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Mindfulness (sati)

 The meditation practice of maintaining awareness of one's body and consciousness
  • Tricycle Community 7 comments

    The Wise Investigator Paid Member

    Can you say something about the title of your book, Don’t Look Down on the Defilements, They Will Laugh at You? I never intended to write a book. One of my yogis had taken a lot of notes during interviews and wanted to make them available to others. Those notes were then edited and expanded by me and some other yogis. We picked the title because it is important not to underestimate the power of the defilements. When I teach meditation I emphasize the importance of watching the mind. While doing this you will see a lot of defilements. In their grosser manifestations, the defilements are anger, greed, and delusion. And they have plenty of friends and relatives, who often show up as the five hindrances: desire, aversion, torpor, restlessness, and doubt. More »
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    Foundations of Mindfulness Paid Member

    By Stephen Batchelor
    The origins of [mindful awareness] practice are found in Gautama's own discourse on the "Foundations of Mindfulness" (Satipatthana Sutta) in the Pali Canon. It has been described as "the most important discourse ever given by the Buddha on mental development," and as such is highly revered in all Theravada Buddhist countries of Asia. The Buddha opened the discourse by declaring: There is, monks, this way that leads only to the purification of beings, to the overcoming of sorrow and distress, to the disappearance of pain and sadness, to the gaining of the right path, to the realization of Nirvana—that is to say the four foundations of mindfulness. These four foundations are the four areas of life to which mindful awareness needs to be applied: body, feelings, mind and objects of mind. In other words, the totality of experience. More »
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    The Ties that Unbind Paid Member

    By Andrew Olendzki
    Imagine what would happen if you took six lengths of rope and tied one end of each to six creatures: a snake, a crocodile, a bird, a dog, a jackal, and a monkey. Then tie the other end of all these into a big knot and let go. What do you think would happen? Each of these animals would pull in a different direction, trying to return to their favorite haunts. The snake would slither toward its nest in the anthill, the crocodile would pull for the river, the bird would fly up into the air, the dog would head to the village, the jackal to the charnel ground, and the monkey would scamper for the trees. Can you picture such a scene? More »
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    Do I Mind? Paid Member

    By Joan Duncan Oliver
    It's all there in the Satipatthana ("Foundations of Mindfulness") Sutta: The direct path to awakening calls for maintaining awareness of body, feeling, mind, and thoughts—and not just when we're sitting in meditation. Whether eating, drinking, chewing, urinating, defecating, walking, standing, falling asleep, waking up, talking, or remaining silent, we must remain fully alert, the Buddha said. More »
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    What's So Great About Now? Paid Member

    By Cynthia Thatcher
    "BE MINDFUL." "Stay in the present." "Bare attention." We've all heard one of these phrases. And if you're more experienced in insight practice, these may be the watchwords that chime in the back of consciousness from morning till night, reminding you that everything genuine in the spiritual path is to be found in the now. But then one day you're sitting in meditation, trying to observe the rise and fall of the abdomen, or a thought, or pain, and it all seems terribly dreary. Suddenly a question floats like a bubble to the surface of your mind: "What's so great about the present moment, anyway?" More »
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    Do the Thoughts Ever Stop? Paid Member

    By Bob Sharples
    THE BIGGEST HINDRANCE to our meditation is constant intrusive thoughts. This is normal for everyone and from the beginning you should expect it. The nature of our mind is to think, and it is childish to imagine that we can simply turn that process off when we wish to. Our minds have been almost completely out of control for most of our life. Recognizing this can help us to be practical and patient—it may take us some time and a lot of skillful practice to tame the crazy “monkey mind.” My own meditation practice was helped when I came across the instruction that while I have thoughts I am not those thoughts. When you stop to examine your thoughts you start to see that they have a life of their own, they come and go, generally in a random, idiosyncratic way. Recognizing the constancy of our endless thinking process is said to be one of the important early steps we take on the meditation path. More »