Search results for: "Thought"

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  2. Gather ’Round the Breath
     … It may be a really good thought, and it would be nice to tie things up with a clean sense of closure, but you say: nope, nope, nope. You come right back. After all, if you try to finish the thoughts first, you’re giving priority to the thought. Thoughts have their internal rules, their internal logic, and if you get stuck into those … 
  3. Make a Difference
     … With any thoughts that go off in terms of sensuality, ill-will, or harmfulness, you beat them back just as a cowherd would beat back the cows during the rainy season when the rice is growing, for fear that the cows might get into the rice, and then there’d be trouble. Then you have to replace these thoughts with better thoughts: thoughts of … 
  4. Changing Your Default Settings
     … In other words, you learn how to get in touch with the feeling tone around your thoughts, and you can begin to realize that many times it’s pretty arbitrary. Some thoughts have certain associations with them, and as soon as those associations come, you start breathing in one way. With other thoughts, other associations, you breathe in another way. Look at the thoughts … 
  5. Mind in & of Itself
     … Contemplate the body to counteract thoughts of lust. Contemplate goodwill to counteract thoughts of anger. In other words, you do what you can to keep these thoughts in check and to encourage ones that are more conducive to getting the mind to settle down. For instance, if you’re thinking thoughts of goodwill, first it’s goodwill for yourself. Ask yourself: If you really … 
  6. Doubts
    One of the purposes of the practice is to develop the skill to think the thoughts you want to think, and not think the thoughts you don’t want to think. And as we all know, a lot of the meditation is about not thinking thoughts. If any thoughts do come up as you’re trying to focus on the breath, if they’re … 
  7. Thoughts, Wanted and Unwanted
    One of the goals of meditation is learning how to gain some control over your thoughts, so that you think the thoughts you want to think and don’t think the thoughts you don’t want to think. There are several strategies that we employ. Focusing on the breath is one of them. This gives you something to fall back on. Whenever you find … 
  8. Your Own Karma
     … The thought is actually related to that tension in that particular part of the body. Whether it’s in the heart or the arm or in the leg or wherever it is, there’s a location for the thought. You just breathe through that pattern of tension and the thought goes away. The fifth way of dealing with thoughts when they come in and … 
  9. Oppressed by Old Kamma
     … When something comes into the mind—say a thought of irritation or a thought of boredom comes in—the first question is: “Why should I believe this?” Second question: “What’s actually is going on here? What’s the process? How did this thought arise? And how does it assume authority?” Often a particular thought assumes authority because it gets into the body. You … 
  10. What Are You Taking into the Future?
     … The craving is in the thought about that thing. And the clinging is there, and then the suffering is right there. So with your thoughts about what you’d like to see or hear or smell or taste or touch in the future, your craving is not there at those things in the future. The craving is right here at the thoughts going through … 
  11. Mindfulness Immersed in the Breath
     … That may help you stay disentangled from the thoughts, and often when the thoughts don’t attract your attention, they begin to get lighter, then dissolve away. If they don’t, and you find yourself getting pulled into them again, try to notice where in the body you feel tension that corresponds with a thought. Thoughts can’t stay in your awareness unless there … 
  12. Metta & Merit
     … So it’s good to spread some thoughts of goodwill to make it a little bit more positive, or as much more positive as you can manage. The thing about spreading thoughts of goodwill is that when you spread those thoughts, it doesn’t stop there. There’s a responsibility that goes with them, which is to carry through. And although you may be … 
  13. When the Mind Is Still
     … When a thought appears, look for where in your sense of the breath and the body there’s a tightness or a little knot of energy getting tangled up around that thought. Sometimes the tangle appears first, then you slap a perception on it. You say, “This is a thought about x or a thought about *y,” *and then you run with it. By … 
  14. Bojjhanga: Discernment Fosters Concentration
     … In other words, if you’re thinking in ways that tend to branch out and create more thoughts—and then, more thoughts based on that—you need some tools to put an end to the process. You need thoughts to counteract your thoughts. That’s what the teachings on inconstancy and not-self are for. As you’re trying to get the mind settled … 
  15. Go, Do Jhana
     … We have a tendency that, once a thought arises, we want to peer into it: “What’s this about?” And if it doesn’t seem to make sense, “Well, how can we make sense out of this?” We get more and more involved in taking it on, making it an intelligible thought, an intelligent thought, making it a thought worth thinking. But if you … 
  16. Centered
     … And so the processes of thoughts, as they arise and pass away, become a lot clearer. You can see the machinations of the mind as it creates a thought. And as in the video game, you can zap the thoughts whenever and wherever they appear. Because it’s not that thoughts don’t have a place in the body. For a thought to stay … 
  17. The Shape of a Circle
     … You can’t really find any true happiness here.” Keep that thought in mind. Sometimes that much is enough to keep you from getting totally swallowed up in the thought world. In other words, proper form here doesn’t necessarily mean you have to sit in formal meditation, but you do have that thought in the back of your mind, that whatever comes up … 
  18. Letting Go
     … As for any other thoughts that come into the mind that are not related to the breath, just let them go. Actually, the mind doesn’t have a hand where it’s holding on to these things. Letting go means that you don’t continue playing along with them, you don’t get engaged with them. A thought will appear, and that’s a … 
  19. The End of Uncertainty
     … Even the thoughts we know to be true: To what extent are they really true? If you think of truth as the correspondence between your thought and the thing it represents, no thought can be totally true. Each thought is just a sketch. There’s no one thought that can comprehend all the many levels of truth out there. Each thought is just an … 
  20. Goodwill & Gratitude
     … Sometimes you’ll be sitting and meditating, and thoughts of someone else will come up, either simply as a thought or as a vision, and before the thought goes away, think thoughts of goodwill to that person. May that person look after him- or herself with ease. This helps the vision go away easily. The thoughts will go away with fewer hooks, let’s … 
  21. Staying Grounded
     … After all, the Buddha doesn’t say not to think at all, just don’t go inhabiting your thought worlds. Try to gain some control over your thoughts. And especially watch out for the thoughts that tend to get involved in conflict—the thoughts that begin with, “I am the thinker.” So, what kind of thoughts would not get involved in conflict? How about … 
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