Search results for: "Thought"

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  2. Rites of Passage
     … Thoughts of the past come along; thoughts of the future come along. As long as we’re tied up in these thoughts we’re not really alone. This is why we take the body in and of itself sitting here as our frame of reference. That’s a way of developing mental seclusion, dropping unskillful mental states. We drop thoughts of past and future … 
  3. Goodwill & Heedfulness
     … By being kind to others, thoughtful, patient, compassionate, and treating them with goodwill, you’re also looking after your own best interest. This is why we develop goodwill. There’s that famous story where King Pasenadi is alone in his bedroom with his queen. He turns to her and says, “Is there anyone you love more than yourself?” Of course, he’s hoping she … 
  4. Stepping Out of Yourself
     … our feelings and our thoughts. Actually, there’s no clear line between feelings and thoughts. A feeling is basically a thought that’s gotten into your body. We’re talking about emotions, not just the feeling tones that they call *vedana *in the technical Buddhist terminology. Your emotions are sankharas, fabrications—thoughts that get into the body. They feel especially real because they have … 
  5. The Mind Comes First
     … A sensation comes in the body, and something in the mind says, “Oh, this is a thought about x.” And then it runs with it. Well, change what you say. Just say, “This is a sensation in the body, and it could turn into thought. But I don’t want it to turn into thought. I want to stay right here with the breath … 
  6. Get Out of Yourself
     … And that thought lightens things: The universe isn’t dumping on you particularly. You’re simply experiencing something we all have in common. That thought helps pull you out of the whirlpool. Our thoughts, when they get into whirlpools like that, just go around and around and around. Thought a leads to b leads to c leads to d, which then leads back to … 
  7. The Wear & Tear of Life
    Every evening, before we meditate, we start with thoughts of goodwill—goodwill for ourselves, goodwill for others, reminding ourselves that that is our aspiration: well-being, happiness. The word sukha in Pali runs the gamut from pleasure all the way to bliss—with a few stops along the way, including ease, well-being, being healed from all the wear and tear of daily life … 
  8. Admirable Friendship
    Admirable Friendship November 13, 2002 Practicing the Dhamma is primarily an issue of looking at yourself, looking at your own thoughts, your own words, your own deeds, seeing what’s skillful, seeing what’s not. It’s not so much an issue of self-improvement as one of action-improvement, word-improvement, and thought-improvement. This is an important distinction, because people in the … 
  9. Occupy Your Space
     … Just because a thought comes through the mind doesn’t mean that it’s your thought. He says that any thought that’s not in your best interest, you can say, “That’s not me, that’s not mine.” Let it go. It doesn’t matter where you picked it up. You may have picked it up years back when something somebody said somehow … 
  10. In & of Themselves
     … While you’re sitting right here, thoughts of your children, thoughts of your family, thoughts of work, thoughts of home, thoughts of your parents: That’s all “world.” And you want to develop a sense of samvega about the mind state that goes out looking for fulfillment in the world, realizing it’s like that mouse pad I saw one time. It had a … 
  11. In Search of What is Skillful
     … He describes the basic formula for right mindfulness, and then once the mind is settled in, he says to stay focused on, say, the body in and of itself, but don’t think any thoughts related to the body. In other words, you drop directed thought and evaluation, and that’s how you get in the second jhana. Which implies that in the establishing … 
  12. Determined to Be Undefeated by Death
     … realizing that the thoughts that you cling to in the mind are the ones that are really going to be making a difference in where your mind is going to go. So you want to be very picky about which thoughts you hold onto and which thoughts you let go. As the Buddha says, when you’re dying, the first thing you have to … 
  13. Vitakka & Vicara
     … In other words, you engage in these two activities—thinking of something first and then thinking about it, or directing your thoughts to a topic and then commenting on it—and then you break into speech. Without having had those verbal thoughts in the mind, there would be no external verbal action. They’re the mental activities that precede speech. They’re also two … 
  14. An Island above the Flood
     … As for any thoughts with regard to the world at all—greed or distress with reference to the world—you put those thoughts aside. You subdue them. Vineyya, the verb used here, is a verb that’s related to a Vinaya, or discipline. You discipline those thoughts. You don’t give them any space in your mind. Now, there are times when the Buddha … 
  15. The Duty to Be Positive
     … Each of the four noble truths has a duty, and thinking about thoughts that wear you down—about what’s wrong with you, things you’ve done in the past that you feel ashamed of—is not one of your duties. Those sort of thoughts are not to be developed. What you should develop are factors of the path. And one of the factors … 
  16. Monologue on the Breath
     … One part is called directed thought, when you decide what you’re going to talk about. The other part is evaluation, when you make comments on what you’re thinking about, deciding whether you like it or not, or turning it into stories, or analyzing it. So here we’re trying to focus both the directed thought and evaluation on one thing: on the … 
  17. The Taste vs. the Reality
     … And the taste of the thought is very different from the actual emotion of being there. So if a particular thought is really beguiling, ask yourself what it would really be like to go to that particular state of being. You’d probably find yourself wishing you had some quiet time to be by yourself. But here you already have quiet time to be … 
  18. Where the Mind & Body Meet
     … You’ll notice thoughts come up, and the mind, if you’re not careful, loses its full-body frame of reference and shrinks down to a size smaller than the thought to get inside the thought. Then it goes up and down as the thought goes up and down. You have to remind yourself that you have a place where you can step out … 
  19. Developing Absorption
     … But then when things are good, then you can be with the breath, but don’t think thoughts about the breath. In other words, just hold that perception in mind, and just be with the breath, with the breath. As he says elsewhere, “If you think skillful thoughts all day, it can get to be tiring for the mind.” They may be good thoughts … 
  20. Friendship Leading to Seclusion
     … Those thoughts, the thoughts about the right version of these things, are your loyal friends inside. Because you need friends to encourage you, “Yes, you can do this.” If you find yourself feeling lonely, they can talk you into realizing that you’ve got a good opportunity here to really get to know yourself. If you’re feeling discouraged, they give you encouragement. When … 
  21. Empathetic Joy Is Ennobling
     … Which means you have to develop thoughts of goodwill at times when you’re not feeling happy, too. If the breath is uncomfortable, the body’s uncomfortable, that’s no time to have ill will or thoughts of being put upon. Think of the Buddha’s image of the person being sawn into pieces by a group of bandits. He said that if, when … 
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