The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science for Greater Mindfulness

Meditation Factors:1 Directed Attention, Sustained Attention, Meditative Joy, Pleasure/Happiness, and Unification of Mind.

Meditation is a series of simple tasks, easy to perform, that only need to be repeated until they bear fruit.

If the skills and insights we learn on the cushion don’t infuse our daily life, progress will be quite slow.

The best way to avoid or resolve impatience is to enjoy your practice. While this isn’t always easy, a good start is to consistently focus on the positive rather than the negative aspects of your meditation. Notice when the body is relaxed and comfortable, or when the mind is focused and alert. Seek out and acknowledge these rewarding aspects, no m

For now, your aim is just to tame the constant movements of attention, while at the same time trying to maintain peripheral awareness of things in the background. In other words, you want to develop stable attention with mindfulness.

“eight worldly dharmas.” Here’s an easy formula to help you remember them: gain-loss, pleasure-pain, fame-obscurity, and praise-blame.

Chasing after physical pliancy and meditative joy is like prying open a bud so it will blossom more quickly.

Attention not only interprets objects based on self-interest, it leads us to identify with external objects (this is “my” car), or mental states (“I am” angry, happy, etc.).

Take note of, savor, and even purposely induce feelings of peace and happiness, especially as your attention becomes more stable and you experience more inner calm.

A deep purification of the mind happens in meditation, and a large part of that purification involves putting to rest concerns about past misconduct, actual or perceived.