Search results for: "Thought"
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- Frame Your Questions Well… They thought they had him. So when they asked him the question, he replied, “That doesn’t deserve a categorical answer. It deserves an analytical answer.” He stepped out of the false dichotomy. As he said, there are times when it’s for the good of the other person that you say something displeasing. He gave the example of a baby who’s gotten …
- To Keep You Going… That thought will bring a lot of regret or denial, neither of which is anything you want to develop. So these are some of the ways in which the Buddha has you motivate yourself to develop patience, so that you actually do find a sense of joy, a sense of well-being, even at the points where the path seems pretty hopeless, where you …
- Karma & Gratitude… So let that thought be uplifting.
- The Path of Adventure… Just the thought of thousands of steps can get discouraging. What you do is that you don’t focus on the thousands of steps, you focus on the one step you’re doing right now. Make sure that when you place on foot in front of the other, you’re placing it well and you’re going in the right direction. That’s all …
- Lessons for New Monks… One morning they were going on alms round and one of the people who put food in their bowls asked a question, and Ajaan Fuang’s first thought was, “That’s a question you don’t have to answer.” But the other monk did answer the question, and then later that day he had a bad case of diarrhea. Ajaan Fuang connected the fact …
- Honoring the Noble Ones… As for any thoughts that have to do with the world, you put them aside. And you bring three qualities to this exercise: The first is ardency. Of the three qualities, this is what makes our practice skillful. The ardency is the desire to do things really well. Alertness is watching what you’re doing, and mindfulness is keeping things in mind. Now, alertness …
- Oneness… Any thought that spills out from that, you don’t want. Totally throw yourself into the breath. There’s nothing else you have to do, nowhere else you have to go, nothing that has any need to pull you away. Ajaan Lee makes the comment that this breath, if you’re totally immersed in it, will take you through all the levels of jhana …
- Actualizing Your Potentials… They thought he was being irresponsible. But as he said, trying to find an answer for those questions doesn’t really lead you to awakening. And they come from attitudes in the mind that shouldn’t be encouraged. Nowadays we have different lists of questions. It might be useful to sit down sometime and ask yourself, what are the questions you’ve been living …
- Creating a New Self… He thought it was very peculiar. But then he reflected on himself—he liked to climb mountains. And he realized that while he was climbing mountains, he was miserable. When he reached the top of the mountain, there wasn’t much of a sense of accomplishment—just “Oh, that’s all?” Then he’d go back down. Yet as soon as he got back …
- One Point, Two Points, Many Points… As you’re thinking about your hand, your arm, or your leg, other thoughts related to hands, arms, and legs might sneak in and carry you off someplace else. He compares this to starting an orchard. If you plant your whole orchard all at once, using all your resources, you may find that you’ve overextended yourself. You’re faced with a drought for …
- Multi-Dimensional Dhamma… We’re told that Buddhism boils down to one particular practice, like noting, mindfulness, or spreading thoughts of loving kindness. Sometimes we’re told that it teaches just a handful of basic principles: letting go, equanimity, emptiness, contentment, compassion. If that’s all we know of the Dhamma, we miss the fact that it has many dimensions. It does contain all of these things …
- Practicing on Your Own… Otherwise, when you start opening your mouth without any thought about why you’re opening it, then other things come out besides just friendly chatter. And again, this stuff comes back at you. In the meantime, the fact that you’ve been thinking about these things and sending your mind all over the place just to talk means that the mind is going to …
- Disconnecting… He does celebrate the fact that you can choose to be interdependent in a skillful way through your actions, through your thoughts, your words and deeds. But there’s also that danger: You can act in skillful ways and then get waylaid, get distracted, get born in a comfortable place, and then forget about the practice. One of the sad things about saṁsāra is …
- Exploring the Basics… At the very least, working with these different forms of fabrication—the in-and-out breath, directed thought and evaluation, feelings and perceptions—gives you something interesting to do. That helps with the staying power of the meditation because after all, the mind is a very complex organ. Training the mind is not a matter of forcing it into a few simple and draconian …
- Old Kamma & New… Now you find, particularly on the issue of intention, that other thoughts will come into the mind while you’re sitting here. And they’ll come unbidden. Think of those as old kamma. You’re not responsible for them right now. In fact, how you deal with them right now is your new kamma. In this particular case, you want to learn how to …
- The Uses of Equanimity… So even though the pain may be there, you realize that it’s not the same sort of thing you thought it was. You can see that it’s something separate. The two things are there in the same place, but they’re different things, on different levels. Then you can apply the same principle to your awareness of both of the pain and …
- Eyes in the Back of Your Head… In other words, it’s not going to be right where you thought it was. It’s certainly not going to be right at the spot of the concentration. It’s going to be hovering around. This is why you need that all-around awareness to see it. Then there’s a sense of awareness itself—consciousness, viññana—that’s in there, too. You …
- Heedfulness is the Path… This applies to your thoughts and your words as well, not just to your physical actions. The same pattern goes all the way through the practice. There are other discourses where the Buddha says to look at the way you relate to sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations. If the way you relate is causing harm, then don’t relate in that way. Watch …
- Introduction… the Buddha concludes by saying all those who become pure in their thoughts and words and deeds have developed purity in just this way. There you are, three very noble qualities: wisdom, compassion, and purity. They all come from taking your desire for happiness very seriously, realizing that happiness is not something that’s just going to float your way. It comes from your …
- Birth Is Suffering… The first one that peels off is the directed thought and evaluation. The second one that peels off is the in-and-out breath. You’ll have breath energy in the body, but the in-and-out breath will grow calm. Only at the very high levels of the formless jhanas can you see the mental fabrication peel away, too. So you’re getting …
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