Search results for: "Thought"
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- Preparing to Die Well… As you see the mind flickering off to yet another thought—which develops into a little thought world, a little becoming—you learn how to catch it and stop the process more and more quickly. Then you realize that this skill is not just a matter of mindfulness and alertness but also of your sense of values: You have to undo the desire to …
- Relationships… As for any other thoughts that may come by, just let them go past. You don’t have to get involved with them. You don’t have to straighten them out. You don’t have to remember them no matter how wonderful or fantastic or useful they may seem. At the moment, they’re of no use. Just let them go. Let them go …
- Horror Stories… Don’t expect everything to be explained to you.” I thought about that. How does a thief think? Suppose you were a thief and you wanted to rob somebody’s house. Would you go to the front step and knock on the door and say, “Excuse me, when are you going to be away from home, and, by the way, where do you keep …
- Suffering Is a Feeding Addiction… You’ve got a whole hour free, you could think about whatever.” How do you protect the mind? If you’ve had some experience with meditating, you can remember things you’ve done in the past that helped you to shed those thoughts. If you’ve read something about meditation, bring your memory of what you’ve read to bear on what you’re …
- Mastery… As long as you find that you can control things like form, feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, and consciousness—the five aggregates—you do exert control over them. You do develop a sense of self around them on the path: the self as its own mainstay, the self as its governing principle. But you try to develop it, not in the sense of trying to …
- Quality… Use this as your razor to shave off all the extraneous thoughts that can get in the way. All too often, when you sit and meditate, all your anticipations that you want things to be like this, you want things to be like that, how much longer you’re going to be able to take this meditation: All these things are unknowable. So shave …
- Getting Yourself… The kids had never thought of those things, but once the strategy was taught, they could master it. They could wait long periods of time. So the principle of delayed gratification can be taught. And once you start suggesting to kids like that that they can think in different ways, they begin to observe their own minds. This is why the Buddha taught after …
- Clinging-Aggregates in Context… We cling to fabrications, the way the mind puts thoughts together intentionally, and we cling to consciousness. And in clinging to these things, we make ourselves into a being. Why do we do that? Because of craving. That’s the second noble truth, the cause of suffering. We crave sensuality. We fantasize about pleasures that we’d like to get, and to get those …
- Remembering Ajaan Fuang… How about when he was alive, anything amazing then?” I said, “What I thought was amazing was that even though he was Thai and I was a Westerner, during my time with him I never had the feeling that that was a barrier between us. The communication was heart to heart. Even though I had to learn Thai ways of doing things, still I …
- In Alignment… Regardless of what you thought were normal ways of practicing, normal ways of living, you come to see this state as true normalcy. This is balance. Or again, with Ajaan Lee: He said, “Look at the Buddha image in front of you. He’s not disturbed by anything. People bring flowers, he’s not disturbed; if people created a mess here in the hall …
- The Economy of Goodness… When the mind is here with a sense of well-being, then when any thoughts come up that would lead to anything unskillful, you see them clearly as they arise. And you see them for what they are: something you don’t want to get involved in because you’re feeding the mind well. It’s when we’re hungry for pleasures that we …
- Using Perceptions… That pulled all of her thoughts into that line so that she could be anchored in the body and have a sense of feeling solidly here. As she said, if she imagined only one spot, it was hard not to think around that spot. It was as if she had one hand full, but the other hand was free to grasp whatever came by …
- Determined on Awakening… What will the long-term consequences be? This is so different from what you ordinarily hear, which is that Buddhism is all about being fully in the present moment. “No thought of the past, no thought of the future. It’s being fully aware right here, right now.” But for the Buddha, discernment is a matter of looking at the long-term. Discernment begins …
- Adjusting the Flame… Thoughts will come up that you may like, but you say, “These are not skillful thoughts, so I’ve got to learn how to get rid of them.” And again, you have to make yourself want to get rid of things that in the past you may have liked. So there’s a certain amount of psyching yourself up to do this. Then, based …
- An End to Suffering… What pleasure does the mind get simply out of thinking thoughts of lust? What does it get out of thoughts of anger? Any sense of self-righteousness there may be in the anger or whatever: Notice that. Watch for it. And then look for the downside of all these things. When the mind feeds on lust, exactly what is it feeding on? What does …
- Toxic Environments… His first thought was to climb a tree. But as he started climbing, at the first step, something said inside him, “If you’re afraid to die, you’re going to keep on dying.” So he sat back down and radiated as much goodwill as he could to the elephant—and the elephant stopped. It seemed taken aback, and then very calmly walked away …
- Loss… The people you know and love pass away; your own body begins to deteriorate; institutions that you thought were solid, reliable, turn out to be corrupt—very unstable. There’s a lot of reason for grief. So it’s good to reflect on what the Buddha taught about grief. There was the time when King Pasenadi came to speak with the Buddha, and it …
- A Poker Mind… They may not fit quite together at first, which is why we have to do a lot of directed thought and evaluation: figuring out what’s wrong with the breath, what’s wrong with the mind. And when the breath does get comfortable, the next question is what you can do to maintain that sense of ease and then let it seep through the …
- A Path of Aggregates… If the mind is wandering away, you remind yourself, “Hey, come back!” That’s directed thought. Keep the mind coming back, coming back, coming back. While you’re here, evaluate how the breath feels. Is this a breath that’s easy on the body? Is it easy on the mind? As you adjust things, you’re engaged in the process of fabrication. You’re …
- Asalha Puja… First he thought of his two teachers who had taught him before he had gone off on his path of austerities. He realized that they had passed away and gone into the formless realms, where they couldn’t be contacted. So that was their loss. Then he thought of the five brethren who had attended to him during his austerities and had left him …
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