. To see the distinction between those two kinds of suffering, you really do have to probe into … 
  8. Noble Treasures
     … So here we’re trying to get the mind to settle down. At the same time, we find that there are issues in the body. We all have them, and you can use them as your motivation for wanting to figure out this problem: How can you get the mind to settle down in a body that’s not really in good shape? Partly … 
  9. Forest Bathing
     … How does the mind create dangers for itself? How does it create suffering for itself? You want to get the mind really still so that it can see these patterns of behavior in action. So you focus on the breath, focus on any part of the body that you find easy to stay focused on. There’s also the meditation on the thirty-two … 
  10. Mindfulness in the Driver’s Seat
     … Either way, when you realize that you can’t stay here anymore, the mind is going to run off in every direction, like the story of the man who jumped on a horse and rode off in all four directions at once. You need a part of the mind that’s trained not to go along with those things, that can step back and … 
  11. Fear of Letting Go
     … So when there are things in the world that the practice requires you to give up, ask yourself, “Is it actually the thing outside that I’m giving up, or is it a quality of the mind? And what quality of the mind am I being asked to give up?” You’ll find that the Buddha never asked you to give up anything that … 
  12. Questioning Everything
     … And something in the mind says, “Well, it’s irresponsible not to do that.” Well, okay, I’m irresponsible. What’s wrong with that? It’s a thought that we’re often afraid to think but it’s good to be irresponsible for a while so that the mind can have a chance to be on its own, to look at what’s actually … 
  13. Wherever You Go, There You Aren’t
     … Learn how to look at the mind in a way that actually helps solve the problem instead of compounding the problem. Part of this means bringing the right narrative to what you’re doing, learning to look at the events of the mind simply as events, in and of themselves. This requires that you have the proper attitude. If you bring in the narrative … 
  14. Many Desires, Many Selves
    As we practice, we try to focus our desires on one thing—the ending of suffering—but the nature of the mind is that it desires tend to head off in lots of different directions, like the man who jumped on a horse and rode off in four directions all at once. Our desires to pull us here, pull us there, and we try … 
  15. Endurance & Restraint
     … Finally, sacitta-pariyodapanaṁ, the purification of the mind, making the mind bright and pure, bright and clean: We train the mind to be pure in its thoughts and its words and its deeds, particularly through raising the level of the mind. Here, again, think about the fact that the word “mind” here, citta, can also cover the heart. We try to lift our hearts … 
  16. Analyzing Anger
     … But the mind has this way of putting blinders on itself. It forgets its sense of shame and its sense of compunction, which are its protectors. And at the moment when you say, “I’m just going to go with this because I like it,” there’s part of the mind that’ll just brush everything else away. So you’ve got to take … 
  17. Cooking Skills
     … So we’re here to cure the diseases of the mind using the breath, to at least help alleviate some of the symptoms of the body in the present moment, but also to give the mind a good place to stay so that we can alleviate any bad symptoms in the mind. You use your directed thought and evaluation, along with your perceptions, to … 
  18. Endurance with a Purpose
     … What is the appropriate response? What would be the most effective thing to say or do right now? When the mind has developed its powers of endurance, it can think clearly to get good answers to those questions. If it can’t endure pain, the mind won’t be able to think clearly. You think of something, and it seems okay, and then after … 
  19. Goodwill in Heart & Mind
     … So to make metta a quality of the heart and the mind, you have to do more than simply metta practice. You’ve got to work on the problems inside—the way in which you’re creating unnecessary suffering for yourself—getting past any of the obstacles in the mind that refuse to admit that, refuse to see that. Because as long as you … 
  20. Fear of Death
     … This means realizing that there is something deathless that can be touched by the mind right where you’ve been experiencing the body. It comes not just through concentration, but also through working on the opportunities for insight that the concentration provides. As the mind gets more and more still, you begin to see the mind’s attachments. You can see them as activities … 
  21. Creating Your Environment
    Having a conducive place to stay is an important part of training the mind. Having conducive people to practice with is also important. It creates a good environment, an energy that helps to carry us along, especially during the times when, if we were on our own, we’d start flagging. Our energy would start having gaps. It would be nice if we could … 
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