Search results for: "Thought"

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  2. Rhythms of the Mind
     … There’s that one passage in Majjhima 125 where, after you’ve settled down and gotten into the first jhana, you then focus on the body in and of itself—ardent, alert, and mindful—but do not think any thoughts concerning the body. In other words, you let go of your directed thought and evaluation, and you’re just there, using one perception, just … 
  3. Breath Meditation: The Third Tetrad
     … Temporary release is when the mind has been burdened down with thoughts of work or thoughts of school, thoughts of responsibilities at home, and you can get the mind—for the duration of your concentration—out from under those things. We talked today about developing a perception of wilderness. When you stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon, a lot of your concerns … 
  4. Time to Heal
     … One way or another, they’ll be able to look after themselves.” So she carried that thought around: As soon as any thought of home came up, she said, “Okay, you’ve died. You don’t have to take on that responsibility.” And she was able to stay for the two weeks. In the same way, when you find thoughts of this sort coming … 
  5. Taking Your Own Medicine
     … We’re all afraid of repression, but consciously saying No to a particular thought is not repression. Repression means you don’t even admit to yourself that the thought was there. That’s when it goes underground and turns into The Thing. You may have seen that movie a while back, about a being that has long tentacles that slip underground and come popping … 
  6. Respect for Tranquility & Insight
     … For that, you need to get the mind really, really quiet so that you can step out of the formation of thoughts and see them as something other. We live so much in our thought worlds, and we often can use one thought to step back from another. But how about stepping entirely out of those patterns of thinking? What would you gain? Whatever … 
  7. Skills for Dying Well
     … Or you can see that some of those thought worlds are actually worth entering into, because there’s something that has to be thought through—then you go in. But you go in knowing what you’re doing. This is precisely the set of skills you’re going to need at the moment of death because different thought worlds will appear and they could … 
  8. Guardian Meditations
     … I’ve always thought it was a shame that we didn’t have the text of what the Buddha taught him. All we have is the general outline. At any rate, the archer was able to gain the Dhamma Eye and became a noble disciple. The Buddha saw that this person had, buried someplace in him, the potential. Even though he’d been willing … 
  9. Happily on the Path
     … This in itself is a happy thought, because if your suffering could be ended only by things that other people do, or if it simply wore itself out on its own, that would make you powerless. But here the Buddha is saying that you have power through your actions to bring suffering to an end. That thought is a happy thought, and one of … 
  10. Addictive Thinking
    You can think of meditation as a way of overcoming addictive behavior, with the word “behavior” meaning not only things you do with the body or substances you take, but also your thoughts, because thoughts can be addictive—and not just the good ones. In the same way with addictive substances, the problem is that we think something over and over again, and even … 
  11. Breath Meditation: The Fourth Tetrad
     … This allows you to develop some dispassion for those restless thoughts, those thoughts of anxiety. You’ve seen their allure, but you’ve also seen their drawbacks. And when you see that the drawbacks outweigh the allure, you can develop dispassion for them. When you’re not feeling any passion for them, they cease. Then you can let the whole issue go—the thoughts … 
  12. The Tools of the Path
     … You get hands-on experience with them in using them to get rid of unskillful thoughts. You see what kinds of feelings lie behind the thoughts, especially if there’s a strong emotion. You look at the way you breathe to see if you can get out of the cycle when the breathing aggravates the thoughts, and the thoughts aggravate the breathing. Of course … 
  13. No Resistance
     … When you’re thinking a complex thought, you have to block things out. The mind is very good at blocking things out when you’re thinking about something you’re really interested in, something that requires a lot of analysis or a lot of details. The breath doesn’t have a lot of complex details. And because it places much less of a burden … 
  14. Your Inner Mob
     … That makes room for the thought of anger to come back in and take over again. So one thing to remind yourself of is, “It’s just the hormones in the blood, and the actual thought of anger comes and goes.” It’s the same with all the other hindrances. Just because there’s a physical symptom doesn’t mean that the emotion is … 
  15. Be Bigger Than Your Pains
     … So even though a thought may appear, make sure that it’s like a little thought balloon. You don’t go into the balloon. You watch it floating there. It appears in the mind for a minute, and then it disappears. You don’t get into it; you stay here in the body. This is why, in the Buddha’s meditation instructions, as soon … 
  16. Four Noble Questions
     … So you take advantage of that choice and say, “I’m going to identify that as physical right now and breathe through it.” That way, you nip a lot of thoughts in the bud. Otherwise, if you identify the stirring as a mental event, then it becomes a thought. A thought about what? Well, it could be a thought about tomorrow’s meal, it … 
  17. Two Hands Washing
     … as an action, as part of a causal chain. “Where does this thought come from, where is it going?” Instead of getting carried away with the content of thoughts that are really mind-blowing, or new, we simply watch them as part of a cause and effect chain, a process, to see what they do. Sometimes new thoughts are very helpful, sometimes they’re … 
  18. Right View & Right Resolve
     … The Buddha said that he got on the path where he learned how to divide his thoughts into two sorts: those that were based on sensuality, ill will, and harmfulness on the one side, and those based on renunciation, non-ill will, and harmlessness on the other. With the first sort, he said he had to keep them in check in the same way … 
  19. A Heart Bigger Than the World
    Start with thoughts of goodwill, wishing for your own happiness—your own true happiness—and the true happiness of everyone around you. Life is a lot easier when we can maintain that wish, even though we know that not everybody is going to be happy. And why is that? Because not everybody acts on the causes of true happiness. You can’t make anybody … 
  20. Limitless Thoughts
     … If you identify with your feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, consciousness, you’re limited by those things as well. So as we’re meditating, we’re trying to strip away the limitations we place on ourselves, for those limitations are much more confining than the ones that other people place on us. We counteract these limits with limitless thoughts, starting with thoughts of good will … 
  21. True Freedom of Speech
     … It comes from what you’re choosing to do, starting with the thoughts of the mind. Then you realize that from the thoughts in the mind, it comes out your mouth. This means that that’s the first place you should check to see that you actually are on the path: through the things that you say, the type of speech you engage in … 
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