Search results for: "Thought"
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- The Wheel of Dhamma… Then there’s fabrication, which is the mind’s habit of making thoughts, putting things together. There’s an intentional element here. And finally there’s consciousness, which is the basic awareness of things at the six senses. We suffer because we cling to these things. The word clinging, in some passages, is translated as desire and passion, but the word for clinging in …
- Paying Off Your Debts… The way he learned was to look at his actions to see what results they gave, look at his thoughts to see what results they gave. This is the beginning of right view: realizing that whatever suffering there is in life comes from within, from your own actions, particularly from actions of the mind. But you have the freedom to change, the freedom to …
- Lust… directed thought and evaluation. This can either be directing your thoughts to the breath and evaluating the breath, or thinking about the defilement simply as an event in the mind, and analyzing it, noticing what stress it creates in which parts of the body, and how it clouds the mind. In other words, instead of looking at the object of your lust or the …
- Responsible… So, if you want to act in a responsible way, the mind has to be trained, because it has lots of unruly thoughts, unruly cravings. You’ve got to get them under control, and this is something no one else can do for you. You’ve got to do it yourself. Of course, you’re not the only one who benefits as you get …
- If These Walls Could Talk… There’s that line of thought that says, “If you try to get rid of your unskillful mental qualities, that’s engaging in craving for non-becoming. It’s showing aversion.” Well, there are times when you have to be averse to things that are unskillful. If you let unskillful qualities stay, they’re going to take over. And you’re missing out on …
- The Buddha’s Buffet… Its habits, the ways it talks to itself, the ways it perceives the world, the ways it perceives itself, its ideas of what it has to do, its clinging to sensual pleasures or even just to the thought of sensuality: These are the things you’re addicted to. You can see the drawbacks, but there also has to be a part of the mind …
- Nobility Is the Best Policy … Then he thought about what his father had said. So he put the sword back in the scabbard. Then he started thinking, and pulled out the sword again, but then thought of what his father said. This happened three times. The king woke up in a fright, saying he just had a horrible dream in which the prince, the son of that king he …
- Shaping Your Breath, Shaping Your Life… So I just thought, “Suppose the breath came in in the middle of the forehead? Suppose it came down from the top of the head? What muscles would have to be used in order to get the breath in, or to allow it in?” That thought allowed the muscles that had been doing the work to rest, while other muscles picked up the work …
- Observant & Ingenious… I remember, on first seeing that, I thought, “How many years is this going to take?” But by the end of the first day, they had tapped down to about a foot and a half into the rock. After two days, they had holes deep enough to do the blasting. When the blasting was done, one piece of rock came out an almost perfect …
- Twigs & Branches… There are the fabrications of directed thought and evaluation, as you direct your thinking to the breath and then evaluate how it’s going. And then there’s consciousness, which is aware of all these things. Discernment, too, involves aggregates. As you develop discernment, you’re going to be using perceptions—perceptions of things being inconstant, stressful, not-self—as a way of developing …
- Truth Without Air Quotes… No perceptions, no thought constructs, no feelings, no sensory consciousness, no awareness of the body. As the Buddha said, it’s the ultimate happiness. And it is a state of knowing, even though you’re not engaged in the six senses. As he said, this consciousness is not experienced through the six senses. It’s something outside. The image he gives is of a …
- Desires Rightly Directed… As for fabrications, they include the intention to stay here, the intention to get the mind really, really settled in by using your powers of directed thought and evaluation. Even when you drop the directed thought and evaluation, you still have the intention to stay. All that is fabrication. Then, of course, there’s consciousness, which is aware of all these things. You’re …
- Dhamma Medicine… Sometimes you sit here thinking thoughts of goodwill and you notice that your heart isn’t in it. The mind has no problem thinking thoughts of goodwill, but there’s no sense of warmth that goes along with it. Still, at the very least, you’re establishing pathways in the mind. When you learn how to think of the people you like and the …
- When Attacked by Distractions… What are the feeling tones and perceptions you’re holding in mind that make this kind of thinking attractive? The same applies to anger, the same applies to whatever thoughts you find addictive: What perceptions do you hold in mind? The Buddha offers a few alternative perceptions, say, for sensual desire, to help you see through its allure. He says it’s like a …
- The Power of Truth… Then he would say first you develop this concentration with directed thought and evaluation—that’s a jhana practice—then without directed thought and evaluation, with enjoyment, with equanimity. In other words, you take it through all the four jhanas. One of the basic themes of concentration practice is just this: establishing mindfulness. There are lots of passages you can cite, showing that the …
- The Little Things… As for whether you’re going to attain concentration or not attain concentration, don’t even have that thought in your mind. You’re here totally to examine the breath. Be very careful with the breath. Pay close attention to the breath. If you come in with preconceived notions about whether it’s going to work or not tonight, whether it’s going to …
- Things Aren’t as They Should Be… There were those who thought that to be deathless, you had to find an unending source of food. In other words, you’d be deathless in time. What the Buddha discovered, though, is that you can experience the deathless only if you step outside of time—and you can do that. It’s a possibility—a dimension where there’s no need for food …
- The Context for No Context… You see your body as something separate, your feelings as something separate; your perceptions, your thought constructs. Even your sensory consciousness: You have to see that as something separate—separate both in the sense that these are individual events that arise and pass away, and in the sense that they’re separate from your awareness, your sense of you. You want to pare back …
- The Politics of Arising & Passing Away… So one of the things you have to learn is that whenever a thought comes up or whenever any kind of potential for a thought world comes up, you just want to let it burst like a bubble without your getting involved in it and without your trying to make anything more out of it than that. I remember hearing someone once talking about …
- Top Priorities… Here he had attained the state of neither perception or non-perception, a very high refined state of concentration, which many people in those days thought was the ultimate, but it wasn’t good enough for him. He wanted something better. When he lived in the palace, became dissatisfied with the pleasures of the palace, even though everyone said, “This is as good as …
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