Search results for: "Thought"

  1. Page 113
  2. In Accordance with the Dhamma
     … We cling to form, we cling to feelings, perceptions, thought fabrications, consciousness, which means we feed on them, hoping to get some satisfaction out of them. As the Buddha points out, that’s why we’re suffering. So he wants us to gain a sense of having had enough of this kind of feeding. It’s through having had enough that we gain release … 
  3. Determined on Goodwill
     … We open our minds to the possibility that there may be opportunities in our lives that we hadn’t thought of before, or hadn’t noticed before, for giving ourselves space to practice that, at the same time, are being a help to others. Once you’ve made up your mind in that direction, you have to be true to it. That’s the … 
  4. Right Exertion at Play
     … You direct your thoughts to a particular topic and then you make comments on it, you question it. You develop your understanding around it. You also get more sensitive to mental fabrications—the feelings that arise with the breath—and what you can do with them. You realize that feelings are fabrications. You’re not just stuck with a pleasant feeling or an unpleasant … 
  5. In Control
     … In other words, the breath becomes your path to the end of suffering, the body becomes part of your path to the end of suffering, your thoughts all become devoted to the end of suffering. You can make that choice and you don’t want anybody else to come and unmake it. You don’t want any random emotions or old habits to come … 
  6. Customs of the Noble Ones
    We spread thoughts of goodwill to put our minds in the right frame to practice: “May I be happy; may all beings be happy.” This means we want a happiness that doesn’t cause harm to anyone, and we want them to find a happiness that doesn’t cause harm to anybody else either. Where are you going to find that happiness? You’ve … 
  7. People Who Think Too Much
     … It’s the same world over and over again, just that they had to go back and look more carefully at their basic assumptions, the things they thought they understood. They had to go back and look again, and look again, and look again. Sometimes we’re too clever for our own good. As Ajaan Lee says, there are times when you have to … 
  8. Even Common Animals Can Be Trained
     … She thought, “Even elephants, even common animals, can be trained. Why not me?” That’s a good image to keep in mind.
  9. When Your Will Is Ill
     … During my first year in particular, when I was meditating on the top of the hill there at Wat Dhammasathit, the thoughts that would destroy my concentration more than anything else came from thinking back on some injustice, where somebody had done something wrong or was doing something wrong and getting away with it. I could get worked up about that for hours at … 
  10. Obstacles to Full-body Awareness
     … There’s one perception that’s very common, which is that the parts that are tense or tight or painful tend to be the parts that you use a lot to bring the breath in because of your subconscious thoughts about what needs to be tightened up for the breath to come in, or about where it gets pulled in. See if you can … 
  11. Your Game Leg
     … So as you look at your practice, what is your game leg? In other words, what are the unskillful thoughts, attitudes, the excuses that you give to yourself for not putting more effort into the practice? A lot of the practice is simply learning how to drop the excuses and just do it. I think it was Ajaan Singthong who once said that there … 
  12. Surveying the World
     … So he directed his thoughts to the passing away and the re-arising of beings throughout the cosmos, and he saw that their re-arising was based on their actions, and their actions were based on their views. The actions, of course, were intentions. So, in the third watch of his night, he looked at his intentions, to see whether there was an intention … 
  13. Comfortable With the Truth
     … The compulsion to go after a particular idea or a particular thought—or particular sight, smell, taste, tactile sensation, whatever—gets a lot weaker when you have a good comfortable place to stay. It’s like the difference of having a good home to stay in as opposed to a really harsh and punishing home or a narrow, miserable home. The kids from the … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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