Search results for: committee
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- Slowing Down to Look… Think of your mind as a committee, and it’s not an ordinary committee. It’s like the Chicago City Council. Sometimes the impulse will say, “We know this is the right thing,” but that’s because Karl Rove is behind it—or the Chicago equivalent, okay? And other times you know because you know. But it’s only when you go through the …
- The Size of Your Eyes… If you see that it’s an unskillful member of the committee of your mind, do what you can to counteract it. That way, when the time comes to sit down, here you are. You’re already looking after your mind, rooting out what’s unskillful. And sitting down and closing your eyes simply gives you a better chance to do it with a …
Desires for the End of Desire
Determined on Freedom
… It also has to know how to be persuasive, in other words, teaching the members of your inner committee to want to do what’s in their best interest. This is where having a strong sense of values is an important part of the path. This will involve all three types of fabrication that we discussed on the first night, especially verbal fabrication, which …Show 2 additional results in this book- Practicing in Solitude… You’re adding new committee members with new ideas, new attitudes, in hopes that they’ll shake things up a little bit. This way, you can make the most of the freedom you’ve got. Because for a lot of us, having a big chunk of free time like this is daunting and almost a little scary. But as you gain a sense that …
- Framing the Body… You’re using these perceptions to lure yourself, to lure the committee of your mind to go along with that desire for the body. Now, because we’re attracted to human bodies not only for the body itself but also for their ability to provide us with an entry point into the human world, you have to ask yourself, with regard to whatever you …
- Easy to Instruct… There was one time, toward the end of Ajaan Lee’s life, when he was building a new monastery on the outskirts of Bangkok, Wat Asokaram, and the temple committee decided they wanted an ordination hall. It’s typical in Thailand that ordination halls tend to be on an east-west axis, the Buddha on the west side of the ordination hall facing east …
- Make Yourself Reliable… This is where the fact of having a committee of the mind—which can so often be a problem because the members can be pulling in different directions—can actually be helpful. There’ll be part of the mind that gets convinced about something, but you can look around for another part of the mind that’s willing to question it. Think of Ajaan …
- Virtues & Values… When you’re here in the present moment and the mind is still, you can hear the different voices of the committee or the corporation of the mind. You can sort out who’s responsible and who’s not responsible, who can be relied on and who can’t be relied on. In that way, your values become a reality. They really do develop …
- Do. Maintain. Use.… Some of the members of the committee want to stay here, and others want to go wandering off. They say, “Here’s a whole hour. We can think about all kinds of things.” And you may find yourself dealing with all kinds of things throughout the hour. Sometimes the distractions get so numerous that it gets frustrating, but at least you’re dealing with …
- Inconstancy… Using the perception of *anicca, *inconstancy, is one of his strategies to help get you on his side, to get the members in charge of your mental committee on his side so that you can taste something of what he tasted, and can see something of what he saw. So when anything threatens to get in the way of the practice, look for its …
- Your Duty Lies Right Here… Who’s in charge of your committee right now? Who’s making the decisions, and on the basis of what? Can they be trusted? How do you know? You develop as much as mindfulness and alertness and ardency as you can. That’s where your duties lie right now. Everything else is not your duty This division into what duties fall to you and …
- Forging a Path… This gives the mind something good to do, and you begin to see the other activities of the mind, because of course as you make up your mind to stay with one thing, there will be other members of the committee that say, “No, I’d rather think about this” or “What about that thing that happened today?” or “What about tomorrow?” or whatever …
- Responsible for Your Actions… It’s like sorting through the committee of your mind and figuring out who should actually have the right to vote and who should not. To do this, you have to be mindful to keep that perspective in mind, that you want to look at your thoughts not simply in terms of what you like or don’t like but where they come from …
- Push Yourself… But I said, “Well, how has your practice been? Doesn’t it require suffering to some extent? Doesn’t it require stress?” You’ve got members of your mental committee who don’t want to practice. You’ve got to fight them. That requires exerting bodily fabrication—in other words, looking at the way you’re breathing—as well as verbal fabrication, the way …
- Delight… This is not in our best interest here”—using the word “our” in the sense of the whole committee in the mind. Just because there’s a particular emotion coming up, a particular feeling coming up in the mind, that doesn’t mean that that’s the one you have to take on right now. Remember that there’s a whole field of potentials …
- Anchored in the Present… That’s when you see all these other intentions coming in—other members of the committee who seemed to be with the program but they were just biding their time. When they see that they’ve got their chance, they move in. If you hadn’t had a firmly placed intention to begin with, you wouldn’t have noticed it. There are trains of …
- Skillful Attachments… All too often we blindly take on whatever comes in, but as you stay with the breath, you get a greater and greater sense of the mind as being a committee, with lots of different voices in there. There’s really no reason that you have to identify with any of them. If you want to, you can, but again, you’ve got more …
- Clearing Your Space… This is where you have to think about the committee of the mind: There will be some members who just keep talking, and they’re not going to stop, but the reason why they don’t stop is because you’re paying attention to them. So, let them chatter, let them speak as much as they want. You just don’t focus there. You …
- Goodness… This is why we have so many committee members in the mind. Each has his or her own idea, which has or hasn’t been tested, and is all too happy to recommend it, whether or not it’s been tested—and with very little discussion about what the standards would be to judge as to whether something’s truly happy or truly good …
- Taking Apart Suffering… A good way to approach it is to assume that the mind is like a committee. There’s not just one person in there talking or observing, or just one mood in there simmering away. There are lots of different potential moods, lots of different observers. Even though the mind may tend to go in a certain direction to identify with a particular mood …
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