Search results for: "Thought"

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  2. Dispassion & Delight
     … Let those thoughts encourage you. Be passionate about that goal. Then, when you’ve attained that goal, you look at everything else you’ve been holding on to and you realize you don’t need that anymore. You can let that go as well. But in the meantime, be passionate about what you’re doing as you fulfill your duties on the path, because … 
  3. The Bright Tunnel
     … There’s form affected by clinging, feeling affected by clinging, perceptions, thought fabrications, consciousness, all of which are affected by clinging. The clinging is what turns them into suffering. The clinging is what tries to wring a happiness out of them that they simply don’t have to offer. Having to run around clinging to things all the time puts the mind in a … 
  4. Fence Me In
     … Think of the skin as being the limit to as far as you want your thoughts to go. If you’re going to think, think about things that are going on in the body right now. If you’re going to be aware, try to be as totally aware of the body as you can be—either one part of the body or the … 
  5. Samvegic Ironies
     … Wherever your thoughts could go that would pull you away from your object of concentration, you have to realize they’re taking you to a place that’s unreliable. The only way to make yourself reliable is through the practice. That’s what your breath offers. It may not seem like much—just in and out, in and out—but the way you develop … 
  6. Endurance Through Discernment
     … How are you fabricating your thoughts around the pain? What are you telling yourself about the pain? And it’s perfectly legitimate to bring in the breath as well. Through the way you breathe you can create feelings that enable you to sit with the pain for a longer period of time and feel less threatened by it. Of course, there will be things … 
  7. Karma-ism
     … If you try to maintain a whole-body awareness, you find yourself less likely to latch onto thoughts just because they pass through the the larger range of your awareness. Then he says to calm bodily formations, which means calming the activity of the breath, all the physical processes going through the body. How do you calm them without stamping them out? These are … 
  8. Seeing with the Body
     … And just that fact of how it feels in the present moment, without your having to get involved in thoughts of identity, the narratives of your life, your worldviews: Get used to looking at things simply on this level, just the experience in and of itself. This gives you a new foundation. You get in touch with the ability, in the midst of the … 
  9. Put Your Books Back on the Shelf
     … When you find that you can stay with the breath comfortably and things feel good, then you can put aside all the directed thought and evaluation, the chatter about the breath. Just be with the breath. And at this point, you don’t have to make any comments on it at all, aside from just, “Breath, breath, breath.” I remember one time—when I … 
  10. Your Sketches vs. the Buddha’s
     … So look at your thoughts. Look at your ways of thinking. Look at your ways of breathing, where you say, “It’s got to be this way,” because it’s in your map. If it’s causing you to suffer, throw out the map. Try the Buddha’s map. A lot of people have used it and found that it works. Of course, even … 
  11. Cut Through the Narratives
     … It sounds almost comical, because we don’t usually stop with that thought. It continues: “Why is that person saying that? Why do they have no respect for me? Why do they look down on me?”—or whatever the reaction is. Then we go spinning out another narrative. So even something simple like that—“an unpleasant sound is making contact at the ear”: That … 
  12. Dangers Outside & In
     … And you’ll find that as you take a more proactive approach to the pain, it’s not as scary as you thought it was. When you’re running away from it, it seems huge. But when you turn around and really face it, it begins to shrink. You begin to understand the extent to which your perceptions have made the pain a much … 
  13. In the Driver’s Seat
     … He said the actions of the past give the same kind of result, which is something very, very different, because if you have a change of heart—which includes developing unlimited thoughts of goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity; training the mind so it’s not easily overcome by pleasure, not easily overcome by pain; training it in virtue and discernment—then the results … 
  14. The Bowl of Oil
     … It’s good to keep these thoughts in mind because we’re going to be having a busy weekend this weekend, with people coming to make merit for Songkran. It’s not specifically a Buddhist holiday, but it’s become Buddhist here in the West, as people take it as an opportunity to practice generosity. That’s something for which we should have some … 
  15. Pain
     … And then there’s the discernment to not get caught up on the pain, not get caught up in all the painful thoughts going through the mind about what you’re going to have to leave or to give up. Learn how to give those things up with grace so that they don’t pull you around. This way, you can use pain as … 
  16. A Happy Tradition
     … In a lot of cases in the Canon, people from very low positions in society, who thought very little of themselves, found that they, too, could practice; they, too, could gain awakening. There’s one story of a leper who was taught by the Buddha. Soon after he was taught, he gained the Dhamma eye and then he died. He was reborn as a … 
  17. Nurturing Patient Endurance
     … Don’t allow any thoughts to come in that would squeeze it up, tighten it up. After a while, the sense of fullness there will begin to grow, and then you have something good to spread around. As you do this, you have to talk to yourself, one, to remind yourself that you’ve got to be patient and persevering, but that, two, the … 
  18. A Refuge from Aging, Illness, & Death
     … He asks the king, “When you were young, were you strong?” The king said, “Yes, I thought I had the strength of two people.” “How about now?” “Oh, no, now I’m 80 years old, and sometimes I intend to put my foot in one place and it goes someplace else.” So aging is the main inconstancy teaching. The world has no shelter; there … 
  19. The Buddha’s Program
     … So what are the Buddha’s feeding instructions? He has you feed on generosity; feed on virtue; feed on meditation; thoughts of goodwill; and then the meditation of getting the mind to settle down with the breath, to gain discernment. All these instructions are the assumptions that you use to feed well—and feed in a way that takes you to a point where … 
  20. On Your Own Two Feet
     … And the reliable things actually made it worse, “Because this worked out, and that came true, then gee, everything that must come up in the mind in meditation must be true.” That’s what they thought. And they ended up getting further and further away from reality. This is why the Buddha said that heedfulness is the most important quality, pne, to develop skillfulness … 
  21. Dealing with Limitations
     … You can’t change back.” So the animals thought for two days about what tools they might want, and then one by one asked for their boons. The badgers, for instance, asked to turn their skin into shields and their forearms into garden forks. And so on down the line. Some of the embryos wanted wings, some wanted tails. Whatever tools they asked for … 
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