Search results for: committee
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- Sensitive to Fabrication… When the members of the committee are getting obstreperous, how would he describe the story? How would he describe the issue? How would he sort things out among them? If Ajaan Fuang doesn’t seem to be the one to settle things, think of the ajaan you most respect or the person in the Pali Canon you most respect. Add that voice to your …
- Endurance & Contentment… It was during that period on the mountain that I began to realize that my mind was like a committee: lots of different opinions, some of which I could trace to my mother, to my father, different lessons I had picked up at school, picked up from the culture at large. Being in a place far away from my culture, far away from my …
- Creating Interest in the Present… Remember the image of the committee: lots of opinions in here. Some opinions want to stay; some opinions want to go. Try to side with the ones who want to stay and strengthen them by giving yourself something good to do here in the present moment. If working with the breath gets dull, then you can work on thoughts of goodwill, you can contemplate …
- Training Your Minds… When we talk about the mind being like a committee, sometimes it seems like that’s too small an image. It’s more like a crowd, and lots of people in the crowd have different agendas. So as you’re meditating, you have to realize that even though part of the mind is with the breath, there are other parts that don’t want …
- Goodwill… In this way, you straighten out the committee inside your mind. We have lots of different opinions inside, lots of different ideas about what we should do and shouldn’t do. Sometimes they’re in agreement, sometimes they’re not. Part of the training of the mind is to learn to get everybody in agreement that you want to behave in a skillful way …
- Animals in the Mind… What every member of the committee—any animal—here in the mind wants is happiness, a sense of well-being. And in the beginning stages, you can provide that with the breath. As different members of the committee become more inclined to look here, you find that there are deeper and deeper levels of happiness that can be found right here, until ultimately everybody …
- As Days & Nights Fly Past… It’s as if we have a committee inside, and not all the committee members are on board with the meditation right now. Some of them would be all too happy to use this hour to think about something else. You have to get really good at saying No, No, No, again and again and again, until those members of the committee finally realize …
- Limitations… Again, think of the committee of the mind. You don’t have to identify with every voice that comes up in the mind. You don’t have to identify with every feeling that goes through the body. Ajaan Lee’s picture of what’s going on inside you is even more radical than the image of the committee of the mind. He says that …
- Ups & Downs… We sometimes call it a committee, but it’s often more like a raucous crowd. You have to learn how to be a patient observer to figure things out, the same way that the people in listening stations during a war listen very carefully to the enemy. They can’t let themselves get excited or depressed or impatient. They’ve got to keep listening …
- On Top of Your Actions… This is where the committee of the mind actually becomes a useful thing. If there were just one of you in there, there’d be no way that you could question your opinions, because your opinions would be your opinions and that would be that. But if you realize that there are other beings in here, other voices, other opinions in there, try to …
- The Role of the Observer… After all, when you really can’t figure out what’s going on, one of the best things to do is to say, “I’ll just sit with it for a while.” But in sitting with it, you’re creating an identity in this committee you have in the mind: the identity of the watcher. And you’re going to hold on to that …
- Farming Your Body & Mind… You can think of it as being like a committee where different members of the committee watch other members—although as someone told me recently, he felt that his mind was more like a nursery school: lots of squabbling little kids in there. But even in a nursery school, there should be an adult in charge. So, you want your adult in charge right …
- Distraction & Drowsiness… There’s a committee in there, and the different members of the committee have different ideas. Some of the tapes they’re playing are things that were actually set into motion a while back. Now that your mind is beginning to calm down a little bit and get quieter, you’re beginning to hear things going on in the background that were obscured before …
- Keep Your Spirits Up… This means keeping certain things in mind, one of which is that—given that the mind is so complex and there are so many opinions in there, so many members of the committee—it’s bound to happen that when some of the members get well-trained, then others come barging in, not well-trained, and they seem to destroy everything. Actually, they don …
- Working with Fabrication… All the different voices in the mind, all the different committee members, all our different identities are made up of these various forms of fabrication. This is where the teaching gets useful. A thought comes into your mind, an emotion comes into your mind, telling you that you want to do this or that: If you realize that it’s not skillful, you can …
- A Clean Mind… We’ve got to get the good committee members of the mind watching over the ones that tend to misbehave—and watch out for their every movement. Some people say this makes them really tense. But if you can do it with a sense of well-being with the breath it’s a lot easier. You find actually that the more you can keep …
- Looking After Your Own Affairs… There are lots of different you’s, different members of this committee inside. And some of them will slip in with agendas that are not really in your own best interest: maybe a short-term happiness but nothing really long-term. But wisdom comes from seeing that happiness comes from your actions and that there is such a thing as long-term as opposed …
- Thinking that Leads to Stillness… There are good reasons for why you’re staying here.” Then when you try to settle down, you also want to deal with the obstreperous members of the committee that are very picky about where they want to settle. The mind is really strange this way. It can go off and think about things that cause suffering for days and days and days on …
- Trust in Heedfulness… There are members of your inner committee who are trustworthy and other members who are not—just as outside, there are people who are trustworthy and people who are not. You need to learn how to combine the inner trustworthy members with the outer trustworthy people, to find a happiness that really does satisfy. Because a lot of what the world has to say …
- Truthfulness… Learn to have some conversations and negotiations with the different committee members in the mind that are being recalcitrant. That way, this quality of truthfulness really does become one of your qualities. You look at the ajaans. All of them made up their mind to do something and they did it. They didn’t talk about the difficulties involved, but they would talk about …
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