Search results for: "Mindfulness"

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  2. Insights
    To get the mind to settle down, you have to do some surveying first. It’s like figuring out where to build a house. You go and sit in one spot on your property, see what it would feel like to have the house there. Maybe you like it, maybe you don’t. So you try another spot and then another spot. Then you … 
  3. Turtle Meditation
    One of the reasons concentration is so central to the path is that the mind can see things more clearly when it’s still. Not only that, it can feel things more clearly as well. As you get more sensitive to the breath, you become more sensitive to the whole range of energy in your body. You can see where you’re holding things … 
  4. Hold on for All You’re Worth
    We had those chants on the brahmaviharas just now to put us in the right frame of mind to meditate. We have goodwill for ourselves, goodwill for other beings. In other words, for ourselves we want a happiness we can trust, one that’s worth the effort that goes into it. At the same time, we have goodwill for others. We don’t want … 
  5. A Home & a Mobile Home
    One of the standard terms for concentration is *vihara-dhamma, *which can be translated as “a home for the mind.” As you focus on the breath, you want to get the mind so that it feels at home here, in a home that’s solidly built and a good place to stay. Otherwise, the mind goes roaming out looking for scraps outside to give … 
  6. Potentials Past & Present
     … There’s a dimension that the mind can touch if you develop all the right qualities in mind—in particular, mindfulness, concentration, discernment: what we’re trying to develop right now. You get very clear about what’s going on in the mind, how the mind takes raw material from the past and can fashion it either in a skillful way or in an … 
  7. Awe
     … You’ve got the mind. What shape is the mind in? Fortunately, the Buddha doesn’t leave us stranded here. All too often in the West, this sense of awe is left simply as an aesthetic sense or a vague religious feeling. But the Buddha gives you further instructions on what to do with it. Take that sense of the earth and think just … 
  8. Mission Possible
     … If a part of the mind says, “Well, I’m supposed to be doing insight work, and I’ve only got a few more days here at the monastery,” get the mind quiet. Because it’s in the quiet mind that the real work is done. So keep things in balance. Remember, you have a repertoire here. Again, it’s like having lots of … 
  9. Protest Your Virtue & Right View
     … The Buddha also says that these are the bases for getting the mind into right mindfulness, and of course from right mindfulness we go to right concentration. So in various ways he keeps saying these are the two things that are really important. You’re creating the circumstances, you’re creating the environment in which you really can get to look into the mind … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. Look at Yourself
     … If you’re constantly focusing outside, you’re going to miss what’s happening in your mind even as you sit and meditate. There’ll be that habit to focus outward, to slip off into some theory or to slip off into some abstract idea about things rather than really looking at the movements of the mind. Things come up in the mind, insights … 
  12. A Sense of Yourself
     … Learning how to investigate is when you have to use real mindfulness, which is the ability to keep things in mind, to keep your duties in mind as you take on the path. That way, you know what has to be comprehended, what has to be abandoned, what has to be developed. You’re mindful. You’re also alert—very clearly seeing what you … 
  13. Friends & Enemies
     … Then we want to remember those lessons, because our real enemy lies in our lapses of mindfulness and lapses of discernment. Several people have noted that the Buddha image we’re going to be blessing this year is called the Destruction of Enemies. People have asked which enemies we have in mind, and the answer is the enemies inside: greed, aversion, and delusion. Those … 
  14. Goodwill, Gratitude, No Guilt
     … Where does that impact come from? It comes from the mind. The mind is making choices. If it doesn’t pay much attention to what it’s doing and it’s not really determined to change things, it just goes along in its own ways, forgetting that it’s creating all kinds of influences on people and things around you. The mind is an … 
  15. Persistence: Lift Your Heart
     … As the Buddha said, see the drawbacks of sensuality, see the degradation, anything that will help you change your mind about which side you’re on. This will be an ongoing process, because the mind will keep switching sides, going back to its old friends. You’ve got to get quicker and quicker at recognizing what’s happening, and which parts of the mind … 
  16. Comfortable With the Truth
     … There are lots of currents flowing through the mind. The Buddha calls them asavas or fermentations, effluents, things that come flowing out, and if we’re not careful they become floods overwhelming the mind. You’re sitting here telling yourself you’re focusing on the breath and all of a sudden you’re far away someplace else. The mind’s been carried away by … 
  17. Potentials
    As you survey the body sitting here right now, the mind right now, you’ll notice that there are lots of potentials: There’s a breath potential—the energy that can flow in different places. There’s a fire potential—the warmth. There’s a potential for coolness—which is water. A potential for solidity—earth. A potential for space. The mind has potentials … 
  18. Loving Yourself Wisely
     … And then, secondly, you want to have the quality that the Buddha calls being developed in body and developed in mind. Developed in body means that pleasures can come and your mind isn’t overwhelmed by them. Developed in mind means that pains can come and your mind isn’t overwhelmed by them. In other words, your mind is larger than these things. So … 
  19. The Gift of Meditation
     … In other words, you analyze what’s going on in the mind to see what’s skillful and what’s not skillful. If you see that something is skillful, you try to encourage it; if it’s not, you try to discourage it. This means, on the one hand, if something unskillful has arisen in the mind already, you do what you can to … 
  20. The Wisdom of Incongruity
    One of the first lessons of meditation is seeing how disorderly and chaotic your mind can be. Stream-of-consciousness novels have nothing on the strange shifts and incongruous fragments that the mind can toss up. If you try to trace where your mind has been or the course of its inner conversations even over the course of five minutes, you find that it … 
  21. Right Resolve & Right Concentration
     … Right resolve is a concerted intention you keep in mind. You basically lay down the law for yourself that you don’t want to think in unskillful ways, because that leads you to acting in unskillful ways. And then as you’re able to start thinking in more and more skillful ways, it’s easier to get the mind into concentration. At the same … 
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