Search results for: "Thought"

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  2. Alone Together
     … This means you have to put thought into your words. When you put thought into your words, other people will be willing to think about them. The third principle is that when you help other people, you genuinely help them. You don’t do things simply to make points that then you will then collect as return payment. Always looking into: “What does this … 
  3. Working from the Inside
     … directed thought, evaluation, singleness of preoccupation, pleasure, and rapture. As he pointed out, the pleasure and rapture are the results. You want to focus on the other factors first, because those are the ones you do. Directed thought relates to your mindfulness. You’re remembering to stay right with one thing. Evaluation deals with your ardency. Try to make this a good, comfortable place … 
  4. Calm & Insight
     … Verbal fabrication is what’s called directed thought and evaluation. Very simply put, it’s how you talk to yourself. You focus on a topic—that’s the directed thought—and then you make comments on it, ask questions about it, try to come up with answers: That’s the evaluation. Then, there are mental fabrications, which are perceptions and feelings. We try to … 
  5. Cleaning up Your Personal Environment
     … You can stop and look through those and clean those out, realizing that your past is now just a thought in your mind. Its influence in your mind is made up of the thoughts that are still there in the mind, but you’re in a position now where you can sort through them and decide which influences from the past will continue to … 
  6. Something to Stand On
     … Can you sense that? Can you see the connection? Can you take advantage of that connection? That pattern of tension is your little marker that keeps that thought in mind. If it’s an unskillful thought, just let it go. Try to dissolve it away as you breathe the breath energy through it. This is how breath provides a mirror for the mind. And … 
  7. Dhammacentric
     … Think of the Buddha’s first step in getting on the path, when he divided his thoughts into two sorts: motivated by sensuality, ill will, and harmfulness on one side; and renunciation, non-ill will, and harmlessness on the other side. He made the division based on two things: one, where these thoughts came from; and two, where they were going to lead, looking … 
  8. The Duties of Compassion
     … So when you’re spreading those thoughts of goodwill, that’s the thought you’re spreading: “May all beings act on skillful intentions.” And skillful intentions are informed by right views, so: “May all beings have right views.” This is why, when the Buddha taught the four noble truths, it was an act of compassion: to help beings—anyone who was willing to listen … 
  9. Issues of Control
     … The Buddha calls it directed thought and evaluation. You bring your thoughts to the breath, you notice how it’s going, you try different ways of breathing, and then you decide which ones feel best. Then consciousness is aware of all these things. So there they are: all five aggregates. If you cling to them in the wrong way, they’re going to cause … 
  10. Choosing to Believe in Your Choices
     … You can either stay with that someplace else and follow whatever the thought is or you can come back to the breath. They’re both here: the thought and the breath. And you can tell yourself, if you follow the thought, it’s nothing different from what happens when you sit around thinking anyhow. Try seeing what happens if you come back to the … 
  11. Fear & Insecurity
     … You can take your form, feelings, perceptions, thought-fabrications, consciousness, and turn them into a path—like you’re doing right now as you meditate. You’re focused on the breath, that’s form. You’re creating a feeling of well-being. You use perceptions to stay with the breath, and directed thought and evaluation, which are fabrications, to adjust the breath and the … 
  12. Streams of Anger
     … That means learning to be skillful in our thoughts, in our words, in our deeds. And part of skill, especially in words and thoughts, is thinking in ways that lead to harmony. We’ve heard many, many times that the antidote for anger and irritation is goodwill combined with equanimity. But just thinking thoughts of goodwill and equanimity won’t be enough. You have … 
  13. The Power of Intention
    We begin our meditation with thoughts of goodwill because we want to be clear about our intention in being here. We want to find a happiness that’s harmless, that takes into account the fact that other beings want to be happy, too, and that it is possible to find happiness in a way that doesn’t cause any harm to anyone at all … 
  14. Equanimity & More
     … That thought should give rise to a feeling of samvega. Where are you going go to find a true, unadulterated happiness? There’s only one place, and that’s nibbāna—and it’s not even a place. It’s another dimension entirely outside of space and time. You think about that and you realize that that would be the only way to find true … 
  15. Off to a Good Start
     … As for the thought, you don’t have to do anything with the thought that’s wandered off. You don’t have to tie up any loose ends. Just let it go, however ragged it may be. Just keep coming back to the breath, coming back to the breath. It’s always here to come back to. Each time you come back, reward yourself … 
  16. Lessons in Fabrication
     … This is how we go from one thought world to another in the course of the day. It’s also how we go from one life to another. So if you want to understand the process of what happens at rebirth, look at what the mind is doing right now as it moves from one state to another, to another. You realize that you … 
  17. The Language of the Heart (1)
     … In getting far away from sensual thoughts, far away from unskillful thoughts, the mind has the tendency to want to settle down and find some peace. And there’s your jhana, regardless of whether you thought of it or not. Years back, there was a lay Dhamma teacher who was going to spend some time in the Forest Refuge and do some work on … 
  18. Thinking Your Way to Stillness
     … He’s sitting in his little forest hut, but instead of meditating properly he’s thinking thoughts of sensuality, thoughts of ill will, thoughts of harmfulness. A deva comes to him and says, “You’re not attending appropriately the way you should be. You know how to get the mind back into right resolve, so think of the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha, virtue … 
  19. Taking the Long View
     … So he was very much taking a position on what he thought was an important topic. After all, we have to think about the things we do in order to get what we want, and the things that we can gain in the human realm often require that we do unskillful things. If, when there’s no sense of right and wrong, something seems … 
  20. Fighting the Defilements
     … And basically the power of feelings comes from their ability to get into your physical system—in other words, when a thought is strong enough that it begins to affect the way you breathe, it begins to affect the way the blood flows in your body. Just the physical sense of how your body feels, say, when there’s anger, desire, restlessness, the sense … 
  21. In Charge of Your Moods
     … If other thoughts do come into the mind, you can ignore them. They can come and they can also go. You don’t have to follow them. You don’t have to welcome them in, and you don’t have to follow them out. Just think of your thoughts as being like clouds going across the sky: There’s nothing to catch the clouds … 
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