Search results for: "Thought"
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- Everything’s Right There… It’s as if you’ve climbed to what you thought was the top of a mountain and then you discover it’s just one little secondary peak and there’s more to do. But the work is good, because it goes deep down inside the mind to figure out: Where is it that you’re causing yourself suffering? What can you do to …
- What Made the Buddha Exclaim… Let that thought give you energy.
- De-domesticated… He blamed it on the ice in a soda he had drunk, but I thought it was something deeper. So that night I went into his room, sat down next to his bed, turned off the light, and just talked to him. He had a sense that, yes, this was the son he had known. I looked different, was living a different life, had …
- Delight in Conviction… Or there are people we have to depend on, but we learn that they’re not as dependable as we thought they were. So if you’re looking for a reliable happiness, you’ve got to look inside. Of course, you look at yourself and you ask yourself, “Am I very dependable?” Well, maybe not yet. But you can work on it. Again, if …
- What Are You Doing?… When the Buddha learned the path to awakening, it wasn’t necessarily the path that he thought he wanted. It revealed things about himself he didn’t necessarily like to see, but when the truth came up that he was implicated in this, that he was responsible for a lot of this, he learned how to respect that fact. He didn’t try to …
- A Meditator’s Environment… I always thought the purpose of asking that question was to get the right answer—so that you could look at your own cravings, your own desires and passions, to see which ones are skillful, which are the cause of suffering, which ones are actually part of the path. Not all desires are bad. You’re not going to learn that if you take …
- The Brightness of Life… I ran into this same line of thought a couple of weeks back when someone was saying that there are people out there who say that if you approach the present moment with particular ideas about what you’re going to find there, then of course, it’s going to determine what you find. Your agenda would shape what you would get out of …
- There’s Work to Be Done… There’ll be a little pattern of tension here, a little pattern of tension there, to correspond to the different thoughts that you want to keep in mind. If you have a lot to keep in mind, there’s going to be a lot of tension. So, as we get the mind to settle down, we’re trying to unwind some of that tension …
- Skill… And this thought, this intention. Take them one by one. Look at whatever situation you’re in and figure what’s the skillful thing to do right now. The sensitivity and the understanding you develop in approaching things in this way: That’s the path. That’s the way to the end of suffering. If you can manage to enjoy the process of developing …
- Change Your Mind… In other words, you put aside any thoughts that would pull you away from the breath. You keep the breath in mind, you’re alert to what the breath is doing, and you’re ardent—in other words you’re trying with your whole heart to do this skillfully. As the Buddha describes in the steps of breath meditation, this involves training yourself to …
- The Truth of Desires… If we don’t set up this intention that we’re going to stay here with a breath, one intention, one thought, one perception flows into another, and another, and another. The boundaries get very vague. Our intentions can hide other intentions very easily. But once you’ve make up your mind you want to stay right here, then anything else that doesn’t …
- Confident, Steadfast, Resolute… The Buddha talks about how, in his practice as he was getting on the right path, he realized that he needed to put aside the thoughts of sensuality and all the other hindrances. He realized that that would enable the mind to be peaceful. But as he said, his mind didn’t “leap up” at the idea. It wasn’t confident in the idea …
- Universal Truths… One is the distinction between skillful and unskillful action in thought, word, and deed, and the fact that unskillful actions should be abandoned, and skillful actions developed. And the other is the four noble truths: stress, its origination, its cessation, and the path of practice leading to its cessation. That’s it. Those are the teachings he taught as really basic. Those are the …
- Caring Enough to Doubt… What happens if you learn how to put those thoughts aside? Part of the mind will complain. It wants its instant pleasure, because there is a certain pleasure that comes out of just fantasizing about things. But here you’ve got the breath. You’ve got the body sitting here, being energized by the breath. Can you use that energy to create a sense …
- The Skill of Happiness… When they see that the field is open, there’s no other activity going on right now, they’ll come to the fore and pull your thoughts off in different directions. Either that or the committee members that want to just go to sleep. You doze off. You can’t let them take over because we’re trying to develop a state of mind …
- Mindfulness of Breathing: Four in One… threatened by the things it doesn’t like, and it’s not so attached to things that it does like—but that are not quite as skillful as you may have thought. It’s easier to accept the things that are unpleasant about your own mind if you have a sense of well-being right here. It’s like talking to people about their …
- The Treasure of Virtue… You try to get the mind to settle down, and it seems to be just full of thoughts. It’s like herding cats, or the image they give in Thailand is of catching crabs to put into a basket. You get the first crab in the basket, but by the time you reach down to gather up the second crab, the first crab is …
- Exercising the Mind… Always keep that thought in mind. And then you strengthen it through training the mind in mindfulness and concentration, learning how to exercise the mind by keeping it still but alert. That gives you the foundation to keep going, because in addition to mindfulness, you need strength. It’s possible to learn a lesson but then forget it, that’s a lack of mindfulness …
- The Missing Fabrication… Verbal fabrications are defined as directed thought and evaluation—how you talk to yourself, the way you focus on a topic and then ask questions about it, make comments, decide what to do with it. That type of fabrication is not mentioned in the steps of breath meditation. There’s no talk about becoming sensitive to verbal fabrications or calming verbal fabrications. But if …
- Determination… Ajaan Fuang happened to see that and said, “Hey, I thought you were taking the eight precepts.” That was a case of no mindfulness and no alertness. So if you’re going to stick with the precepts, you have to be mindful, you have to be alert, all of which are the qualities we try to develop here as we meditate. And you have …
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