Search results for: "Thought"
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- Empathetic Joy… You spread thoughts of empathetic joy first to people that it’s easy to feel it for—the people you like, the people whose happiness you’re easily happy about. Then you pose the question in the mind: “Is there anyone else out there whose happiness I don’t like? Whose happiness I resent?” And you may think of a few people. Well, ask …
- Pleasant Practice, Painful Practice… You have to find out for yourself.” Unfortunately, the young monk thought that Ajaan Maha Boowa was saying that he didn’t know the way to awakening, so he got discouraged, left, and ended up disrobing. He tried Zen for several years, disrobed from that, and ended up being a professor of Buddhist studies here in the States. The sad thing, of course, is …
- The Buddha Teaches a Yakkha… And actions there covers not only physical actions, but also the words you say and the thoughts you think. The other categorical teaching is the four noble truths and the duties appropriate to them: to comprehend suffering, abandon its cause, realize the cessation of suffering, by developing the path to the cessation. Those are the only teachings that the Buddha said are true across …
- A Safe Space Inside… So when thoughts come up in the mind that would pull you away from the concentration, you’ve got the right view to say, “No, not right now. I have to work on something really important here in getting the mind as solid as possible.” Work with the breath. Think of the breath filling the whole body, with no gaps in the breath. The …
- A Refuge from the Winds of the World… Any thoughts of the world that come up right now, you’ve got to put them aside. If you’re going to be rightly concentrated as you go through the world, you have to focus specifically on resisting those qualities of greed and distress. How do you maintain your focus? How do you maintain your balance, without your greed and distress pulling you out …
- Help Others, Help Yourself… Then you try to maintain a steady focus there, so you stay away from any thoughts about the world. You’re ardent, alert, and mindful. Ardent in trying to do this well. Alert in watching what you’re doing. And mindful in remembering what you should be doing. If something comes up in the mind, you have to learn how to recognize what it …
- Shame & Acceptance… At the same time, there was a lot of pride in Bangkok that if anybody was going to understand the Dhamma, it was the scholars in Bangkok, people who had the background and education that prepared them to read and think philosophical thoughts. Although it was possible for people to come from the countryside areas into Bangkok to learn, the scholars were considered to …
- A World Apart… Any thoughts or interests you may have in the world outside will actually get in the way of doing what needs to be done at that point, which is to stay focused on being calm in the midst of all the turmoil that will go on in the body. You want to make sure that wherever the mind goes after life, the mind will …
- The Meaning of Happiness… We primarily think of meditation in terms of developing mindfulness and alertness and other good qualities as we sit here and do formal meditation, but it applies to all areas where you see that your mind needs to train itself in noble qualities—in your thoughts, your words, and your deeds. So when we say, “May I be happy; may all living beings be …
- Taking Stock… As for the thoughts that may be buzzing around in the mind, just let them buzz away. You don’t have to chase them down; you don’t have to do anything to them. Just don’t get involved with them, that’s all. After someone has died, this is usually the hardest part. All the activity of the funeral is done, the cremation …
- Bases for Success… In this kind of concentration, the directed thought and evaluation in the first jhāna are directed to noticing where there’s the slightest bit of stress, say, in the breath, in your whatever your meditation object is. You evaluate that and try to do what you can to lessen the stress. The Buddha talks about going through the various levels of concentration with this …
- Tranquility & Insight with the Breath… how you work with the breath, how you work with your thoughts, work with your perceptions, so that the mind can rest well, and can rest in deeper and deeper levels—like peeling away the layers of an onion. In the course of doing that, you begin to see how the mind works in general. You’re seeing the mind in its actions, and …
- Learning by Doing… And you have to learn how to not fall for that particular thought that wants to know what’s next and wants to go someplace else, wants to step on the concentration to get someplace that it thinks is higher. You’ve got to have respect for concentration. You’re ardent in doing it and you have to have respect for it, like the …
- Training Heart & Mind… As you do this, you’re developing right concentration, which the Buddha once said is the heart of the path, and you do that by bringing awareness to physical fabrication, the breath; verbal fabrication, your thoughts in thinking about the breath and evaluating the breath; and then mental fabrication, the feeling of ease that comes from the breath together with the perception that stays …
- Craving & Clinging… You’re in another thought world. If you catch yourself, you can remind yourself that you’re not here for that. Start to develop some dispassion for it, and you’ll find yourself back, back at your center. Then watch for the next time the mind’s going to slip out. I remember when I first went to practice meditation with Ajaan Fuang, I …
- The Mind's Immune System… Sometimes it’s translated as “latent tendency,” because literally “saya” means to “lie down;” and “anu” means to “be with” or “following.” But if you look how the word is used in the texts, it’s more like “obsession.” In other words, your thoughts keep lying down with a particular object, a particular pattern. They’re obsessed. There are particular types of obsessions, and …
- The Importance of Being Truthful… You’ve got to really look at that carefully and point out to yourself, “Okay, this doesn’t work.” it’s not nearly as appealing as you might have thought. This particular tactic is especially helpful when you do have the alternative of the breath, a sense of well-being in the present moment that you’ve learned how to maintain, that you’ve …
- A Confident Ego… The skill with which you treat your thoughts, your words, your deeds; the skill with which you encounter sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations: That’s a skill you have to develop on your own. No one can do it for you. And it does make a big difference in your life. So whether it takes a short time or a long time is …
- A True Person… All you have to do is just sit there and think thoughts of goodwill, and that should take you all the way to nibbana. This was from a scholar who’d studied Buddhism for many years, but who was more interested in reading between the lines than in taking seriously what the lines had to say: that the brahma-viharas, on their own, don …
- Evident Inequality… My wife and I have never given anything.” So he thought to himself, “What do I have? I just have this over-robe. It’s my one possession.” He fought with himself, back and forth, back and forth till quite late at night. Finally, he decided, “I’m going to give the robe.” He stood up and shouted, “Chaiyo! Chaiyo! Victory! Victory!” Then he …
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