Search results for: "Thought"

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  2. Using What You’ve Got
     … perceptions and thought constructs. This again is where concentration comes in handy, because you’ve been learning about perceptions and thought constructs as you get the mind concentrated, so you’re more familiar with the way they fashion your reality. The more you apply them consciously, then the more you can catch them as they do things in a subconscious way. This is why … 
  3. Calm & at Ease
     … If you’re going to start thinking unskillful thoughts, you have a tendency to block out the memory of certain people. It’s as if those people had never existed in the world: the Buddha, Ajaan Mun, Ajaan Lee, Upasika Kee. In that way, you’re free to think your unskillful thoughts. But when you realize that this is not healthy, you want to … 
  4. The Trick to Staying in Place
     … After all, every thought that stays in the mind has some connection with the body as well. There’s going to be a little pattern of tension, maybe in your neck, maybe in your legs, anyplace in the body at all. If you detect the tension that arises together with the thought, you can dissolve the thought away by just breathing through the tension … 
  5. Cut the Currents
     … Don’t let any currents of thought go straying away, but if they do stray away, bring them right back. It’s those currents of thought that you have to watch out for. It’s interesting—the Buddha talks so much about heedfulness. He says it’s the basis for all skillful qualities; it’s the basis for the five faculties, the five strengths … 
  6. Not Siding with the Hindrances
     … We spend so much time being interested in our own thoughts that when we make up our minds to stay with the breath and just be observant and not really think about anything, it goes against the grain. We have to tell ourselves that our thoughts are not all that interesting, but it hurts. It’s almost an insult. But stop and think of … 
  7. To Begin the Day
    It’s good to begin your morning meditation with thoughts of goodwill. Just tell yourself, “May I be happy. May I understand the causes for true happiness and be willing and able to act on them.” That sets your intention for the day. Then spread goodwill to everybody. Think of all the beings to the east: May they all be happy. May the beings … 
  8. Seeing Through Your Defilements
     … Your thoughts are no longer divided into the categories of what you’d like or what seems powerful, most pressing in the mind. It’s more a question of, “If I continued to think this thought, where would it lead?” realizing that you have the choice not to continue with it. Then you look at the thought not in terms of its content, but … 
  9. Karma in the Present
     … directed thought and evaluation. Direct your thoughts to the breath. Evaluate the breath. Do you like this breath? If you don’t, you can try another one. It’s like trying on a different set of clothes. You don’t like this set of clothes, you change them for another one. You find something you like, then you wear it. If, after a while … 
  10. Feeding Off the Future
     … So look at where you’re weighing yourself down with unnecessary problems, unnecessary unskillful thoughts. And if the unskillful thoughts keep coming up in the mind, you’ve got to remind yourself: You don’t have to play along with them. If you play along with them, that’s when you’re carrying them. If they just happen to come in through the force … 
  11. On the Surface of Things
     … The same with thoughts: Any thoughts that deal with anything else, let them go. Pay attention to the thoughts that are about the breath, and see if you can settle down on this level of awareness, where you’re aware of what’s immediately apparent. Don’t try to go behind the scenes. Don’t think about the narratives of who’s meditating or … 
  12. Radical Questioning
     … On the one hand, you’ve understood the thinker better, but also there was a sense of distancing that you aren’t taken in by that person’s thought world. You could look at it from the outside. In the same way, you want to be able to do this with your own thoughts. Learn how to question the assumptions, especially the assumptions where … 
  13. Self-Correct
     … It’s the same with your thoughts. If you don’t pay them any attention, after a while they leave. And like dogs, they may whine for a while and complain, but you just say, “I don’t need you,” and eventually they’ll go away. Or you can notice the fact that when you’re thinking a distracting thought, it takes some energy … 
  14. Heedfulness Is Auspicious
     … As he said, the proper response to those thoughts is not to get wound up in remorse. It’s simply to recognize, okay, that was a mistake. You resolve not to repeat the mistake, and then you develop thoughts of goodwill again, for everybody, thoughts of compassion, empathetic joy, equanimity for all the beings in the universe. This is partly to reinforce your determination … 
  15. True to the Teachings
     … He thought first of his two teachers, the people who had first taught him meditation years back, but he realized that they had passed away and had gone to the formless realms, where they were out of reach. Then he thought of the five monks who had been his attendants throughout his many years of austerities, and who had left him when he started … 
  16. The Energy You Broadcast
     … Other thoughts will come in, the result of past kamma, but if you spend all your time getting engaged with those, you’ve thrown away your original intention. So you’ve got to hold to your original intention regardless, and use the energy of that intention to repel any thoughts that might come in. This is related to the Thai word for what they … 
  17. The Heightened Mind
     … In the description of the first jhāna, the Buddha says you have directed thought and evaluation after you’ve put aside thoughts of sensuality and all unskillful qualities like wrong view, wrong resolve, wrong speech, wrong action, all the wrong versions of the path. Then you direct your thoughts to the breath and you evaluate the breath. In Thai, the term for a directed … 
  18. Guarded
     … Your own mind is filled with all kinds of thoughts; you have to be guarded around your own thoughts. So learn how to be guarded but, at the same time, don’t take that sense of being guarded as a weight. Do what you can to lighten the load. Nourish yourself with a sense of well-being inside. Look after your breath, look after … 
  19. Between You and Your Eyes
    The Buddha’s teachings are primarily about things that are immediately present to our awareness—the feeling of the breath, the movements of the body, thoughts moving in the mind: things immediately present, but things that we tend to miss, things we’re pretty ignorant about. When we suffer, we think we know suffering, but we don’t really. When we have a desire … 
  20. A Wilderness Mind at Home
     … Any thoughts that pull you away from here you know are thoughts you don’t want to get involved with. Do your best to let them go. If you find yourself wandering off and chatting up the past or chatting up the future, just drop the conversations and come back here. Remind yourself that the breath is always here, coming in, going out. The … 
  21. Insights
     … In other words, as you’re staying with the breath, you can see a thought beginning to move out, and you want to be able not to go with it. In other words, there goes the thought, but you’re still right here with the breath. You’ll see that the thought only goes a certain distance and then it disappears, because you’re … 
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