Home › New to Buddhism › Mental Discipline

Mental Discipline
  • Tricycle Community 2 comments

    Metta Practice Paid Member

    By Sharon Salzberg
    This essay is from the Tricycle book, "Radiant Mind." More »
  • Tricycle Community 3 comments

    Tibetan Buddhist Meditation Paid Member

    By B. Alan Wallace
    WE CAN BEGIN to stabilize our minds from the beginning of our spiritual practice, while placing our chief emphasis on ethical discipline. By taking out some time each day for the practice of meditative quiescence, we become increasingly aware of how our minds function; and in the process we begin to discover how scattered our minds have been all along. Recognizing this, we may yearn to explore the potentials of the human mind that become apparent only when the awareness is still and lucid. More »
  • Tricycle Community 0 comments

    Vipassana Meditation Paid Member

    By Henepola Gunaraana
    THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN Vipassana meditation and other styles of meditation is crucial and needs to be fully understood. Buddhism addresses two major types of meditation. They are different mental skills, modes of functioning or qualities of consciousness. In Pali, the original language of Theravada literature, they are called Vipassana and Samatha. More »
  • Tricycle Community 2 comments

    Practicing Zazen Paid Member

    By Shunryu Suzuki
    WHEN WE PRACTICE zazen our mind always follows our breathing. When we inhale, the air comes into the inner world. When we exhale, the air goes out to the outer world. The inner world is limitless, and the outer world is also limitless. We say "inner world" or "outer world," but actually there is just one whole world. In this limitless world, our throat is like a swinging door. The air comes in and goes out like someone passing through a swinging door. If you think, "I breathe," the "I" is extra. More »
  • Tricycle Community 4 comments

    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 »