Search results for: "Thought"

  1. Page 117
  2. Learn from Your Mistakes
     … He never thought that maybe some god would come down and save him, or that his own innate goodness would carry him through. And that meant that when he noticed he was not getting where he wanted to go, he had to look back on his own actions: What could he change? What was he doing wrong? And the resolve not to repeat the … 
  3. Clinging
     … That’s why the Buddha has you analyze your sense of self into those different aggregates—form, feeling, perceptions, thought constructs, consciousness—because the aggregates, too, are primarily actions. Even form, the form of your body, is something you’re doing. You’re constantly telling yourself, “Where is the body right now?” Just sitting here still, there’s an activity that goes around maintaining … 
  4. Against the Grain
     … He tells the Buddha basically that there were people in the past who thought they were awakened but they really weren’t and they fell from that attainment. The Buddha’s not fazed. So then Mara says, “Well in that case, don’t teach. Those who were awakened in the past, when they taught others, were reborn in a coarse body, while those who … 
  5. Heightening the Mind
     … All thoughts of past and future we put aside. We just bring the mind to the breath so the mind doesn’t have to spin around anymore. It simply stays with the breath coming in, going out, and gains at least some measure of freedom. From this heightened perspective we can look at our normal involvement with the world and begin to realize that … 
  6. Peace vs. Clinging
     … What kind of feelings are you feeding on? What kind of perceptions are you feeding on that are shooting arrows into your heart? What kind of thought constructs are you feeding on? What kind of food is this? If you were to take a picture of the mind as its feeding, what kind of posture and look would it have? Some things we can … 
  7. Noble & True
     … As for any thought that comes up, no matter how interesting or enjoyable or alluring, you’ve got to say No right now. It’s in your ability to say No that nobility lies. And also, to stick with the No – that’s where the truth lies. But you’re not just saying No. You’re saying Yes to the experience of the breath … 
  8. Protection from Fools
     … One of the Buddha’s greatest insights is that you have to watch out for the questions that are implicit in a thought. When someone says you’ve got to do things this way, you’ve got to do things that way, exactly what question is that way of acting supposed to resolve? Look at it that way. Then you realize also that you … 
  9. Rightly Directed
     … How is it that a thought forms in the mind? How does it become an emotion as it involves the breath, and then from the breath it gets into the body? How do you take on an identity within that emotion, and how do you get out? If you can see these steps, then you can step out at any time. That way, you … 
  10. Fourth Truth, First Duty
     … But an important part of both right mindfulness and right concentration is that you put aside any thoughts—any aggregates—about anything else that has to do with the world. You begin to see that those are perceptions and fabrications, too. This will sensitize you to other perceptions, other fabrications, and other feelings as you go through the day. After all, the work we … 
  11. Questioning Impermanence
     … When you direct your thought to the breath and you evaluate the breath and the feelings of pleasure and pain that come with the breath, you’ve got all the raw materials for awakening all gathered together. Now, our problem is that we haven’t allowed these things to grow, to develop, to show themselves. We haven’t learned how to ask the right … 
  12. Facing Pain
     … I used to hear the ajaans in Thailand saying that it would disappear into the heart and I thought they were speaking figuratively, but they were actually speaking literally. The pain goes zipping into the area of the heart and then just disappears when you drop that perception. So some of the ways of dealing with pain are defensive in the sense that you … 
  13. An Auspicious Birth
     … It wants this kind of feeling, these kinds of perceptions, thought constructs, this kind of consciousness. We talk of the first kind of birth being auspicious when you’re born into a family that’s got material comforts and you have an opportunity to meet with the Dhamma. But it’s really made auspicious by this other kind of birth, the momentary attachment, because … 
  14. Harmlessness
     … My mind’s a mess.” That’s harmfulness right there, that thought. And as Ajaan Lee once said, “If you can do harm to your own goodness, it’s very easy to let it spread out and you start thinking about doing harm to other people’s goodness, too.” It’s interesting that when the Buddha talks about benefiting others and harming them, it … 
  15. Self-esteem
     … The thought, “I am the thinker,” he says, is the root of all mental proliferation, all the creation of issues that, as soon as they get set into motion, turn around and then it assail us. In other words, we beat ourselves up with this idea of “I’m the one who’s thinking.” There’s this “I am” in there that’s doing … 
  16. Analyzing Suffering
     … We identify with a certain kind of feeling, a certain perception, a certain way of fabricating our thoughts. It’s not necessarily the case that we hold on to one particular thing as our self all the time. If you looked at the pattern of your self-identification, you would see that it constantly shifts around. Sometimes you hold on to a feeling, sometimes … 
  17. A Sense of Yourself
     … Discernment is not just a matter of having learned things or having thought them through. It means actually seeing, when you’re about to do something that’s going to be unskillful: How can you talk yourself out of it? If you feel lazy about doing something that’s skillful, how can you talk yourself into doing it? This is a real test of … 
  18. Right but Wrong
     … So when the truck driver thought that leaving his truck dirty was a sign of wisdom, understanding the inconstancy of all things, it was a misuse of the teaching. You try to be clean. One of the basic attributes of a good practitioner is that you’re clean about the place where you live, the place where you meditate, because that develops good habits … 
  19. Relating to Kamma
     … The Buddha wants you to encourage that habit, encourage that thought. The second point the Buddha is making when he says that helping other people is really worthwhile is that people don’t just end with death. There’s something that goes on, a process that goes on, and if you can help that process, you’re helping something that could have long-term … 
  20. Sensitive to Stress
     … Sensual thoughts fall away in the first jhana. Verbal fabrication falls away in the second jhana. Bodily fabrication falls away in the fourth. Ajaan Lee’s image is of smelting a piece of rock that has different types of ore in it. You get it to one temperature, the tin comes out. You get it to a higher temperature, the copper comes out. A … 
  21. Protection in all Directions
     … Things you haven’t really thought through carefully, things you’re not really sure about what your intention is: Suddenly it all gets let out. You end up saying things that are untrue or divisive or whatever. Particularly in terms of your sense of humor, you have to be very careful. Just because something is funny doesn’t mean it has to be said … 
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