Search results for: "Thought"

  1. Page 143
  2. The World of the Noble Truths
     … The first thought that went through his mind was, “Who’s looking after whom here?” Then he said to himself, “Well, that’s their business. I’ve got my business I’ve got to take care of.” And suddenly he realized—he’d been trying to get rid of the pain, get rid of the suffering of the headache, which is not the duty … 
  3. Can All Beings Be Happy?
     … These are the reasons why we develop that thought, “May all beings be happy”: We want to make sure that we don’t harm beings. And by creating our own more limitless state of mind, we develop the ability to deal with whatever negative things happen. In other words, we learn how to take responsibility for ourselves. We take responsibility for the decisions we … 
  4. A Handful of Leaves
     … You realize it’s not as scary as you thought it was. You can develop the skill to be with it and yet not suffer from it. You can also use the breath to look at mental pain because mental pain has a lot to do with all the different voices in your head, many of which you identify with. If you can stay … 
  5. Therapy for the Mind
     … He thought, he questioned, he observed. His thinking wasn’t abstract thinking. It was thinking around the issues of what’s happening right here, right now. “What am I doing right here, right now? What’s originating in the mind right here, right now? And what’s the process of running with a defilement? What are the steps?” If you don’t think about … 
  6. 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.
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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