Search results for: "Thought"
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- Humility & Confidence… We want happiness and yet so many of our actions, so many of our thoughts, our words and deeds create suffering. Stress. Dis-ease. Why is that? What is it about our minds that we don’t know? That should be the most interesting question you can ask yourself. And here you’ve got the opportunity to learn, to explore, to figure out the …
- Beyond Likes & Dislikes… It’s only when we begin to realize that the more we keep creating these trains of thought that we love to follow backwards and forwards, the more we create suffering for ourselves. That’s when we begin to wonder: Maybe there’s a way out; maybe there’s something better. The Buddha has a teaching on what’s called transcendent dependent co-arising …
- The Safety of Jhana… You’ve got your old karma and then you’ve got consciousness, focused in on whatever old karma presents in terms of form, feeling, perceptions, thought fabrications, or consciousness itself. Instead of delighting in the idea of making something new out of these things, you can simply see them as they arise and pass away. That’s how you go beyond the dichotomy between …
- Mindfulness of Death… So if the breath is hard to focus on, try to think thoughts of goodwill as best you can. The fact that these tendencies, these habits, are right next to the breath makes them very present. Then there’s verbal fabrication. The Buddha doesn’t mention verbal fabrication in his sixteen steps, but the examples he gives of telling yourself to breathe in and …
- Breath Energies… Sometimes you identify with your thoughts, sometimes with the way you label things. There are lots of different selves that you keep making over time. When you start seeing them as processes, and can see that they’re not always necessary—and often are troublemakers—you learn to pare down the different ways that you create a sense of self. You learn to use …
- Protecting the Mind from Itself… When you keep looking at your thoughts, your words, and your deeds in this way, then you become more and more observant about what’s skillful and what’s not. You can fill in the blank spaces that are not covered by the Buddha’s broad principles. And you get very attentive to your intentions—because as the Buddha said, that’s where the …
- Mange in the Mind… Just that thought should make you want to explore. You could spend your life going to the other side of the mountain, but the question is, does the other side of the mountain cause you suffering? Is the end of suffering going to be found on the other side of the mountain? Well, no, you’re just the bear that goes over the mountain …
- True to the Breath… So when a thought arises in the mind, you don’t have to complete it. You don’t have to explore it. You can see that there’s a little stirring in the mind, but leave it just on the level of stirring. You stay with the breath. Try to make the breath as comfortable as possible. This is one of the most important …
- Looking for Essence in the Wilderness… I found, when I went down to the meadow and I only had a few minutes to sit there, that the first thought that came to my mind was, “I hope I can do this again.” Of course, what that means is that the experience itself is not satisfying. It keeps changing, changing, changing. If it’s something you like, you hope it comes …
- Abandoning Effluents (1)… That’s how you work away at your ignorance—and also by learning how not to be concerned about: “Who am I? What am I? Where am I going?” That’s how you chip away at thoughts of becoming. So even though you may not be able to chip all the way through, at least you’re chipping in the right direction as you …
- Strengthening Discernment… What you’re doing is that you direct your thoughts to the breath, which is another kind of verbal fabrication. Then you hold in mind certain perceptions of the breath, and try to develop a perception that allows the mind to settle down with a sense of ease and refreshment filling the body. The feelings of ease and refreshment count as mental fabrication. The …
- Maintenance Work… Everything is still because directed thought and evaluation have done their work. Rapture and pleasure have done their work. They’ve given you a sense of fullness; they’ve given you a sense of ease. Now you can just be very contentedly right here in the present moment, very still, using a minimum amount of effort. Everything in the mind seems really right. A …
- Respect for Concentration… Then he thought of another alternative. At one point in his childhood, he had spontaneously entered the first jhana. And now he asked himself, “Could this be the path?” Something inside of him said, “Yes.” “So why am I afraid of that pleasure? There’s nothing unskillful about it. There’s nothing blameworthy about it.” So he practiced to see if that was right …
- Pleasure on the Middle Way… But if you got this alternative feeding spot, then the thought of your other sources of food disappearing doesn’t dig so sharply into the heart. You can view these impermanent relations of the world with a lot more equanimity. And a lot more discernment. And a lot less desperation. So the pleasure of concentration is an important part of the path. You can …
- A Sense of Adventure… You read the description of directed thought and evaluation, rapture and all, and the question is: What do those terms correspond to in your actual experience? You may have some ideas, but they may be wrong. Is that going to stop you from practicing? It shouldn’t. It should simply alert you to the fact that you’re going to be dealing in uncertainties …
- The Logic of Not-self… form, feeling, perceptions, thought constructs, and consciousness, all of which are impermanent. Then there’s the conclusion, “Therefore, you don’t have a self.” It’s worth noting that the Buddha himself never used this argument. It started later in the commentaries. After all, he noted that many different versions of self were taught in his time, and not all of them were permanent …
- The Door of the Cage… Those are the areas where he goes into a lot of detail about what kinds of actions are skillful in terms of your thoughts, your words, your deeds, how you engage with other people as you go through the day, how you engage with your mind as you sit down to meditate. There’s a lot there. His view of the world is a …
- Right Livelihood… If you’re in the midst of a battle and are consumed by the thought of trying to kill other people, either from greed, anger or delusion, that intention is an unskillful intention. If you die with the state of mind, you go to hell. Or if you have the wrong view that this is going to take you to heaven, you still go …
- Free to Choose… This thought can give rise to a sense of gratitude but it also gives rise to a sense of samvega. When the Buddha talks about how many mothers you’ve had, he said that it’s hard to find someone who hasn’t been your mother at some point, it’s hard to find someone who hasn’t been your father, someone who hasn …
- What’s Important… When I first read that, I thought he was talking about one of the senior monks in Bangkok. Later, though, I found out from one of his students that that was not the case at all. It was a monk who was not well-known, a member of the forest tradition who was assumed to have become an arahant. This makes you stop and …
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