Search results for: "Thought"

  1. Page 112
  2. Inner Worlds
     … I’ve been to hospitals where people are dying and they have the TV on in the background, and I’ve always thought: “This is horrible: Here you are, getting ready to die, you’ve got distractions all around already, and you add more on top of it.” But then I realized that for most people, they have no skills. They haven’t been … 
  3. Practice at Home
     … So dealing with whatever unskillful thoughts were coming up in my mind, just learning how to put them out of my mind and do what needed to be done: All these things were really good lessons in the Dhamma. You don’t get them when you’re just sitting with your eyes closed on a retreat, or think that your Dhamma practice at home … 
  4. Songkran Blessing
     … And even if your mind begins to go a little bit, you can develop thoughts of goodwill, you can try to focus your mind as much as you can. You can do a lot of good. Years back, Ajaan Maha Bua had a student, a woman who had cancer, and before she died she wanted to come and spend some time at the monastery … 
  5. The Courage to Set Yourself Free
     … Ajaan Lee’s first thought when he sees the elephant is, “In just a few seconds, he could be on me.” Before he knows it, he’s starting to climb the tree. But just as he grabs hold of the tree, a voice inside him says, “You’re afraid to die. Those who are afraid to die will die many deaths.” So he gets … 
  6. Factors for Awakening
     … Here the Buddha says it can be either concentration with directed thought and evaluation or without. You’re beginning to go through the stages of jhana until finally you arrive at the third and the fourth. It’s at the fourth where equanimity becomes pure. That’s the seventh factor for awakening. So this is how you get from beginning mindfulness practice up to … 
  7. A Refuge Bigger than the World
     … He and a group of people had gone up to Yellowstone, and when they came back I asked him what he thought of Yellowstone. He said, “Well, there’s nothing there that lies outside of the principle of anicca, inconstancy.” Again the Dhamma is bigger than the world, more solid than the world. This is good to keep in mind as we look at … 
  8. The Perception of Space
     … Then, she said, she thought of space—the space around the body; the space permeating through the body. So she focused totally on the perception of space and let go of every other perception concerning the body. She stayed there for quite a while. Then she realized that she hadn’t died. She came back to the body and everything had returned to normal … 
  9. Life’s First Question
     … it’s the same skill that’s applied to the question of virtue, in your thoughts and your words and your deeds. Now it’s applied on a subtler level, but it’s all in the same basic terms: action and result; skillful and unskillful; actions leading to suffering or stress, no matter how subtle, or actions leading away from suffering and stress. So … 
  10. Exploring Contentment
     … He thought that there was nothing higher than where he was and was extremely proud of his attainment. So the Buddha visited his Brahma world. He had to show him that there was somebody who knew more than he did—more than Baka Brahma did—because it’s so easy when you gain an attainment either in terms of concentration or in terms of … 
  11. Protecting Your Space
     … What conversations are going on in the mind? Look for some physical seclusion, along with what the Buddha calls mental seclusion—dropping your thoughts of the future, dropping your thoughts of the past, and just staying right here, with a minimum amount of internal chatter, just enough to get the mind to settle down. The sense of seclusion is also important in the way … 
  12. Four Determinations
     … Get the mind really quiet to see, “Okay, where is there still a disturbance? What am I contributing to that?” Sometimes it’s in the factors that got you concentrated to begin with, as with directed thought and evaluation. You have to think your way to get the mind to settle down with the breath: You adjust the breath to fit with the mind … 
  13. Centered on Concentration
     … As you look at all the other things you could be focused on, you realize that they don’t offer the happiness that you once thought they did. This is why the Buddha calls it awakening. We dream about things, looking for happiness here and there, and when we try to find it there, as he said, the fires of the mind scorch wherever … 
  14. Noble Wealth
     … The Buddha talks about gaining huge amounts of merit, immeasurable amounts of merit, through having the right attitude toward giving, virtue, and developing thoughts of goodwill for all beings. This is all to the good because it gives us a sense that even though things of the world outside may be washed away—as we say in the chant: “The world is swept away … 
  15. Getting into the Body
     … Sometimes you identify with the body, then oops, you’re identifying with a feeling, or a thought. It moves around so quickly you can’t see it. All you see is the movement. You can’t really pin it down. But if you can develop this sense of really inhabiting the body all the time, continually, no matter what, then you can look at … 
  16. Conceit
     … On the one hand, it’s important to realize that this path you’re on is a hard path to follow, so you can’t go on the complacent assumption that, “This is going to be easy for me.” On the other hand, you don’t want to discourage yourself with the thought, “It’s going to be impossible for me.” The problem isn … 
  17. On Idle Chatter
     … If you’re used to just talking all day, then when the time comes to sit and meditate, the mind says, “Hey, I’ve been churning out thoughts all day. Why stop now?” It’s in the habit of thinking mindlessly. If you don’t look carefully at your intentions, you miss one of the main aspects of social life as a Dhamma practitioner … 
  18. A Radiant Practice
     … There are those who appreciate that fact, and they’re happy for it, for the fact that you’ve thought of them. That’s their merit that they pick up from this. So even though we may be practicing for the sake of getting out of samsara, we still want to leave some good things behind. That picture of the selfish Theravādin who’s … 
  19. Always Observe Your Mind
     … the thought that giving is good. Or, “These people are poor and hungry, I have more than enough, it’s not right that I don’t share with them.” The motivations get higher and higher, and the reward in the next lifetime gets higher and higher as well. The focus is more and more on the state of the mind: “Giving is good.” “The … 
  20. Truths Noble in the Heart
     … How many times in the course of the day have you done something, or said something, or thought something? You can’t count all the actions, and that’s just in one day. And it spreads out over lifetimes. You begin to realize that you’ve got a lot of things going on here. Some of the actions will give results quickly; others will … 
  21. Heirs to Our Actions
     … This thought gives you the incentive to practice the path to get out. Otherwise, life gets confining. Try as you may, no matter how good it gets—you could become king, you could become one of those universal emperors who reigns over whole continents—but even for them it ends. And then where do they go? Back into the cycle. And when you have … 
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