Search results for: "Thought"

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  2. Why We Meditate
     … So many of the thoughts that come through our mind have come before, we’ve seen them before. If they were movies, you wouldn’t bother to pay for them. Yet the mind keeps going back, going back, going back to them. Here you’re providing an alternative. Here is something new. As the Buddha said, when you practice this way, you’ll ultimately … 
  3. Do You Want to Stop Suffering?
     … That’s the discernment that allows you to dig deeper and deeper and deeper inside, always with that thought in mind: There’s something that you’re doing that’s causing stress, that’s weighing down the mind, and you don’t have to do it. You want to look for it. It’s like peeling layers off of an onion. You peel one … 
  4. Stay Principled
     … So if anyone ever asks you what the Buddha’s basic teachings are, these two sets of teachings—the four noble truths, and the basic teachings on how to deal with what’s skillful and unskillful in thought, word, and deed—are the teachings that are true across the board. Particularly with respect to wrong views: As the Buddha said, you’ve got to … 
  5. Kindfulness
     … The more you look at the events in the mind in this way, the more you see that what you thought were things or entities or inherent natures you couldn’t change are actually actions. Even your sense of self is a type of action. You identify with ideas, you identify with the body, you identify with your possessions, your relationships, your role outside … 
  6. Furnishing Your Home for the Mind
     … You drop the other thoughts and here you are with your breathing. Now, to stay here requires several qualities in the mind. You have to be alert to what’s going on. And at the same time you have to have some strategies for making this a nice place to be. You’re trying to make this your home. In fact one of the … 
  7. Why We Practice the Way We Do
     … So you choose one topic, and then you put aside all thoughts about the world outside. To do that, you have to develop three qualities: mindfulness, ardency, alertness. Mindfulness is keeping things in mind. Here you keep in mind the fact that you want to stay here, and then remember that when skillful and unskillful things come up in the mind, what you should … 
  8. Gaining the Dhamma Eye
     … They thought they just didn’t have it in them. A couple of them actually contemplated suicide. But then they gained insight into exactly how they were causing suffering, and how they didn’t have to do. So no matter how bad their past karma was, they were able to attain awakening because of that potential for freedom in the present moment, the freedom … 
  9. Borrowing the Buddha’s Wisdom
     … You shed your thoughts of wanting to get back at people, your demands that “I’m not going to get out of here until justice has been done.” Those things have to be shed. In other words, you focus on the qualities within you that this path develops. Then you also focus on how it influences the way you deal with other people. You … 
  10. Right View
     … What are you doing? What are the results? Are they good enough? When you ask these questions, you begin to see that you’re doing things in areas where you might not have thought you were doing anything at all. Sometimes you hear the distinction made between doing things in the meditation and just allowing yourself to be. Well, the Buddha said being is … 
  11. Ask the Right Questions
     … We often think of meditation as being something you just do without thought, i.e., you just have an exercise to do where you’re not thinking, you’re just being aware or alert to the present moment and otherwise not thinking about things. But that’s not how the Buddha taught meditation. There is an element of reflection that has to go into … 
  12. Mindful Judgment
     … The Buddha defines this suffering as the five clinging-aggregates, which is the technical term for the fact that we try to feed on the form of the body, on our feelings, on our perceptions, on the way the mind fabricates its thoughts, and on acts of consciousness, in our attempt to find happiness. It’s like feeding on potato chips thinking that you … 
  13. Self-starting
     … If you get used to thinking in this way, then when thoughts of lust come up, you’ve got your tools already sharpened. Or in social situations: You know you’re going to go someplace, and there are people there who know how to push your buttons. They know how to provoke you. How can you prepare so you know that no matter what … 
  14. The Will to Awaken
     … Your attachment to thoughts about, plans about sensual pleasures. That’s what you have to learn how to renounce. An important step is learning to see the rewards of renunciation. It’s not going to leave you deprived. It really is restful to the mind. It really gives peace to the mind. There’s a famous story about the monk, a former king, sitting … 
  15. The Karma of Meditation
     … And when you do do them, there is pain? So how can you attribute it all to your past karma?” They didn’t have much of an answer; they hadn’t thought of that. The Buddha was pointing out that what you do right now makes a *huge *difference. You’ve got this freedom, so make the most of it. This is why meditation … 
  16. Neither Here nor There
     … Do you really desire that person? Is that the location of your craving? Or is the craving located in your perception of the person? Or in your thoughts about the person? Or in the way you evaluate the person? The appearance of the person? Your role with regard to that person? If you’re going to understand your craving, you have to know where … 
  17. Treasures Beyond Death
     … This is why we often repeat those five reflections, “I’m subject to aging, subject to illness, subject to death, subject to separation.” Those thoughts give rise to a sense of samvega, particularly when you expand them the way the Buddha has you expand them, which is that you’re not the only one, everybody everywhere is subject to these things. But then there … 
  18. Counter-cultural Values
     … You direct your thoughts to a topic and you evaluate it. These are the sentences with which you describe things in your mind. And then there’s mental fabrication: perception and feeling, which are the raw materials from which you might talk about things—feelings of pleasure pain, neither pleasure nor pain, and the images that the mind creates to communicate with itself. When … 
  19. The Four Bases of Success
     … But then he was able to stop and think, “Well, what other alternatives are there?” He thought of the time when as a child he’d sat under a tree and his mind had settled into concentration with a sense of ease and well-being. That required an act of imagination, not only in memory but also in coming up with that particular memory … 
  20. On the Path of the Breath
     … What you’ve done is that you’ve moved from using directed thought and evaluation to help with the concentration to the point where you don’t need them anymore. You can let them go. There’s a much greater sense of refreshment that comes, a greater sense of fullness, as you’re one with the breath as opposed to hovering protectively outside. That … 
  21. Developing Discernment
     … He went to see one of the famous ajaans and asked him, “What technique is going to work in getting my mind to settle down?” And the ajaan basically said, “I don’t know.” The monk thought maybe the ajaan didn’t know anything, so he left. Of course what the ajaan was saying is that you have to find a topic congenial to … 
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