Search results for: "Thought"

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  2. Who Are You Trying to Please?
     … That’s a scary thought. So you are here to please yourself, but you want to make sure that your standards for pleasing yourself stay broad-minded and high.
  3. Examine Your Happiness
     … What was it that Ajaan Fuang taught that attracted me to him particularly? I didn’t have a ready answer right away, but as I thought about it, I began to realize that there was one teaching that had really struck me when I first went to stay with him, which is that this practice is all about purifying the heart. As he said … 
  4. A Refuge Inside
     … For the time being, focus on the positive potentials, because if the mind doesn’t have a pleasant place to stay here right now, it’s going to go wandering, looking for something else, creating all different kinds of imaginary thought worlds to dwell in. Then they’re going to fall apart, and you’ll have to create some more. There’s no real … 
  5. The Need for Agency
     … Other thoughts may come into the mind, but for the time being you say, “Nope, not going there.” You do your best to make the breath interesting and to make the skill of meditation interesting—to get some satisfaction, not only out of the comfort of the breath, but also out of the fact that you’ve developed some skills and you can use … 
  6. The Real Thing
     … You don’t say, “Hey! I discovered this!” Or, "I was able to attain that!” There’s not that kind of thought at all. There’s just the realization that “There is this.” And there’s no sense of anybody in there attaining it. It’s just, okay, there is this aspect of experience as well. And it’s amazing. You listen to some … 
  7. Pleasure from the Body
     … You begin to see that sensual thoughts are like little blips that appear in the form of the body and you have the choice of going with them or not, stepping into their worlds or not. It’s like a little cyst of a sensual world appearing in the form of the body, a little seed that you then water, and it’ll turn … 
  8. Maybe the Buddha Knew Something
     … Any thought that would pull you away, any desire that would pull you away, you’ve got to say No. At the same time, you have to learn how to develop a sense of ease and well-being around the breath or whatever your topic of concentration is, so that you’ll survive. Look for your pleasure here, and you’ll be more willing … 
  9. The Skills of Truth & Calm
     … You’ve got direct thought and evaluation, which means you’re talking to yourself. Well, you’re talking to yourself about the breath, about the mind settling down with the breath, trying to get them snugly together. Then you’ve got perceptions and feelings. You’re trying to create a feeling of ease, well-being. And you’ve got certain perceptions about how the … 
  10. Trust in Heedfulness
     … So you learn how to drop that, realizing that it wasn’t the underlying principle of the nature of — the underlying awareness of — reality that you thought it was. To see this requires that you be wary about what’s going on. That’s another translation of appamada: wariness. Not so wary that you’re not willing to get into the concentration and work … 
  11. Bases of Success
     … That thought gives rise to a sense of what’s called *pasada, *or confidence. There is a way out, and this is it. And how do you work with your actions? You train your mind, which is the source of your actions. That’s what we’re doing right here, right now. So that’s one quality we’re working on: pasada, or confidence … 
  12. Trading Up
     … As you go through the different stages of concentration, you get so that you can drop the evaluation and directed thought\ when they’ve done their work, and there’s an even greater sense of pleasure, a greater sense of rapture. Then eventually the rapture becomes unpleasant, maybe even disturbing—because your sensitivity has grown greater, so that what seemed really nice to begin … 
  13. Limitations
     … They have thoughts. There may be people you’ve wronged in the past. They may be hovering around in ways that you can’t see. So, you’re dealing with all kinds of things. The important thing is to recognize that if there’s a sense of feeling oppressed by the limitlessness of the path, the limitlessness of the goal, that’s nothing you … 
  14. Dharma Medicine
     … Meanwhile, you apply the perceptions of inconstancy, stress and not-self to any thoughts that would pull you away—and also, when it’s appropriate, to give yourself a sense of patience. You can’t totally control this. You’ve got to learn how to figure out how cause and effect work right now, and what limits they place on you. How can you … 
  15. The Fabrication of Pain
     … Verbal fabrication—directed thought and evaluation, in other words, the way you talk to yourself about something. Then mental fabrication, which are feelings themselves and perceptions. So when a pain is bothering you, ask yourself, “How am I breathing around it?” And here it’s good to also ask yourself, “How am I talking to myself about this?” Because the way you talk to … 
  16. Smoothing It
     … Then, there’s mental seclusion, when you get the mind quiet in a state of right concentration, secluded from its unskillful thoughts. Learn how to appreciate that—the quietness of the mind. Delight in the fact that you get the mind to a state where you can begin to see really subtle things inside. You’re not just getting quiet for quiet’s sake … 
  17. Mindfulness of Death
     … So mindfulness of death isn’t just thinking, “Die, die, die, I’m going to die.” Sometimes those thoughts are useful when you find yourself sitting here meditating and thinking about the pleasures you’re missing right now. You can remind yourself, “Well, I could die at any moment. This is not a good time to be thinking about those things. And the fact … 
  18. Conviction in Charge
     … Sometimes it’s thought that the Buddha said we’re all innately good. He never said that. And there’s nothing in his teachings that depends on our being innately good. But he’s got a teaching for people who want to find true happiness and want to know: Can their efforts lead to it? For those people, he said, the answer is Yes … 
  19. Right Resolve in Real Life
     … You want to have the wherewithal in terms of your virtue and your concentration and your discernment to protect your path, i.e., to protect your thoughts, your words, and your deeds to keep them in line with what you know will ultimately lead to true happiness, to the true end of suffering. When you keep that goal in mind, you realize that a … 
  20. Shaping the Present
     … Any thoughts come up with regard to the world outside, you want to be equanimous toward them right now. In other words, you don’t get involved; just leave them there. They’re not what you want right now. Then, as the mind gets deeper and deeper into concentration, you find that there’s less you have to do in order to urge the … 
  21. Start by Relaxing Your Hands
     … You find that its thoughts change, its moods change because it’s not being squeezed by tension in the body. So the effort here is purely a mental effort. When the Buddha talks about right effort, it has nothing do with how many hours you sit or how many hours of walking meditation you do. Right effort is simply noticing which attitudes of the … 
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