Search results for: "Thought"
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- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
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