Search results for: "Thought"

  1. Page 102
  2. The Stakes Are High
     … But karma is actually a scary kind of thought. It has its potentials, but also has its pitfalls. So we have to work at doing the best we can. As the Buddha said, the secret to his awakening was, one, the effort he put in and, two, the sense of not resting content with the skillful qualities he had developed. He didn’t stop … 
  3. Strong-hearted
     … There are pleasures that the Buddha calls “pleasures of the flesh”—nice sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, thoughts about these things—and there are “pleasures not of the flesh,” which are the pleasures that come from getting the mind concentrated. Those, he says, you want to develop. So we’re mindful to develop them, give rise to them, and then maintain them. This … 
  4. Outside the Box
     … In fact, Ajaan Maha Boowa would tell his students, “Try to prove the Buddha wrong.” So they thought for themselves. This means that the meditation they teach is not an indoctrination. You’re not told that if you see that there is no self, then you’ve gained awakening. Anybody can force him or herself to contemplate things until they decide, yes, there is … 
  5. Ajaan Fuang’s Stories
     … He said he thought of that line in the Canon that talks about the monk who is content with his belongings. “Just as a bird, wherever it goes, has only its wings as its burden, in the same way the monk has his robes and bowl as his only burden.” Another time, they were at Wat Asokaram, near Bangkok, and they were going to … 
  6. One Step at a Time
     … And when I thought about the whole hour and a half I was going to be out there, slogging through mud, it was difficult to get up the energy just to take the first step. But then I realized, of course, that if I didn’t go on my alms round I wouldn’t get to eat that day. So I took it one … 
  7. Understanding Pain
     … But if you think of the energy going through it, you begin to realize that it’s porous—it’s not as solid as you thought it was. And sometimes when you do this, the pain actually goes away. There was pain caused by tension and by bad circulation, and when you’ve improved the circulation with the breath and the blood, the pain … 
  8. Mature Strategies
     … You do anything you can to put the thought of suffering out of your mind — the idea being that if you avoid thinking about it, pay it no attention, ignore it, it’ll go away. And there may be a few cases in life where that works — where focusing on your pains makes them worse — yet there are so many cases where it works … 
  9. Mindfulness 2.0
     … As the Buddha said, one of the purposes of meditation is to think thoughts that you want to think and not think thoughts you don’t want to think. That, too, is one of the purposes of mindfulness. He calls mindfulness a governing principle. In other words, it watches over what’s unskillful and figures out how to put an end to it. It … 
  10. Parsing Out Suffering
     … Which kinds of activity are you attached to? Is there a particular perception you like? A particular feeling or thought fabrication? Ajaan Maha Boowa talks about his contemplation of the body. The practice got so that he was really good at looking at every person and seeing them reduced to what was inside. But it didn’t really put in an end to the … 
  11. Persistence: Lift Your Heart
     … Often I’ve thought I had a pain or tightness in my chest, but it really wasn’t in the chest. It was actually in the back. Or something that seemed to be in the back was actually in the stomach. You’re going to discover things like that only if you play with your perceptions. Turn them around. Turn them inside out, upside … 
  12. Happiness is a Skill
    When I went back to Thailand to ordain, a friend contacted a local newspaper, thought it would be a good story. And so a reporter actually came and asked me a question that ever since I’ve been asked many times, “Why do you want to ordain?” At that point I’d already met Ajaan Fuang and spent some time with him and decided … 
  13. Preparing to Meditate
     … Mindfulness becomes directed thought. Alertness becomes evaluation as you begin to evaluate cause and effect there in the breath. When there are comfortable breath sensations, you spread them out so that you’re alert to the whole body, mindful of the whole body. That’s when simple mindfulness practice turns into concentration practice as you develop this awareness of the whole body breathing in … 
  14. Mindfulness Defined
     … As Ajaan Lee notes, when mindfulness—the ability to keep something in mind—grows stronger, it becomes the jhana factor called vitakka or directed thought, where you really keep your thoughts focussed on one thing consistently. As for alertness, it provides the foundation for another jhana factor: vicara , or evaluation. You notice what’s going on with the breath: Is the breath comfortable? You … 
  15. The Pursuit of Excellence
     … Where do they land?” The monks reply, “They land on the western wall.” “What if there’s no western wall?” “They land on the ground.” “What if there’s no ground?” Back in those days, they thought that the earth was supported by water, so the monks reply, “It lands on water.” “What if there’s no water?” “Then it doesn’t land.” The … 
  16. Tools of Perception
     … The perception of form is gone, and what you’re left with is feeling, perception, thought fabrication, and consciousness. But even these aggregates are not the ultimate terms. In the commentaries they talk about this being the ultimate description of reality: the five aggregates. But the Buddha advises us to go on to perceive whatever arises and passes away simply as stress arising and … 
  17. Poison Your Fantasies
     … That’s why in the first jhana, there’s directed thought and evaluation. You’re talking to yourself about how well you’re staying with the object: adjusting the mind, adjusting the object so that they fit together well. You hover around both the mind and the object. When you feel that the object is good enough, you can just be with the object … 
  18. The Art of Right Speech
     … So when you anticipate a problem, give it some thought: What would be the most effective thing to say? If you try it out and it doesn’t work, well, go back to the drawing board. This is the Buddha’s basic teaching to Rahula. You make a mistake, well, you think it through: What could have been done differently? Learn to take your … 
  19. Stepping Out of the Waves
     … You don’t have to complete the thought. Just notice, “There it is,” and stop it. It’s as if you drop it, as when you’re holding a dish and you drop the dish. A part of you will be a little afraid that the dish will break, then you have to realize that these moods, even though they hit the floor, they … 
  20. Bare vs. Appropriate Attention
     … Back in the beginning of the 20th century, there were people in Asia who thought that you could reduce meditation to simply that: bare attention, simply observing things arising and passing away. The purity of that bare attention, they said, would guarantee purity of insight. Then they felt they had a method that could be exported to other countries as well. But what we … 
  21. To Discern Suffering
     … saying, “This is pleasure, this is pain, this pleasure I can handle, this pleasure I can’t handle.” Thought-fabrications add even more complex layers of likes and dislikes and analysis on top of things. And then there’s consciousness, your awareness of these things. We hold on to these things. This is how we suffer. The word for clinging in Pali means basically … 
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