Search results for: "Thought"

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  2. A Full Heart
     … Sometimes it refers to the thinking side, the thoughts you have: That’s also the citta. It’s important to see there’s no real distinction between the two. Your thoughts have desires that go along with them, and your desires have their thoughts, they have their reasons. It’s not that your desires or your emotions are primary and your thoughts secondary. They … 
  3. The Use of the Present
     … The question is, “What kind of path is it? Where does the particular path you’re on right now lead?” If your mind wanders off to thoughts of sensuality, thoughts of lust, thoughts of anger, it is a path, but it’s a path in a downward direction. If you can develop thoughts of renunciation, compassion, and goodwill, that’s a path leading upward … 
  4. Good Fences
     … If they came from sensuality, ill will, or thoughts of harmfulness, they were going to put bad ruts in the mind. Or in his image, they would bend the mind in a particular direction. The more you allow yourself to think those thoughts, the more the mind gets bent. If they were thoughts that came from renunciation, lack of ill will, or lack of … 
  5. Gather Around the Breath
     … Then there are specific ways of dealing with specific distractions, like sleepiness or lustful thoughts. But everything falls under these five main categories. As the Buddha said, when you’ve mastered these strategies, then you can think whatever thoughts you want to think, and you don’t have to think any thoughts you don’t want to think. And what he doesn’t say … 
  6. Old Movies & New
     … There’s a physical side to all your thoughts, and the more complex the thoughts of the past and future, the more territory they inhabit in your body. One of the easiest ways of making sure the body doesn’t turn into a foundation for thoughts of past and future is to occupy it as fully as you can with awareness right here and … 
  7. Full Attention
     … Which is another good reason you want to cut off any thoughts that would pull you away from really being attentive to right here, right now. Even thoughts about how much longer the meditation is going to last: Just drop them. Good thoughts, bad thoughts, indifferent thoughts: Just let them go. Try to be really, really sensitive to the feeling of the breath right … 
  8. Sober Up
     … When it jumps around from thought to thought, there’s a little bit of forgetting that goes in between each of the thoughts. And there’s a part of the mind that likes the forgetting—the irresponsible part of the mind, the part that doesn’t want to be held accountable. It’s just going from thought to thought for the entertainment value. Here … 
  9. Sitting & Walking
     … When you can see them, you can be aware and watch them—the thought can go but you don’t go with it. That’s an important skill that shows that you can step outside of your thoughts. The thoughts can be there, but you don’t have to be in them. What usually happens is that the thoughts turn into a states of … 
  10. Wise Endurance
     … clinging to form, feeling, perception, thought fabrications, or consciousness. In particular, what are your perceptions, what are your thought fabrications about a particular issue? Remember that even with the aggregates, there’s an element that comes in from the past and an element of fabrication in the present. The way you breathe, the way you talk to yourself, the perceptions and feelings you focus … 
  11. Your Mind is Lying to You
     … After realizing that jhana was one of the factors of the path, he had to work on right resolve, i.e., training his mind to see what kind of thoughts lead toward concentration and what kind of thoughts lead away from concentration. In the same way, you look at your thoughts in terms of cause and effect. To what extent are they bringing the … 
  12. Technique & Attitudes
     … Then notice that the breath changes when you’re thinking thoughts that are good like this. Then let that same ease of breath continue as you drop the thought and return to the breath. Another attitude you want to bring is an attitude of respect, as the chant said just now, respect for concentration. Why? Well, because concentration takes work. We’re not here … 
  13. Generating Power
     … The two causes for gaining a sense of ease and wellbeing are directed thought and evaluation. Directed thought grows out of mindfulness; evaluation, out of alertness. You have to keep directing your thoughts to the breath, keep evaluating it, noticing when it’s comfortable, noticing when it’s not. And then there’s singleness of preoccupation: You try to keep the mind at one … 
  14. A Skillful Attitude
     … The first big troublemaker, of course, is the one that says, “This is boring.” Why do you identify with that? If you see that thought coming in, shoot it down. See if you can locate where in the body that particular thought is related to, because the ability to hold a thought in mind requires there to be tension someplace in the body that … 
  15. Evaluation
     … This is the image for the activity of directed thought and evaluation, which do the work in the meditation. Ajaan Lee calls them your concentration work. The standard description of jhāna talks about a sense of rapture or refreshment and pleasure, born of withdrawal—in which you’ve withdrawn your thoughts from sensual issues, and from unskillful mental states: Just the fact that you … 
  16. Purity
     … Other thoughts will come in. You have to learn how to say No to them. If you find yourself wandering off with another thought, you’ve got to drop it, because that’s not what you’re here for. You’re here to master the skill of getting your mind concentrated—centered on one topic. Anything else right now should be considered unskillful. To … 
  17. Forging a Path
    Allow all your thoughts to circle in and settle down. Try to be right here with the body, right here with the breath. Take some good long in-and-out breaths. Think of the breathing as a whole-body process. Give the mind an anchor. Don’t clamp down on the breath, don’t clamp down on the mind, because if you do, it … 
  18. Cutting New Paths in the Mind
     … thoughts of shame, thoughts of inadequacy, fear, feeling threatened very easily. There are lots of ways in which we bring unnecessary suffering onto ourselves, and they tend to be very quick. They’re like paths in the mind over which we’ve walked back and forth many, many times. There’s nothing in the way, we’ve killed all the grass, we’ve cut … 
  19. Understanding Through Developing
     … There’s the potential for skillful and unskillful thoughts in the mind, and you want to see the distinction, explore that distinction. See what skillful thoughts lead to, what unskillful thoughts lead to. There’s a potential for rapture. The Buddha doesn’t say what it is, but it’s there in your body and you can find it. You can start with that … 
  20. Tough Goodwill for a Tough World
     … So when you start out thinking thoughts of goodwill, first think goodwill for those for whom it’s easy to think those thoughts, and then go to those for whom it’s harder and harder. Then think it through: what it means to have goodwill in light of kamma, and what it means to have goodwill as a means of protecting yourself. After you … 
  21. Desire Is Part of the Path
     … All your clingings to unskillful thoughts, unskillful attitudes are addictions. In fact, you could use that as a definition of clinging aggregates: being addicted to the aggregates. Aggregates, you know, are not things. They’re activities. Your body is constantly active. Your feelings are activities. Your perceptions are things you do. Thought constructs, fabrications are things you do. Consciousness is something you do. And … 
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