Search results for: "Thought"

1. Page 41
2. Play AudioAllies
   Often the evening chants before we meditate have some pretty sobering thoughts. We’re subject to aging, illness, death, and separation. Our actions are important for our happiness and sorrow. This body we have here is filled with all kinds of stuff. We have to look after it. And what does it do? It just grows old and dies. But the chants don’t … 
3. Play AudioPassion for Nostalgia
    … You end up going back and you find out that it’s not the place you thought it was. Part of this of course has to do with the fact that your nostalgic memory is like every memory of sensual pleasure—it’s very selective. When you were back at that spot, in that time, there were uncertainties, there were fears, disappointments, but the … 
4. Play AudioFeeding your Attack Dogs
    … Passion for becoming, the desire to think about this little world of thought, that little world of thought: We keep these thought worlds, these attack dogs, either for the purposes of using them against other people or for our own entertainment. Because part of us feels if we didn’t have these forms of passion, we wouldn’t have the impulse or the ability … 
5. Play AudioGladden, Steady, Release
    … Does it keep slipping out after other things? Thoughts of the past, thoughts of the future? How can you let go of those things and keep the mind right here? The third step is to see if the mind needs to be released from anything, if there’s any burden that’s weighing it down, preventing it from settling in, any way that it … 
6. Play AudioIn the Mood to Meditate
    … I would have thought that, being so busy with the computer, he wouldn’t have time to talk to me. But he actually wanted to talk to me to get himself in a good mood so that he could continue with the work. This principle applies in all kinds of areas. Work that’s difficult is a lot easier when you’re in the … 
7. Play AudioAn Enduring Cheerfulness
    … When I came back after all those years in Thailand, people would ask, “What was the most difficult thing you had to endure over there?” I thought and I thought and I thought, but I couldn’t think of any one thing in particular. There were difficulties, there were hardships, but there wasn’t any one thing that stood out. I began to realize … 
8. Play AudioMeditation Prep
    … Or if you build the other kind of “I am” around the unskillful thought, that “I’m miserable,” that really shoots you down, saps your ability to counteract the thought. This is the problem with “I am”: It starts getting to issues of innate nature. If you have a bad innate nature, you can’t change it. If you have a good innate good … 
9. Play AudioChoiceful Awareness
    … no thoughts, no thoughts. When little eddies of breath energy threaten to turn into nodules, allow them to dissolve away. You don’t want to explore their content because first you want to get really, really skilled at knowing what the mind is like when a very minimal level of fabrication or choice is going on. That’s so you get more and more … 
10. Play AudioShame Yes, Guilt No
     … So if you find that the effort required to turn a thought into actual speech is too quick for you to catch, what about the thoughts just on their own? Take this as a warning, that you’ve got to be more careful, you’ve got to be more alert. This is why the precepts are a good preparation for concentration practice. You need … 
11. Play AudioEmotion
    We have a tendency to see our emotions as being especially real, as more real than our thoughts. And many people come to meditation as a way of getting back in touch with their emotions. But from the Buddha’s perspective, emotions are just as fabricated as everything else. They’re not your real nature; they’re not your real truth. You fabricate them … 
12. Play AudioLike a River Full of Water
     … They’re not just nice thoughts or restful places to put the mind. As you’re developing these attitudes, you want to develop the discernment that’s realistic, clear eyed, so that these attitudes really can apply to your day-to-day life. Otherwise, you find yourself sitting there thinking thoughts of goodwill and then you get on the road and somebody cuts in … 
13. Play AudioBe Observant
     … You don’t identify with the thoughts. Just because a thought comes into your mind doesn’t means it has to be your thought or that you have to run with it. You have your choice to take it or not. The same with the body: You have your choice of doing something or not doing it, particularly in connection to how you relate … 
14. Play AudioFreedom from Beliefs
     … So if a thought comes up saying, “Stay with the breath right now,” you follow that thought. Any thought that would come up and give you any reason for leaving the breath right now, it’s not the time, it’s not the place for that thought. It’s not Dhamma, because for the Dhamma to be Dhamma it has to be not only … 
15. Play AudioStrategic Friends
     … But if you’re really mindful, you catch these things quickly, so you realize: “I could go with that thought if I wanted to, but I don’t. So I’m not going to do that.” In that way, you’ve strengthened your mindfulness. Each time a little thought comes up like that, maintain your determination to stay here with the breath, to keep … 
16. Play AudioThe Resolve to Let Go
     … He had to think again and again and again about the drawbacks of holding on to his thoughts of sensual pleasures, his passion for sensual thoughts before he was willing to let them go and allow the mind to get into the first jhana. But he was able to do it. And he benefitted from it. And other people, following his example, have been … 
17. Play AudioGuarding Against Trouble
     … The things you don’t tolerate—the things you destroy—are thoughts of sensuality, thoughts of ill-will, and thoughts of harmfulness as they come up in the mind. In other words, you don’t just let them sit there, and you don’t say, “Hey, let’s look into this sensual desire here—this looks like it’s fun!” You have to say … 
18. Play AudioWhat You Sense Directly
     … Verbal fabrication is directed thought and evaluation, as you talk to yourself about the breath. Mental fabrication is composed of feelings and perceptions. Feelings are the feeling tones you have right here: pleasant, painful, neither pleasant nor painful. Then perceptions are the images you hold in mind that help you stay with the breath—the markers of the mind, the signposts—or the way … 
19. Play AudioModest in Manner, but Not in Goals
    Spread thoughts of goodwill, starting with yourself. Tell yourself, “May I be truly happy.” Put an emphasis on the “truly,” because it’s possible to be happy about all kinds of things on all kinds of levels, but you want to find a happiness that lasts, a happiness that doesn’t harm anybody—a happiness that comes from developing good qualities inside yourself. Then … 
20. Play AudioHindrances
     … Consider your thoughts about all the sensual pleasures you would like to have: tomorrow’s meal, what kind of things you would like to watch or listen to when you leave the monastery. Remind yourself: What do sensual pleasures give to you? They give a little bit of pleasure and then they’re gone. Ajaan Suwat used to make the comment, “Those sensual pleasures … 
21. Play AudioThe Dhamma Mirror
     … You get hands-on experience with what the Buddha means when he says, “form, feeling, perception, thought fabrication, consciousness.” The same goes for thought distractions. If you’re angry about something, you can ask yourself, “What are the perceptions you have around that? How do you talk to yourself around the anger? How are you breathing around the anger? Can you change the way … 
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