Understanding Our Mind

Author: Thich Nhat Hanh
Publisher: Parallax Press
ISBN: 1888375302
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
Nautilus Award Finalist The renowned Zen’s monk’s profound study of Buddhist psychology—with insights into how these ancient teachings apply to the modern world Based on the fifty verses on the nature of consciousness taken from the great fifth-century Buddhist master Vasubandhu and the teachings of the Avatamsaka Sutra, Thich Nhat Hanh focuses on the direct experience of recognizing, embracing, and looking deeply into the nature of our feelings and perceptions. Presenting the basic teachings of Buddhist applied psychology, Understanding Our Mind shows us how our mind is like a field, where every kind of seed is planted—seeds of suffering, anger, happiness, and peace. The quality of our life depends on the quality of the seeds in our mind. If we know how to water seeds of joy and transform seeds of suffering, then understanding, love, and compassion will flower. Vietnamese Zen Master Thuong Chieu said, “When we understand how our mind works, the practice becomes easy.”

Understanding the Mind

Author: Kelsang Gyatso
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780948006548
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
What is the mind and how does it work?; how can an understanding of our mind be applied to our everyday life? This book provides a practical explanation of the mind in a combination of profound philosophical exploration and practical psychology.

Understanding Our Mind

Author: Thich Nhat Hanh
Publisher: Parallax Press
ISBN: 1935209965
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Mind in Buddhist Psychology

Author: Tshe-mchog-gling Ye-shes-rgyal-mtshan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 176

Book Description
A clear, concise presentation of how the mind functions, based on the Abhidharma teachings of Asanga, with citations, charts, tables of reference, terms, index to sources cited, and general index. Adopted for courses at 26 univerisities.

Buddha Mind, Buddha Body

Author: Thich Nhat Hanh
Publisher: Parallax Press
ISBN: 1935209256
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 150

Book Description
Revered Zen teacher and best-selling author Thich Nhat Hanh explores the connection between psychology, neuroscience, and meditation to reveal how we can cultivate our own happiness. In his previous book Understanding Our Mind, Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh explored Buddhist psychology and its applications in everyday life. Here, he continues that study by asking, “Is free will possible?” as he examines how the mind functions and how we can work with it to cultivate more freedom and understanding, be in closer touch with reality, and create the conditions for our own happiness. Drawing stories from the life of the Buddha and Hanh's own experiences, Buddha Mind, Buddha Body addresses such topics as: • The importance of creativity and visualization in a mediation practice • Basic Buddhist meditation practices such as sitting and walking meditation • The importance of brotherhood and sisterhood in everyday life Delivered in Hahn’s inimitable light, clear, and often humorous style, Buddha Mind, Buddha Body will appeal to those new and familiar with Buddhist psychology.

How to Understand the Mind

Author: Geshe Kelsang Gyatso
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781906665821
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Book Description
This book offers us deep insight into our mind, and shows how an understanding of its nature and functions can be used practically in everyday experience to improve our lives. Part 1 is a practical guide to developing and maintaining a light, positive mind - showing how to recognize and abandon states of mind that harm us, and to replace them with peaceful and beneficial ones. Part 2 describes different types of mind in detail, revealing the depth and profundity of the Buddhist understanding of the mind. It concludes with a detailed explanation of meditation, showing how by controlling and transforming our mind we can attain a lasting state of joy, independent of external conditions.

Your Mind Is Your Teacher

Author: Khenpo Gawang
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 1590309979
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Book Description
This concise handbook of Tibetan Buddhist teachings, designed for Western students, is centered on a sitting practice called Contemplative Meditation. This practice can be used as a way to change troublesome habits, even by someone with little knowledge of Buddhism. Although the teachings are based it on a nineteenth-century text by Lama Mipham, they are presented in a non-scholarly way, with examples drawn from modern life and everyday experience. In particular, the author addresses the unique attitudes and questions of twenty-first-century Westerners who are exploring Buddhism. The practice taught in the book consists of a reflection on four subjects, known as the Four Seals of the Buddha's teaching: multiplicity, impermanence, suffering, and emptiness. Khenpo Gawang Rinpoche explains how to investigate each of these topics in a way that helps you recognize your innate wisdom mind, which is your ultimate teacher. Once you learn how to examine your own mind and your life with this method, you will start to look at everything differently. By helping to dissolve negative thoughts and habits, the practice can increase your focus, confidence, self-esteem, and happiness. Along with exercises and questions, short readings, a glossary, and checklists for study, this book provides a complete handbook, with simple instructions for additional practices: • the Ninefold Exhalation, a breathing method for expelling stale air before meditation • visualization of buddhas and great teachers to inspire practice • the practice of bodhichitta, or generating love and compassion for all beings • the seven-branch offering, seven devotional thoughts to strengthen efforts • dedication of merit—the positive energy from the meditation--for the benefit of all beings Finally, the appendix gives translations of two short readings: The Wheel of Analytical Meditation by Lama Mipham, which is the source of this book's teaching, and the Heart Sutra, a famous brief teaching on emptiness, along with a traditional commentary.

The Book of Minds

Author: Philip Ball
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226822044
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 513

Book Description
Popular science writer Philip Ball explores a range of sciences to map our answers to a huge, philosophically rich question: How do we even begin to think about minds that are not human? Sciences from zoology to astrobiology, computer science to neuroscience, are seeking to understand minds in their own distinct disciplinary realms. Taking a uniquely broad view of minds and where to find them—including in plants, aliens, and God—Philip Ball pulls the pieces together to explore what sorts of minds we might expect to find in the universe. In so doing, he offers for the first time a unified way of thinking about what minds are and what they can do, by locating them in what he calls the “space of possible minds.” By identifying and mapping out properties of mind without prioritizing the human, Ball sheds new light on a host of fascinating questions: What moral rights should we afford animals, and can we understand their thoughts? Should we worry that AI is going to take over society? If there are intelligent aliens out there, how could we communicate with them? Should we? Understanding the space of possible minds also reveals ways of making advances in understanding some of the most challenging questions in contemporary science: What is thought? What is consciousness? And what (if anything) is free will? Informed by conversations with leading researchers, Ball’s brilliant survey of current views about the nature and existence of minds is more mind-expanding than we could imagine. In this fascinating panorama of other minds, we come to better know our own.

The Embodied Mind

Author: Thomas R. Verny
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1643138006
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Book Description
As groundbreaking synthesis that promises to shift our understanding of the mind-brain connection and its relationship with our bodies. We understand the workings of the human body as a series of interdependent physiological relationships: muscle interacts with bone as the heart responds to hormones secreted by the brain, all the way down to the inner workings of every cell. To make an organism function, no one component can work alone. In light of this, why is it that the accepted understanding that the physical phenomenon of the mind is attributed only to the brain? In The Embodied Mind, internationally renowned psychiatrist Dr. Thomas R. Verny sets out to redefine our concept of the mind and consciousness. He brilliantly compiles new research that points to the mind’s ties to every part of the body. The Embodied Mind collects disparate findings in physiology, genetics, and quantum physics in order to illustrate the mounting evidence that somatic cells, not just neural cells, store memory, inform genetic coding, and adapt to environmental changes—all behaviors that contribute to the mind and consciousness. Cellular memory, Verny shows, is not just an abstraction, but a well-documented scientific fact that will shift our understanding of memory. Verny describes single-celled organisms with no brains demonstrating memory, and points to the remarkable case of a French man who, despite having a brain just a fraction of the typical size, leads a normal life with a family and a job. The Embodied Mind shows how intelligence and consciousness—traits traditionally attributed to the brain alone—also permate our entire being. Bodily cells and tissues use the same molecular mechanisms for memory as our brain, making our mind more fluid and adaptable than we could have ever imaged.

The Power of Mind

Author: Khentrul Lodrö T'hayé Rinpoche
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 0834844478
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Book Description
A modern guide to lojong—ancient Buddhist techniques for transforming all circumstances, including pain, anxiety, and stress, into mental well-being that benefits us and the people around us. We’ve all heard platitudes about cultivating love and compassion, but how can we actually develop these qualities in ourselves and—crucially—share them in our world? The Power of Mind provides the proven path of lojong, or mind training, for changing our experience from the inside out. Regardless of what’s happening in our lives, Khentrul Rinpoche teaches that our route to freedom lies in our minds. A thousand years ago, the Indian saint Atisha risked his life to seek out lojong teachings in Indonesia, and then brought them to Tibet, where they flourished and spread to the rest of the world. This book introduces those teachings—the Seven Key Points of Mind Training—which have been passed down from teacher to student for centuries. Khentrul Rinpoche was inspired by his own teachers, who like alchemists, were able to follow these techniques during the Cultural Revolution and transform their immense suffering into something positive. The Power of Mind guides the reader through these transformative practices one by one—from recognizing the value of our human life to overcoming the sources of suffering, together with meditation advice for incorporating these insights into our daily lives. This wisdom is accessible to everyone—whether Buddhist or not. As Khentrul Rinpoche states, “Peace and happiness can be attained, but not by searching for something in the outside world. They start within us then extend out to the entire globe.”