Search results for: "Thought"

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  2. Complacency
     … Like that time the fire was coming over the horizon, the thought that went through my mind was that mother nature wants to kill us. Here’s a fire coming our way, and this body is put together in such a way that it will die if it doesn’t escape. The forces of nature are going to kill it. Do you have your … 
  3. Discipline Is a Choice
     … The basic formula tells you, on the one hand, to follow the body in and of itself, and on the other hand, to subdue thoughts of greed and distress related to the world. You’re choosing to follow one part of your experience and to subdue another part. And you try to do that consistently. Normally, we jump back and forth, focusing on our … 
  4. Enlarged Awareness
     … Some of your thoughts may still feel open and naked when you have this enlarged awareness. In other words, when you’re dealing with other people in your ordinary ways of trying to figure them out in the course of a conversation, those might have a tendency to take over. So you’ve got to remind yourself, no, you’re in a much better … 
  5. Lavish Goodwill
     … May all beings understand the causes for true happiness, and be willing and able to act on them.” It should be a thought that you can think over and over again. But often we’re challenged by other people’s unskillful behavior, and it becomes hard. Or, sometimes we have difficulty thinking goodwill for ourselves: looking at ourselves, seeing our drawbacks, and thinking that … 
  6. Nostalgia for Suffering
     … A mind thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool to be a lizard… wouldn’t it be cool to be a frog… wouldn’t it be cool to fly up and down and back and forth, you’d become a hummingbird.” And the mind is more variegated than all those animals out there, so there’s no way that the Buddha’s going to detail … 
  7. Going Out of Your Way
     … As the Buddha said, when you’re avoiding unskillful thoughts, that can mean either that the mind is in concentration, or simply that it’s thinking things that are skillful: not based on sensuality, not based on ill will, not based on harmfulness. But that’s not necessarily special. What makes it special is when you decide you’re going to focus in on … 
  8. Realities Right Here
     … When you get into a feeling or a thought world, you don’t see them in those terms. But when you can step back a little bit and can observe your mind, you begin to realize that’s actually what’s going on. So try to be fully sensitive here, right here, right now. Put aside the notions you’ve learned from outside of … 
  9. Switch the Context
     … That thought helps to act as a solvent to dissolve a lot of the narratives. Your sense of the world in which you exist: That’s also an act of becoming. We were talking the other day about how dependent co-arising doesn’t happen inside you or inside the world. You and the world happen inside the pattern of dependent co-arising, which … 
  10. Endurance & Contentment
     … Technically, it’s defined as directed thought and evaluation, but it basically comes down to the chatter going on in the mind. When you invest that chatter with your identity, it makes it hard to step back from it. So instead, you can look at it as the committee of the mind, or the corporation of the mind. Or try Ajaan Lee’s image … 
  11. A Tradition of Ingenuity
     … There’s a whole body of thought around the idea that our thinking, even though we may use abstract terms, is never really abstract. There are hidden metaphors behind the way our language shapes things, even in the abstractions. You want to be sensitive about what metaphors you’re applying unconsciously to your practice. Are you applying the right metaphors? This is why the … 
  12. Persuasion
     … The more that you can see that you are trapped by your unskillful thoughts and all you have to do is just drop them and you’re free, the better. If you have a losing streak, you can break it with one win. That’s all it takes. But the mind’s mathematics will say, “Well, you have to make up for all those … 
  13. Pushing the Three Characteristics
     … One of Ajaan Fuang’s students once complained, “Why is it that yesterday my meditation was so good that I thought it would never change to anything bad, and today it’s as if I’ve never meditated ever before?” He told her, “The mind is like the body: It wears different sets of clothes from one day to the next. And just watch … 
  14. Around in Circles
     … Helping your sense of the body in the present moment is important too, but ultimately you’ve learned a lot more about what it means to be attentive, what role of perception plays, what role your thought constructs play, the questions you ask. All of these things you learn just by going over the same old territory over and over and over again. After … 
  15. A Sense of Humor
     … He thought, “Wellll, maybe I won’t meditate here today or stay here tonight.” So he closed the door and went back down to the monastery. That night, as he was meditating in the monastery, he had a vision. Some devas came and told him, “That wasn’t a real snake. We were just testing you.” That was it. A story of a test … 
  16. Happiness – Yours & Others’
     … Let that thought encourage you in your own pursuit of happiness.
  17. Free Sources of Energy
     … They find that they thought they were going to be run into the ground but suddenly they find some energy as things pick up and they gain momentum. So where is your second wind as a meditator? Don’t rule out the possibility that it’s there. And this applies to the practice all throughout the day: the things we have to do, the … 
  18. The Beginnings of Wisdom
     … If we follow his example and search for happiness in a way that’s responsible and well thought through, we’ll develop those qualities within ourselves. And that augments our happiness. So it’s not just a matter of switching partners whenever a certain pleasure falls away. It’s building qualities within yourself that you can rely on in the long term. The Buddha … 
  19. May You Forever Be Well
     … So it’s important that you be able to express your goodwill not only with thoughts of goodwill or with blessings, but also through virtue. You resolve that you don’t want to harm anybody, and you follow the Buddha’s guidelines on the kinds of action you want to avoid regardless of what the situation is. But virtue’s not just a matter … 
  20. Working Ourselves Free
     … A lot of insight is little things you see in the mind that you catch out of the corner of your mental eye as the mind is trying to play tricks on itself, or certain thoughts try to play tricks on the mind, to distract you. Once you’re distracted, they can sneak in, pull their sack over your head, stuff you in the … 
  21. Mental Balance
     … But your actions, your words, your thoughts: These things you are responsible for, always. So if you take good care of these, it’s like the acrobat maintaining his balance. You don’t throw anybody else off balance and you yourself are safe. So value this practice. The more meticulous you are in looking after your own mind, that better the results are going … 
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