Don’t Just Fatten Your Mind
October 09, 2018
We practice concentration as our food on the path. We try to settle the mind with one object, like the breath, and bring the mind to the object in a way that it feels at ease and has a sense of fullness, refreshment. So we work with the breath to see what kind of breathing would feel good, and then we learn to live with that sense of well-being. This is why we practice: to be able to keep coming back to it again and again, to keep ourselves nourished so that we’re not so hungry for other pleasures. When you’re not so hungry, you can look at pleasures not so much in terms of whether you like them or not. You’ll look to see what effect they have on the mind—what they lead you to do.