Search results for: "Thought"

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  2. The Five Hindrances
     … You look at your thoughts as part of a cause-and-effect pattern. When you can deal with them in the proper way—with this ability to see them simply as events in the mind rather than your entering into them as worlds—then you find that the other hindrances begin to fall away as well. When you enter into your thoughts as worlds … 
  3. Responsible for Your Goodness
     … All too often we nourish ourselves with thoughts of our own importance, or thoughts of sensuality, thoughts of who knows what. And that kind of food is not necessarily good for the mind because often those thoughts can poison whatever goodness we may have. The Buddha gives an example of someone who’s practicing concentration and starts thinking about how his concentration is better … 
  4. A Positive-Sum Game
     … And as for thoughts that go in any other direction, just put them aside. This is a game where there are no losers. Each time you can put aside a thought, you win. As for the thought, it doesn’t lose. It just goes away. There’s no person there losing. So just keep coming back to the breath. See how long you can … 
  5. Setbacks
     … You thought things were going well, everything was taken care of, and all of a sudden you’re shown an area where more work needs to be done. Well, don’t let yourself get upset. Just realize that there’s more to this than you may have thought. After all, we’re training the whole mind and not just a few random skills. We … 
  6. Rewriting the Mind’s Song
     … Like thoughts of goodwill for all beings: Think them every day, every day, day after day, until that becomes the new normal for your mind. Because those attitudes of unlimited goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity are Brahma attitudes—the attitudes of a being on a very high level. And you would like to bring your mind up to that level. Otherwise, you’re … 
  7. Carrying Your Duties Lightly
     … So learn how to cut off thoughts mid-sentence, when they’re still unresolved. There are various ways you can do this. One is to remind yourself that death could come at any time. Those fires off to the south: Some weird wind could come up and just blow right through the monastery, blow the fires right through the monastery and that’d be … 
  8. What We Have in Common
     … Three, you express goodwill in your thoughts. As long as we’re extending thoughts of goodwill to one another, it’s a lot easier to live together, to sympathize with one another’s desire for happiness across our cultural differences. The fourth quality is generosity. If you have something to share, you share it with the group. This creates a sense of camaraderie. I … 
  9. To Delight in the Path
     … The Pali term for objectification, papañca, sometimes is translated as “proliferating thoughts,” but the Buddha doesn’t talk about papañca in terms of how many thoughts arise. It’s the type of thoughts that are the problem. Papañca thoughts are thoughts based on the perception, “I am the thinker.” When you have a thinker, then you’re a being, and a being needs to … 
  10. Comprehending Suffering
     … That’s a painful thought. You can’t just sit around and relax. But even those this is a painful thought, it’s that’s. It’s like the tension on a bow in a bow and arrow. If there’s no tension on the string, the arrow’s not going to go anywhere. There’s also pleasure not of the flesh: the pleasure … 
  11. The Best Place to Practice
     … And the question isn’t, “Is it your thought? Is it somebody else’s thought?” Although sometimes it’s helpful to think, “Where did I get this particular pattern of thinking? Who did I pick that up from? What’s the tone of voice? Is that something I want to identify with?” still, the real issue is: What are you going to do with … 
  12. Our Variegated Minds
     … Verbal is directed thought and evaluation. Mental is feeling and perception. These are the things we’re trying to train here as we concentrate on the breath. Take the breath as your object; That’s bodily fabrication. You direct your thoughts repeatedly to the breath and you evaluate the breathing, so that it becomes more comfortable. In other words, you bring knowledge and awareness … 
  13. All Eye
     … Eka would be one, and agga is often thought to mean point, but agga doesn’t mean point. It means the summit of something, like the ridge on a roof or the summit of a mountain. It also means a gathering place, which seems to be the translation closest to what the Buddha’s trying to get at here. There’s a gathering place … 
  14. Seriously Happy
     … I know a lot of people who say, “That’s an awful lot of thought put into your actions.” But if you’re serious about your happiness, this is what you’ve got to do. Too many people are too lazy to really want happiness. And if you don’t put thought into your actions, what are you going to put it into? Think … 
  15. Mindful of Your Potentials
     … He thought a lot. He thought very carefully, very precisely. He thought very usefully. That was what was special about his thinking. He didn’t just let his wheels churn. When the mind had something useful to think about, he’d think about it. When the time came to stop, he’d stop. It’s like having a place to keep your knife, like … 
  16. Walking Meditation: Stillness in Motion
     … You’re not going off entirely into some other thought world. This keeps you grounded. It gives you a place to return to as soon as you’ve done whatever work needs to be done in that thought world. Otherwise, you hop trains, from one train of thought to the next train of thought, like a hobo, and you end up in Lincoln, Nebraska … 
  17. Perceiving the Breath
     … But if you think about thoughts of anger, thoughts of jealousy or lust, where is it going to take you? If the mind keeps coming back to these things, it’s going to start wanting to go off and do these things, act on these things, and do you really want to do that? Haven’t you had enough? That’s a second way … 
  18. Behind the Scenes
    One of the reasons why we start the meditation with thoughts of goodwill for all beings in all directions—along with thoughts of compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity—is to put the mind in the right frame to meditate. Otherwise, we bring the issues of the day into our meditation. Instead of focusing on the breath, we focus on what we did or somebody … 
  19. The Five Strengths
     … That in itself is really nourishing thought. And it’s a wise thought because it reminds you where to look. You look inside. So try to focus more attention on the breath. Notice how it feels when it comes in, how it feels when it goes out. You can focus your attention on the breath at any spot in the body where it’s … 
  20. Intelligent Respect
     … Being reasonable, you check the results of your thoughts in practice, to see what kind of actions they lead to and what results from the actions. If the results are bad, you go back and adjust your thoughts so that the results are good. There are some aspects of the Dhamma that may not be logical, but they’re always reasonable. At the same … 
  21. Stop & Think
     … When you think in these ways, then you’ve thought well. And you know you’ve thought well because then you can go to the stopping-and-not-thinking kind of meditation and really get to work.
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