Search results for: "The Mind"

  1. Page 98
  2. Greed & Distress with Reference to the World
    The Buddha’s formula for right mindfulness contains his instructions on how to get the mind into right concentration, and it contains two verbs. In other words, there are two activities that we do. One is dwelling. The word viharati, to dwell, can also mean to keep doing something. Here we dwell with the breath, the body in and of itself, just as you … 
  3. The Bureaucracy of the Defilements
     … There’s a little bit of stirring here or there in the mind and it’s right at the boundary between the mind and the breath. Then a perception comes along and stamps a meaning on it, saying that “This is a thought about x.” You realize you can go with that perception or not. If you’re clear about what’s happening, if … 
  4. Abandoning Effluents (3)
     … That will ideally lead to a sense of rapture as the mind gets more and more at peace, as unskillful qualities fall away. From the rapture then comes calm. From calm comes concentration, and from concentration, you get equanimity. These two sets—the destroying and the developing—go together. There is that pattern throughout the path: As you’re developing good qualities in the … 
  5. The Water in Your Cup
     … This way you get to see things you didn’t see before inside, both in the body and in the mind. Because as the mind begins to gather around the breath like this, and you give it one thing to stick with, you begin to see other movements in the mind: other intentions that may come up, other thoughts referring to the past, referring … 
  6. All Eye
     … There’ll be thoughts in the back of the mind, saying, “This is stupid. Nothing’s happening.” Well, nothing has to happen for the time being. It’s good to get the mind used to being in this state, so that when it leaves this state, it can see things clearly as the mind begins to start thinking about things again. You can see … 
  7. The Safety of Jhana
     … You can breathe, learn to focus the mind, let the mind settle down, become unified around the breath, and you’ve got a source of pleasure that’s totally your own and has no drawbacks, carries no blame. It does have its limitations. After all, it is conditioned. And the Buddha says, if you stay attached to it—in other words, if you’re … 
  8. The Taste vs. the Reality
     … We’re here to train the mind, and part of training the mind involves doing things over and over and over again: pulling the mind away from distraction over and over again, keeping the mind with its object over and over again, taking a skill that you develop while you’re meditating and learning to apply it in daily life over and over again … 
  9. Humility
     … The fourth has to do with “delighting in developing, delighting in letting go” — in other words, delighting in developing good qualities in the mind, delighting in letting bad qualities go. In fact, the word bhavana, “developing,” here, is the same word for meditation, but it means specifically developing whatever good qualities are needed in the mind. No matter how much effort needs to be … 
  10. Seclusion Through Mindfulness
     … In other words, you try to get the mind centered here on the breath, and then you observe the mind as you’re trying to get it centered here. You’re observing feelings, you’re observing mental qualities in relation to the act of focusing on the breath. The breath gives you a focal point. Or in Ajaan Thate’s image, you’ve got … 
  11. Fears
     … It permeates much more deeply into the mind. In fact, it allows the mind to open up, because for most of us the mind jumps around like a cat. Wherever it lands, it’s always going to stay tense, for it knows it has to be ready to jump again at any moment. But when you find something you can stay with for long … 
  12. A Handful of Leaves
     … There have been attempts over the centuries to fill in the blanks, but we have to remember that his purpose in teaching was to be helpful—to provide views that would be useful for the mind, views that had purpose. The Pāli word is attha, which means not only “purpose,” but also “meaning,” “benefit,” “goal”. After all, the mind has its purposes. It creates … 
  13. Concentration that Bears Great Fruit
     … When you find it’s congenial, that it’s restful for the mind, stay with that one topic. Sometimes you can think about the samvega that comes with either the contemplation of the body or the contemplation of death, and that can be restful in the sense it helps again put a lot of the day’s issues into perspective. Once the mind can … 
  14. Passion for Dispassion
     … After all, seeing how the mind lies to itself is like a detective novel: Who committed the crime? And how did they cover it up? The irony here is that the mind is lying to itself, right to its face. It does things here in the present moment, and then it disguises them. So we should be interested in how this happens because, after … 
  15. Evaluation
     … So, as you’re meditating, remember that your ability to evaluate how things are going, even though it may seem like a disturbance in the mind as you’re trying to get it to settle down, is a necessary part of getting it to settle down: to get things adjusted so that the mind is snug with the body, the mind is snug with … 
  16. Healthy Conceit
     … There’s somebody observing the meditator here, and you want to train that observer to anticipate, Yes, there’s going to be a distraction and you want to look for the warning signs before the mind leaves the breath. How does it start surveying around to see where else the mind might want to go? When the mind starts getting bored with the breath … 
  17. The Broken Gong
     … If you find you’re driving yourself crazy over some incident in your family life, at work, whatever, and it echoes, echoes, echoes, echoes in the mind, you can question it: What actually happened, and where right now is the sensation of that event? It’s at the contact at the mind. But why does it have to contact the mind now, when the … 
  18. The Tools of the Path
     … What made it bearable was the fact that he could get the mind into states of rapture every day, every day. When the mind is well-fed like that, then it’s a lot more willing to look at its unskillful sides—its defilements—and not be bowled over by them, not try to deny them. The mind is much more on an even … 
  19. What Is Skillful?
     … And there will be parts of the mind that don’t want to abstain and don’t want to get rid. They don’t like rules. But it’s not simply that we’re following rules here. As we follow the rules, we begin to see things in the mind that we might not have seen otherwise. For instance, if you don’t take … 
  20. Square One
     … As the Buddha said, you need both tranquility and insight to get the mind into concentration. To get the mind into concentration, you’ve got to choose one topic. Clear away all other topics in the mind. They may keep coming in, but just don’t pay attention to them. And you try to be ardent, alert, and mindful. Mindful means keeping something in … 
  21. Relationships
     … As it fills the body, you find that the mind feels a lot less frazzled. At the same time, the qualities it needs to develop to maintain this, in terms of mindfulness and alertness, give nourishment to the mind. So you’re putting yourself in a position of strength. When you’re in this position, then when you’re dealing with relationships with people … 
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