Search results for: "Thought"

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  2. Why Mindfulness
     … thoughts that lead to suffering and thoughts that lead away from suffering—in other words, thoughts that were unskillful and thoughts that were more skillful. So he decided to step back and look at these two types of thoughts to see what quality of mind was motivating each thought. If there was sensual desire, ill will, or a thought of cruelty, he knew that … 
  3. When Ill Will Is in Fashion
     … You develop it with directed thought and evaluation, with no directed thought and a modicum of evaluation, with no directed thought and no evaluation, with rapture, without rapture, with enjoyment, with equanimity. Then you do the same with the brahmavihāras:** You start with goodwill, then on to compassion, empathetic joy, and then equanimity with directed thought and evaluation, with no directed thought and a … 
  4. Distractive Thoughts
    The Buddha taught five ways of dealing with distracting thoughts, and it’s good to know all five. If you know just one way of dealing with them, you’ll find that one way doesn’t cover all the contingencies, all the different ways the mind can find to distract itself. So as meditators, it’s good for us to have a large repertoire … 
  5. The Choice Not to Suffer
     … The Buddha said that he himself got onto the path to the end of suffering when he noticed that he could choose which way to think, and that his thoughts fell into two sorts. There were thoughts that led to harm for himself and for others, and there were thoughts that led to no harm for anyone. The first type of thoughts were thoughts … 
  6. The Dhamma Wheel in the Heart
     … In the same way, you want to block your thoughts if they’re heading in the wrong direction. Now, there is a problem if you find yourself blocking thoughts and you didn’t know why. If you know why you’re blocking the thought, that’s perfectly legitimate. You see that it’s based on sensuality, ill will, harmfulness. Those are thoughts you want … 
  7. Thoughts to Control Your Thoughts
  8. Unskillful Thinking
     … You want to stay outside the thought. So whatever thoughts come up—good thoughts, bad thoughts, thoughts about the past, thoughts about the future—just shoot them down. In other words, you know they’re there, but you don’t have to get involved. If you don’t get involved, they go away. This is an important lesson in training the mind, seeing that … 
  9. Inner Voice Lessons
     … Then there’s the act of getting interested, paying attention to it, followed by the question, “What’s this thought about?” Then the mind labels, “Oh, this is a thought about x, this is a thought about y.” And that turns it into a full fledged thought. So the question is: Can you watch the stirring that would normally lead to a thought and … 
  10. Groundwork
     … In ordinary right resolve, you resolve not to indulge in thoughts of sensual pleasures, not to indulge in thoughts of ill will, not to indulge in thoughts of harmfulness. Then as the mind begins to settle down, that level of right resolve turns into the directed thought and evaluation of concentration, because you realize you could be thinking thoughts of renunciation, goodwill, compassion, and … 
  11. A Stranger to Your Thoughts
     … Sometimes the simple act of putting that little question mark next to your thought is enough to kill it. It’s the kind of thought that survives only because it’s subterranean. As soon as it sees the light of day, it dies. Like certain worms that live underground, as soon as they are exposed to the outside air they die. Other thoughts don … 
  12. Right View, Right Attention
     … We tend to go through life with a lot of thoughts running through our minds. It’s like a cloud of thoughts. This thought comes, that thought comes in. Some of them hang around for a while, others come and go. And it’s up to us to decide which ones we want to focus our attention on. So it’s good to have … 
  13. Using Right Resolve Rightly
     … But thoughts of renunciation don’t simply stop right there. They turn around and say, “What can I find inside that would create a greater sense of well-being?” This is where your thoughts of renunciation become more noble. In other words, you’re focused on the directed thought and evaluation of concentration: “How do I get to understand my breath? How do I … 
  14. Nuclear Thinking
    Nuclear Thinking January, 2003 Thoughts come and go, but we keep trying to make them stay. In fact we’ve gotten pretty good at making them stay. Without that habit, we wouldn’t be able to speak, to hold conversations, to think anything through. So this habit has its uses, but also its drawbacks. It can weigh us down with all kinds of suffering … 
  15. Chickens from Hell
    Chickens from Hell September 17, 2016 We like to feed on our thoughts, which is why we feed them. We gain entertainment from them. We gain help with our occupation in life, especially if we’re employed in a job that rewards thinking. So to keep the thoughts going, we just keep feeding, feeding, feeding them. But as the Buddha noted, our thoughts then … 
  16. Train Hopping
    Normally we spend our lives like hobos, hopping from one train of thought to another. We can cover a lot of ground, just as trains can go all over the country. But can you imagine what it would be like if you spent all your life just on trains? You’d never really arrive anywhere in particular and you’d get very strange ideas … 
  17. Thinking & Not Thinking
     … It would be more restful not to think, so you relax any tension around your distracting thoughtl Then the final one, if none of those methods work, is to grit your teeth, put your tongue against the roof of the mouth, and just tell yourself, “I will not think that thought.” In other words, you replace the distracting thought with this thought: “I will … 
  18. Equanimity as a Factor of Awakening
     … A thought comes in, and it’s not so much the actual content of the thought that pulls you in. There’s a lot of power of suggestion around it, a lot of hype in the mind. This is what you’ve got to learn to be skeptical about. When these thoughts come in, you have to ask, “Is this really true? Is this … 
  19. Yes & No
     … the world of your thoughts; the world of your plans for sensual pleasures; thoughts of ill will, thoughts of restlessness, anxiety, uncertainty, whatever. This is where Mara can catch you. You have to learn how to say No to those thoughts. But you have to do it wisely. You can’t just say No and expect them to go away. I was reading this … 
  20. Investigative Work
     … One of the things we’ve got to learn how to do is to get some control over our thoughts, get the mind as quiet as possible, because we’re so constantly bombarded by thoughts that we don’t have any opportunity to see the thoughts clearly. It’s only when we can get the mind really still, and then notice what happens when … 
  21. The Uses of Fear
     … In other words, you step out of the thought and see it as a part of a causal process. This thought leads to that reaction, that reaction leads to that thought, that thought leads to that reaction, and so on. To get out of these trains of thought, you also want to see how each thought gets put together. Why do thoughts arise to … 
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