Search results for: "Thought"

  1. Page 147
  2. Permission to Play
     … i.e., through the breath, through directed thought and evaluation, and through feeling and perception. But to will skillfully, you have to bring these fabrications together in a way that makes the path pleasant to follow. Otherwise you can’t stick with it. This is why right concentration is such an important part of the path. It gives you a good place to stay … 
  3. Acceptance
     … There’s a greater sense of rapture, a greater sense of refreshment and ease that come when you’re ready to put aside the directed thought and evaluation. And so on down through the levels of concentration. This becomes possible because you become more and more sensitive to what’s actually here, what’s actually going on. Things have been going on all the … 
  4. Cutting the Fetters
     … Then there’s the intention to stay here, and the directed thought and evaluation as you try to adjust the breath, adjust the mind, so that they fit together snugly. That’s all the aggregate of fabrication. Then there’s consciousness, which is aware of all these things. As you contemplate these things, you see that concentration is the best thing that the aggregates … 
  5. An Interest in the Breath
     … He thought of the breath energy there not coming in from the front, but coming in from the back to best disperse the tension. This teaches you something about the relationship not only between the breath and the rest of the body, but also between the breath and your perceptions. We’ll get to that more in a moment. Think of the breath coming … 
  6. Avoidance
     … When you’re bombarded with thoughts that “This has to be done now,” if you don’t stop and ask, “Well, is this really important?” your life gets frittered away with urgent things. If, when you come to meditate, you run into an urgent demand of your defilements, you have to keep asking yourself, “Is this really important?” When you learn to make the … 
  7. Undomesticated Happiness
     … We tend to assume that our thoughts and our awareness are ours more than anything else. They’re what we really are. So we need to get deeper in the mind. Take the approach that we use to the senses outside, to let them go, and then apply it to the mind. Ask the same questions and look at it from the same point … 
  8. The Duties of Happiness
     … You learn to recognize a mistake, you make up your mind not to repeat it, and then the Buddha says, you extend thoughts of goodwill to yourself and all beings. Extend goodwill to all beings so that you don’t mistreat them again. Extend goodwill to yourself to remind yourself that, okay, you’re doing this for your own well-being. The fact that … 
  9. The Third Noble Truth
     … If you find that you’ve let go of something because you thought you should, yet there’s still some nostalgia for it, that’s something you have to look into, because that nostalgia is the seed for the next bout of craving again. Only when you’re totally free of the nostalgia for these things, when you’ve had enough, you never want … 
  10. Alighting on the Dhamma
     … What’s the perception here? What’s the thought construct? What’s the feeling here? And then seeing these activities as things worthy of dispassion. Now, you don’t want to jump to dispassion too quickly. If you do it too quickly, you lose the foundation in concentration you need in order help pry away your attachments to other things. In fact, while you … 
  11. Adbusting the Mind
     … Then things just got worse and worse and worse until he finally got to the point where he thought, “Boy, I wish I hadn’t disrobed.” Then he realized, “I haven’t disrobed. Here I am, still a monk.” That’s one way: Just let the fantasy get really bad. You’ll find that part of the mind resists that. In that way, you … 
  12. Dhamma Warrior
     … Ajaan Lee talks about how our thoughts of goodness sometimes become Maras, obstacles in the path, because we get fixated on lesser aspects of the practice, or externals at the expense of the internals. The word wat in Thai means both monastery and your duties in the course of the day. And the duties here can be either internal or external. Ajaan Fuang would … 
  13. Insight into Pain
     … There’s a principle in postmodern thought that every attempt to teach people anything is an act of aggression, because you’re trying to make them submit to your view of things, but the Buddha’s teachings are a huge exception to that. He didn’t force anyone to accept his teachings. He offered his teachings as therapy. You can take them and use … 
  14. How to Be Alone
     … We tend not to trust our thoughts because we know we’ve picked up a lot of ideas from the media and other people around us, but our moods and emotions seem to be genuinely ours, who we are in the present moment. This is where the Buddha’s teachings on understanding yourself are important. You don’t have to identify with your mood … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. Understanding Breath Energies
     … If any thoughts of outside responsibilities come up right now, you can say, “No, I’ve got these inside responsibilities I’ve got to work with.” The greater the sense of well-being, the sense of feeling settled and belonging in your own skin, then the more strength you’ll have to deal with those things later outside. So give yourself some time. It … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
  22. Load next page...