Search results for: "Thought"
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- Inconstant, Stressful, Not-self… When I was young I thought I had the strength of two men. But now, when I think to put my foot in one place, it goes someplace else.” This is the teaching on inconstancy. Aging is the big illustration for inconstancy. You can get things really, really ideal in terms of a good relationship, a good family, but then everybody grows old and …
- Self View & Conceit… Ajaan Fuang once told me that when he was a little kid he thought nibbana was up in the Himalayan Mountains. And you can imagine what the people in the Himalayan Mountains think: someplace else. Actually, nibbana is something we can attain through our efforts right here. Someone once asked me, “Where’s the best place to practice?” And I said, “Right where you …
- Interdependence & Death… So if you catch yourself identifying with your thoughts or your perceptions, try to be very careful about which perceptions you hold on to, like the perceptions that tell you that you don’t want to create a sense of identity, and you don’t want to inhabit any of the worlds that can appear to you. In other words, you don’t want …
- Proving the Teachings… Wherever you see it, whether it’s in your thoughts, in your words, or in your deeds, that you’re causing harm, causing any stress that’s unnecessary, just drop it. When you can do that, you’re mature. Life takes a huge turn for the better. And you begin to see how many problems in your life were caused by the fact that …
- Putting Out the Fires… You find all kinds of thoughts will come in. There’s boredom, impatience: “What’s next? Why can’t I think of something else?” “No, don’t think of anything else. Just stay right there with the breath. And allow it to do its work. If you’re going to feed the mind, it takes a while for this nourishment to soak in.” When …
- Pleasure on the Path… So if you’re doing work that requires thought, let the breath spread around behind the eyes, around the eyes, deep into the brain. If you’re doing heavy physical work and you’ve hurt yourself, okay, figure out some way to focus on the breath and use the breath energy so that it can heal the wound. Sometimes that will require focusing directly …
- Body Contemplation Is Compassionate… So if you have any thoughts that somehow the contemplation of the body is an act of violence, remember, the violence is toward your own lust, and your lust is probably what’s complaining. When there are these complaints about body contemplation, on the one hand, that comes from the lust itself, and secondly, from wanting to have a good body image. The two …
- Off the Continuum… how thoughts or perceptions have a fabricating influence on the mind, how the breath has a fabricating influence on your sense of the body. You learn this not by just sitting there and watching things arising and passing away, but steering them or training them in particular direction. It’s like learning to be a cook. If you want to cook an egg, you …
- Motivation… Do you really love yourself if that’s the way you act? That thought is meant to develop a sense of the danger of slacking off. The second governing principle is the appreciation of the Dhamma. This is a wonderful Dhamma we’ve got here, taught by someone totally free from greed, aversion, and delusion. It’s timeless. That points to the positive aspect …
- Inner Refuge Through Inner Strength… Keep that thought as your motivation and then, based on that, develop the five strengths. The first is conviction—conviction in the Buddha’s awakening, the three knowledges he gained on the night of his awakening, and most importantly the knowledge he gained about kamma: that actions have results, and that the results depend on the intentions inspiring the action and the skill with …
- Hold on for All You’re Worth… Your thoughts, your words, your deeds: They’re all produced here. So you want to get some control over it. We do that first by focusing on the breath, taking a couple of good long deep in-and-out breaths. Notice where you feel the breathing in the body, because that’s what we’re going to be focusing on: the sensation of energy …
- Accepting the Way Out… We’re not necessarily talking about past lifetimes here, but more the thoughts that went through your mind 10 minutes ago, or half an hour ago, or half a day ago, that got those hormones churning to begin with. Some hormones are going to stay in your bloodstream for quite a while before they get washed out. That’s an example of past karma …
- A Pleasure Without Stories… The Buddha, after all those of years of self torment, after realizing that self torment was not the way—he had been running away from pleasure of all kinds— asked himself, “Is there another way?” And he thought of a time when he was young and his mind became concentrated, almost spontaneously. He had gotten into a deep absorption, with a sense of pleasure …
- Right View Comes First… You’ve got feelings, you’ve got perceptions, thought-constructs, consciousness—and you cling to these things. That’s the suffering. Suffering is not something that you’re passively receiving. You’re actually doing the action that constitutes suffering. Think about that. And why do you do that? Because of craving: either craving for sensuality, craving for a state of becoming, or craving to …
- The Unity of the Path… The mindfulness develops into directed thought. This is how right mindfulness flows smoothly into concentration. As the Buddha said, the four establishings of mindfulness are the themes of right concentration. Here we have another kernel within a kernel. Right effort is the kernel within right mindfulness, and right mindfulness is the kernel within right concentration. You might think of it as a pearl. You …
- The Dhamma Eye… Two, you have to be really willing to observe what’s actually going on in your mind, in your thoughts, your words, your deeds, so that you can catch any mistakes. Then you look at what you’re doing. If you see that what you’re going to do is going to lead to suffering, you don’t do it. If while you’re …
- The Second Noble Truth… She thought about how little they had seen of life, and how sad it was in one sense. But then she started thinking about bird-dom as a whole, and she said it was like skin. The skin keeps creating new layers. The old layers slough off, but new layers keep coming. She ended up with saying that empathy is what makes it possible …
- Friends & Enemies… What does this person really need? In what way would this person really appreciate receiving help? Sometimes you want to do it in ways that that person might not expect, to show that you really are really giving some thought to that person’s feelings and needs. That kind of help really goes to the heart. If it’s just help for show, it …
- The Lightning Bolt… If unskillful thoughts come up, you’ve got to find ways to sidestep them. If you can’t deal with them directly right now, allow them to go off to the side. Don’t put yourself right in the line of fire. Whatever the techniques required, you try to master them. Eventually you’ll get to the point where you’re getting to the …
- Recollection of the Buddha… So when you think of the Buddha, make sure your thoughts then come back to your practice, and have them energize your practice. That’s the whole purpose of his teaching, which is to help us see that we have these potentials within us, and that we can develop them. If you have any gratitude to the Buddha at all—which is the proper …
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