Search results for: "The Mind"

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  2. The Buddha’s Standards or Yours?
     … It’s not that you’re going to do jhana and suddenly say, “Well, I’m going to do some directed thought and some evaluation.” The mind’s doing these things all the time. And then, of course, you’re breathing all the time, and the mind’s dealing with feelings and perceptions all the time. But the Buddha’s highlighting the fact that … 
  3. Educating Equanimity
     … Try to get the mind as still and as centered as possible, and then from that improved perspective look into the way the mind is reasoning around its reaction. Ask, “Well, why do you feel this way?” The mind will say, “Of course, I feel this way.” “Why?” See if you can get some answers, and then test the answers to see if they … 
  4. Still
     … Part of the mind will say, “What’s next?” After a while, you’ll have to say, “There’s this.” If it’s still, protect it. As for what level of jhana it is: I remember that when Ajaan Fuang was teaching, he never talked about the jhanas. Ajaan Lee would talk about them, but that was because he was teaching at a time … 
  5. The Power of Intention
     … He’s more concerned about the power of the mind. Mano-pubbaṅgamā dhammā: All experiences have the mind as their forerunner, they’re shaped by the mind, the mind is in charge. This is precisely where it’s in charge: in your intentions. So we’re learning how to use that power for good. As for equanimity, that’s only one aspect of the … 
  6. Mindfulness Gets Intimate
     … When the Buddha uses the word “origination,” he’s talking about things arising from causes in the body and the mind. And to see causes, you have to manipulate things. Only then will you know what’s a cause and what’s not a cause for a particular phenomenon in the mind. As he describes the different levels of jhana you can get into … 
  7. Clinging & Its Cure
     … As he said, if there’s a sensual pleasure that you indulge in and it doesn’t have a bad impact on the mind, that’s okay. But if it requires that you break the precepts or if it has an intoxicating effect on the mind, that’s something from which you’ll have to restrain yourself. Now, the substitute the Buddha gives is … 
  8. A Path Rooted in Desire
     … You think about the way you live in the world and if you see that you’re doing harm to yourself or other people, it’s hard to put those thoughts out of the mind. Or if you can succeed in putting them out of the mind, it becomes a blind spot, which is not conducive to insight. So realize that holding to this … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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