Search results for: "Thought"

  1. Page 148
  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. Three Intoxications
    Gather all your thoughts into the present moment. Gather your awareness right here, because this is the beginning point of everything. Your life is shaped by your intentions, and where do your intentions show themselves? They show themselves right here, right now. Your past intentions are things you can’t watch. You may remember them, you may not. As for your future intentions, they … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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.
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. To Look after Yourself with Ease
     … There’s a phrase we have when we extend thoughts of goodwill to ourselves: “May I look after myself with ease.” That’s related to the principle of being unburdensome. As the Buddha said, when you practice the Dhamma, you know the Dhamma is true when it makes you unburdensome. And part of being unburdensome is having the ability to look after yourself, where … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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