Search results for: "Thought"

  1. Page 145
  2. Antidotes for Narcissism
    It’s easy to see why some people think that meditation encourages narcissism, a fascination with your own feelings, a fascination with your own thoughts, your own breath, as if that was all that mattered in the world. And it’s not helped when the meditation is reduced to a certain formula, a certain technique, that again just focuses on what you’re feeling … 
  3. The Ennobling Path
     … There’s awareness, and there are the thoughts and labels that awareness is putting on things. There are feelings. Try to leave it at just that level. Put these things together in the present moment and don’t add anything else. You’ll find, of course, that the mind is constantly adding other things, but if you notice these are things piling up in … 
  4. Pride in Your Craft
     … You’ve thought it through and you realize: “This really is helpful to me. My teacher has been compassionate to me. Why can’t I be compassionate to myself and do what I know is the wise thing?” In this way, you build up a bank of arguments to use against your old defilements, your old ways. What this comes down to is that … 
  5. Questioning & Acceptance
     … And you go through the feelings and the perceptions and the thought fabrications and the consciousness that’s aware of all these things. You examine each of these things in the same way. Even when there seems to be just a very bright, bright awareness, you still have to question it: Is there any inconstancy in this awareness? And sometimes the concentration can be … 
  6. Homage Through the Practice
     … There’s a lot of struggle and a lot of pain in getting these things and then you find that they’re not what you thought they’d be. But the Buddha says you can find a true happiness by developing qualities in your mind that you can be proud of—again, unlike so much in the world where in order to be happy … 
  7. Anupassana
     … If you thought about it for twenty-four hours, where would it take you? Well, not anywhere good. So why give it any time at all? But more important are the perceptions that allow you to stay with the breath. You’ll find that different perceptions will have a different effect on the breath and a different effect on the mind, so use the … 
  8. Path & Raft
     … In other words, you see one of these processes of becoming arising in the mind, but instead of jumping in and taking birth in that little thought world, you watch it and say, “Gee, why would I want to ride in that one? That’s just going to take me down the river.” Whereas with others, there’s a much stronger pull, in which … 
  9. When it’s Hard to Settle Down
     … Some of them he just thought were very strange. I began to realize that if he got that strange look in his eye when I’d tell him about one of my problems, this was a very American problem and I’d have to work through it myself. But I noticed that when he was dealing with the problems that he was familiar with … 
  10. Appropriate Attention
     … You would have slipped off to those other thoughts without realizing that there was any conscious intention there at all. So, for the time being, the skillful intention you want to maintain is the one that stays with the breath, that makes the breath comfortable. This is an important aspect. If the breath is uncomfortable, you won’t to want to stay. You may … 
  11. Generosity First
     … letting go of distractions, letting go of unskillful thoughts. If you’re used to letting go of material things, it comes a lot easier to begin experimenting with letting go of unskillful mental attitudes — things that you’ve held on to for so long that you think you need them, but when you really look at them you find you don’t. In fact … 
  12. The Brightness of Life
     … We focus on thoughts that are nourishing for the mind, because they give us strength. As long as the mind still feels the need to feed and as long as it’s still hungry, let’s give it good healthy food: the healthy food of right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration, right view—all the right factors that we chanted just now. Right view … 
  13. Training Your Minds
     … Then when the thought comes that you might want to do something based on greed, aversion, or delusion, you say, “Why bother? It’s needless suffering. Why bother with it?” You’ve got something better. This is how you train the mind: You develop good qualities that lead to knowledge and you also develop a sense of well-being that can sustain you. That … 
  14. Virtuous Beginnings
     … Your actions are things you can be open about, your words are things you can be open about, your thoughts are things you can be open about. That sense of openness means that your foundation isn’t crooked, it doesn’t have any hidden weaknesses. And that’s the kind of foundation you can really build on with confidence.
  15. Always Willing to Learn
     … you can nip the anger in the bud, so the anger can be defused in a subtle way like the fog stealing in? These skills we learn as we meditate—watching thought patterns arise and learning how to nip them in the bud—are an important part of the meditation. We like to think that real meditation is when you settle down with the … 
  16. Beyond Inter-eating
     … These require the food of appropriate attention, which means looking at things in line with such questions as, “What’s skillful? What’s unskillful? What, when I do it will lead to long-term harm? What, when I do it will lead to long-term happiness?” You look at your actions, you look at your words, you look at your thoughts in this light … 
  17. Dealing with Pain
     … This is where the emotions are along with your more complex thoughts. Then finally there’s consciousness—awareness of these things. The Buddha says we feed on these activities. And in fact, these activities are the activities that the mind usually uses in feeding as well. So there are two levels of feeding going on. For example, when you’re feeding on physical food … 
  18. The Second Frame of Reference
     … There’s bodily fabrication, the way you breathe; verbal fabrication, the way you direct your thoughts to a topic, such as a feeling, and then evaluate that feeling: Is it potentially skillful? Potentially not? What are you going to do with it? And then there’s mental fabrication, which consists of the feelings themselves plus the perceptions that you hold in mind. Now all … 
  19. Always in Training
     … At first, the former champ thought he would just retire from boxing. But then he saw that the new champ was out of shape, so he challenged him to a rematch. Because the new champ was so much out of shape, he lost the second match. The lesson, of course, is if you’re a boxer, you always have to be in training, in … 
  20. A Doctor’s Strategies
     … We try to get the mind to a point where it can be beyond all thought, but you have to use your thinking to get it there. We try to get it beyond desire, but you have to use your desire. Desire is part of right effort. In that chant just now, when we were chanting about right effort, there’s the phrase, chandam … 
  21. Audacious & Undaunted
     … We cling to our perceptions, our thought constructs, our consciousness. And in that clinging is the suffering. Why do we cling? We cling because of craving. If you can comprehend the suffering to the point where you go beyond any passion, aversion, and delusion around it, and if you can abandon the craving, that’s the end of suffering. That was the third noble … 
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