In traditional descriptions, meditation is likened to training a horse. The analogy helps as we understand more about the workings of mind, brain, and body together. This is where our horse-riding helps.
Table of contents
- Notable Posts
- How Taming the Mind is Like Riding a Horse
- Taming the Mind
- The Science of Taming the Wandering Mind
I don't feel that I am getting across just how wonderfully this book is written -- it is so profound -- and helps alter ones life -- in such a wonderful way.
Notable Posts
Can and is useful in ALL religions. Even if one is an atheist of all things. Give it a shot -- so very well worth it! Can;t go wrong with any thing written by Thubten Chodron. Don't need much knowledge of Buddhism to get a lot out of this book. She is a great teacher who presents content in an easy to understand manner and makes the teachings applicable to the real world we live in.
Great book at a great price. I recommend it highly for anyone interested in Buddhist practice and theory that can make positive changes in one's life and outllook. A well informed read and understandable for the newcomer or those just curious about Buddhism. I find this religion right up my alley. I have a hard time with the "do no harm", which I shouldn't because I am an animal lover and a vegan a quiet one, not in your face about it at all , but I must kill fleas on my dogs and occasional ants in the house.
These are things that seem ingrained in me.
- See a Problem?.
- England, Our England?
- DONT WORRY BE HAPPY!.
- Psychology Made Simple (Made Simple Books (Doubleday)).
- Shooting Stars and Flying Fish.
- Taming The Mind by Thubten Chodron.
I do move spiders harmlessly, either out of my way, or outside for the scarier looking ones. This all seems minor in the scheme of things but doing no harm is a very honorable moral, and our planet needs thoughts and deeds like these more than ever. This is another great book from Thubten Chodron. This book is much more focused on the Buddhist perspectives than "Working with Anger.
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- A Question of Survival?
- Three Just Men [Approved] (Four Just Men).
- Taming The Mind.
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It goes over the 4 noble truths, the 8 fold path, etc. A little mroe Buddhist than what I was looking for but still good info and perspective. May not be for everyone. I live in the city with no vehicle and I was very interested in going to a book store however, I did not want to pay what one normaly would so a friend recommend Amazon and I signed up for it. The books i had seen at corner book store was expensive so I wrote the titles down and found all the books I needed thru amazon and absolutely loved the price I paid for them!!
Some were used books and descriptions of the books were accurate!! I highly enjoy them! This book consists of 5 main parts which differ significantly. The 1st 3 are a mixture of popular psychology and Buddhism.
Much of the material is familiar to readers of psychology bestsellers, but Bhikshuni an honorific for Buddhist nuns Chodron makes some pithy statements worth repeating: But when we take responsibility for our decisions That gives them the idea that they too can do the same. Vajrayana is, to a large extent, also about positive transformation: Thus it has adapted to the culture of each country where it has taken root. In part 5, she discusses Buddhism today with intimations of its future in the West, stating that: The first is to clarify people's misconceptions about it. Thus, she states that: IMHO, this is a wholesome approach.
See all 9 reviews. Most recent customer reviews. Published on January 28, Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers.
How Taming the Mind is Like Riding a Horse
Learn more about Amazon Giveaway. Set up a giveaway. Customers who bought this item also bought. On other trials we asked them to tell us what the scene was, was it indoor or outdoor? And in this way we can manipulate attention and confirm that the participants were actually doing what we said.
Taming the Mind
Our hypotheses about attention were as follows: If attention is indeed doing its job and affecting perception, maybe it works like an amplifier. But when we direct it to the scene the face becomes barely perceptible as we process the scene information. We found that when they paid attention to the face N was larger, and when they paid attention to the scene it was smaller. What it tells us is that attention, which is really the only thing that changed since the images they viewed were identical in both cases, attention changes perception and it does so very fast, within milliseconds of actually seeing a face.
And our hunch was that if you put people in a very stressful environment, if you distract them with disturbing negative images, images of suffering and violence—sort of like what you might see on the news, unfortunately—doing this might actually affect their attention. What if we distract ourselves? And to do this we had to basically come up with an experiment in which we could have people generate their own mind wandering. And the trick to mind wandering is that, essentially, you bore people. When we bore people, people happily generate all kinds of internal content to occupy themselves.
That was pretty much it. The one trick was that sometimes the face would be upside down and it would happen very infrequently. On those trials they were told just to not press the button. So what do all of these studies tell us? They tell us that attention is very powerful in terms of affecting our perception. What about in the real world? What about our actual day-to-day life?
Where is your attention right now? Now, why am I saying this? These might be small little trips that we take away, private thoughts that we have.
And when this mind wandering happens it can be problematic. Imagine a military leader missing four minutes of a military briefing, or a judge missing for minutes of testimony, or surgeon or firefighter missing any time. The consequences in those cases could be dire. So, one question we might ask is: Why do we do this? Why do we mind wander so much? Part of the answer is that our mind is an exquisite time traveling master. It can actually time travel very easily. If we think of the mind with the metaphor of a music player we see this: We can rewind the mind to the past to reflect on events that have already happened; We can go into the future to plan for the next thing that we want to do.
We land in this mental time travel mode of the past or the future very frequently, and we land there often without our awareness, even if we want to be paying attention. Think of the last time you were trying to read a book, and you got to the bottom of the page with no idea what what the words were saying. A growing body of literature suggests that we mind wander, we take our mind away from the task at hand, about 50 percent of our waking moments.
The Science of Taming the Wandering Mind
We miss critical information sometimes, and we have difficulty making decisions. Conscious enough to realize our suffering and maybe the patterns that lead to it, but not always aware and resilient enough to respond to that suffering wisely. Fortunately, just as our bodies can be strengthened with exercise, so we can train our minds. By learning how we add stress to our suffering, and training our minds to do things differently, we can start to step out of the struggle.
Life becomes less like being bucked by a bronco, and a little more akin to Olympic showjumping. Plenty of hurdles, but a bit more poise. The Science of Enlightenment. Kristin Neff guides us through a twenty-minute compassion meditation, first directing kind phrases to ourselves and then to others. He is author of three books: Horse-Riding Practice Take your seat. Sit on a sturdy chair, if possible with your upper body upright not stiffly so and your feet in contact with the ground.
Imagine yourself taking the dignified posture of a rider on a steed. Listen to the horse. As best you can. Bring awareness to the cognitive mind, your thoughts.