Search results for: "Thought"

  1. Page 119
  2. Trust in Heedfulness
     … Rather, it’s learning how to sort out inside you which perceptions and which thought constructs are actually more trustworthy than others. And you can test them, if you get really clear on what you’re doing and what the results of your actions are—in other words, if you’re really alert. Those instructions that the Buddha gave to Rahula—even though he … 
  3. Where Your Mind Gravitates
     … Make sure it stays there for a while, and when it feels solid enough again, then you can entertain some of your other thoughts again. It’s in this way that you get more and more sensitive to the mind in a way that’s really useful, because building on the step of being sensitive to the mind, the Buddha says then you gladden … 
  4. Lift Up Your Mind
     … But the word accompanied by is not there in the Pali formula related to *pleasure and rapture. *Instead, they’re said to be accompanied by directed thought and evaluation. The pleasure and the rapture are the things that you really get absorbed in. You have to hold on to the breath as your main object, but the absorption comes with the sense of rapture … 
  5. The Right Place to Look
     … That’s a scary thought. The mind is doing things, and you hardly even know what you’re doing, but you’re still going to have to pay for it down the line if it’s done unskillfully. So you want to become really sensitive to what you’re doing right now, starting with the subtleties of the breath or the subtleties of whatever … 
  6. Body as Path
     … Directed thought and evaluation are the fabrications. And of course there’s consciousness. They’re all here together. You’re taking all the aggregates and you’re using to make them a path. Once you’ve done it, then you try to maintain it. Keep the path going inside. Think of your body as a path. How the mind relates to the body is … 
  7. The World of Conviction
     … There’s that story of how, after he gained awakening, he thought about how subtle it was—the realization he’d come to—and he wondered if it would be a waste of time to try to teach it to anyone else. Sahampati Brahma read what was going on in the Buddha’s mind and was alarmed. Here the Buddha had gone to all … 
  8. Count Yourself Lucky
     … Those thoughts, those images of yourself, are activities. You can ask yourself, “Is that a good activity to follow through with?” Think of it as a tune: Is it good tune to sing along with? Or are there other tunes in the present moment you can sing along with? You’ve got your choice. Because who-you-are, what you identify with, is not … 
  9. Commit & Reflect
     … Why is the mind churning out these unskillful thoughts? What’s the allure? You really don’t know the allure unless you’ve thwarted it—by saying “No” and seeing how the mind responds. See who responds in there. So it’s a matter of watching yourself in action—watching yourself in action trying to do something really well. That’s how you gain … 
  10. The Strength of Conviction
     … Then you let go of directed thought and evaluation, and you go to the second jhana. It sounds like a single stairway through the mind. But the mind is more like a jungle. Or you can compare it to the chaparral out there with all those coyote paths. Some of the coyote paths go nowhere. Some of the coyote paths, only coyotes can follow … 
  11. Nobody’s Servant
     … There are some schools of thought that say you’ve got to put everybody else’s happiness ahead of yours. But the Buddha said No, when you do that, how do you know what happiness is? How can you give guidance to other people in happiness? If you can find it for yourself, then you can give guidance. So this is not a selfish … 
  12. Events as Events
     … Building on the present moment, we can also create thoughts of past and future. But right now, we’re trying to keep away from getting involved in past and future. You want to just see what’s happening right here, right now, simply as events. If you add your sense of “you” to it all, then it becomes a state of becoming. For the … 
  13. The Light of the World
     … Finding well-being with thoughts of universal goodwill causes no harm at all. This is very different from the happiness defined by the world in terms of gain, status, praise, physical pleasures. Happiness of that sort usually means that when somebody gains, somebody else has to lose. It’s because of the pursuit of that kind of happiness that there’s so much trouble … 
  14. Delight in the Path
     … He instructs us first in the steps of how the mind creates a thought-world and then goes into it, but he encourages us to learn how to step back and watch these things and learn how to bring them under our control. There’s a clarity that comes with that, and a fascination with understanding, “Oh, this is how the mind has been … 
  15. Magha Puja: Showing Respect with the Practice
     … And as one of the Buddha’s closest disciples recommended, you can tell yourself, “If they can do it, so can I.” Think that thought as a way of strengthening your practice. When you have doubts about whether you can do this or not, remind yourself of what you need. Ajaan Mun talked about this many times. What do you need to practice? You … 
  16. Defilements as Not-self
     … Where did it come from? He saw people behaving in very self-indulgent ways and he thought that they had no feelings of guilt about it, but I had to explain to him that guilt runs very deep. So you really do have to teach yourself how to have goodwill for yourself. I talked one time to a person who was working in a … 
  17. Focus on the Precepts
     … This thought can be conducive to concentration. And as I said, this training fosters mindfulness, alertness, ardency, qualities you need for mindfulness practice. It focuses your mind on your intentions, which is where concentration practice comes in. And it keeps you focused on your actions, so it helps you understand right view. After all, right view focuses on suffering and its causes. And what … 
  18. The Positive Side of Heedfulness
     … And then I began to realize that the timing that I thought was bad timing was simply getting in the way of my desires for what I wanted to do. So I had to figure out what was making me miserable around that and learn how to drop it. When you learn to do this, you can live with a lot of situations that … 
  19. The Path is Fabricated
     … being mindful, alert, ardent, and trying to stay with one object—directing our thoughts to the object; evaluating it, as we’re doing with the breath right now. We keep reminding ourselves to stay with the breath. That’s mindfulness. We’re holding the perception of breath in mind. And then we evaluate the breath, to see how comfortable it is, how it feels … 
  20. A Fool for Sensuality
     … After the class, he asked them, “What was it like? What were their impressions of talking to a monk?” One of the women in the class, who was a cheerleader, said, “Well, I’d thought monks were subhuman, that they just didn’t have the intelligence to enjoy sensuality.” There’s a certain pride that goes with the ability to generate sensual images. It … 
  21. Intro to Breath Meditation
     … Yet the real suffering that goes deep into the heart is our own lack of skill in dealing with the present moment, dealing with the thoughts in our minds, dealing with our opportunities to act and speak and think. So we’ve got to learn to redirect our gaze, bring it in here, and watch here continually. Then keep asking yourself, “Is there any … 
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