Tag: mind

Just three breaths

Karl Duffy3 Comments

The simple practice of just three breaths can come as a relief. We ask the mind to rest a bit, to be completely still, just for three breaths. Because we do not have to count three breaths, we can enjoy them. When the three breaths are done, let the mind loose for a bit, then turn its full attention again to just three breaths. As the mind rests more and more in the present moment, it will naturally settle. Then, without effort,  we can be present for a few more, and then just a few more breaths, until we are able to sit in relaxed, open awareness.

Jan Chozen Bays, How to Train a Wild Elephant

Image taken from Earthways Yoga

Body and mind

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https://mail-attachment.googleusercontent.com/attachment/u/0/?ui=2&ik=fa2f2a1f5d&view=att&th=13cd442839acd2c1&attid=0.1&disp=inline&safe=1&zw&saduie=AG9B_P_aeckBNJlAg2uPvDKT8sTW&sadet=1360771300969&sads=tw0ObBfqa_brc4jXQgB-rvwL5nQWe tend to think of the mind as being in the body. Actually we’ve got it wrong: the body is rather in the mind. Everything that we know about the body, now and at any previous time, has been known through the agency of our mind. This doesn’t mean to say there isn’t a physical world, but what we can say for certain is that the experience of the body, and the experience of the world, happen within our mind. It’s all happening here. And when that here-ness is truly recognized and woken up to, the world’s externality, its separateness ceases. When we realize that we hold the whole world within us, its thing-ness, its other-ness has been checked. We are better able to recognize its true nature.

Ajahn Amaro, Inner Listening

Working with the mind

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

You should all bear in mind that this practice is difficult. To train other things is not so difficult, it’s easy, but the human mind is hard to train.  The mind is the important thing. Everything within this body-mind system comes together at the mind. The eyes, ears, nose, tongue and body all receive sensations and send them into the mind, which is the supervisor of all the other sense organs. Therefore it is important to train the mind. If the mind is well-trained all problems come to an end. If there are still problems it’s because the mind still doubts, it doesn’t know in accordance with the truth. That is why there are problems.

Ajahn Chah

Training the mind

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Mental energy is finite, and our mind is diminished in direct proportion to how much its attention is fractured. The problem is not so much attention deficit as it is attention dispersion, when the available attention is spread thin……Concentration practice……consists of gathering together and placing the mind upon an object of the senses, or upon a mental object. We do this reflexively all the time, but in practice we are invited to do it with deliberate intention, with sustained energy, and with consistency over multiple mind moments. It is natural for the mind to resist such discipline and to wander off to any aspect of experience that is new, unusual, or apparently more interesting. Early humans did not survive in nature by ignoring incoming stimuli; like birds or chipmunks, we are more accustomed to glancing around constantly, attentive to both threat and opportunity. But most of us no longer live in a hostile natural environment, and the threats that confront us are usually manufactured by our minds. Cultivating mental focus, consistently returning to a primary object, and settling into ever-deeper states of tranquility helps to gradually reign in the mind’s wandering in a way that consolidates the power of awareness.

Andrew Olendzki, Busy Signal, How multitasking leads to Ignorance

How we give up fixed positions and get peace

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Through examining and contemplating perceptions, we begin to see the relative truths of the angles or biases that we have, the blaming, self-blaming or justifying, or ignoring. Perceptions don’t give you an ultimate reality; they give you a subjective readout of where you’re coming from. Widening the perceptual field means the mind becomes more peaceful, less defensive and less obsessive….You realize everything and anything that is held onto can’t be an ultimate truth, it’s just a naming, based upon a position. Through insight into perception, the mind has given up on “naming” and has realized peace.

Ajahn Sucitto, Working with Perception

How to work with negative thoughts today

Karl Duffy1 Comment

One of the biggest problems with thoughts is that we tend to believe everything they say: “If I am thinking it, it must be true.”I have learned that the best way to deal with excessive thinking is to just listen to it, to listen to the mind. Listening is much more effective than trying to stop thought or cut it off. When we listen there is a different mode employed in the heart. Instead of trying to cut it off, we receive thought without making anything out of it. When we look at thought in this way we aren’t being pulled into it. We can just look at it. We don’t reject it or suppress it, but we don’t buy into it either. We don’t make more out of it than is there. That attitude of listening, of opening to and receiving thought, has a liberating quality in-and-of itself.

Ajahn Amaro, Thinking