Search results for: "Thought"
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- Cutting Through the Hype… Notice which thoughts keep you with the breath, which thoughts pull you away. For the time being, side with the thoughts that keep you with the breath. You want to make it more pleasant to be here. Try to keep the breath comfortable. Don’t force it too much. There’s a tendency when we decide to concentrate on something that we clamp down …
- Only Natural… When the Buddha talks about directed thought and evaluation as one of the factors of right concentration, if you’re not familiar with what he’s referring to, it sounds as if you’re going to have to do something new you’ve never done before. But the phrase, “directed thought and evaluation,” is simply another name for talking to yourself. So now, as …
- To Gladden the Mind… With those thoughts in mind, then you can get back to the breath and develop those qualities: the qualities that the Buddha developed himself and that he didn’t lay exclusive claims to. He opened the path to everybody. So here it is, open to you. Let these thoughts be uplifting.
- Guided Meditation… So start off with thoughts of goodwill, wishing for your own happiness and the happiness of everybody around you. The first place to start is with thoughts of goodwill for yourself, because if you can’t wish goodwill for yourself, it’s hard to wish goodwill for anyone else. Just tell yourself, “May I be happy. May I find true happiness,” with an emphasis …
- A Producer Mentality… being resolved on giving up sensuality, in other words, giving up your fascination with thoughts of sensual pleasures; giving up ill-will; giving up harmfulness. These are precisely the things you need to give up in order to get the mind to where it’s secluded from sensuality, secluded from unskillful thoughts, unskillful mental states, so that you can get into the first jhana …
- Before Your Face Was Born… When you can admit that to yourself—that what you thought made you special was really a waste of time—that’s when you learn humility. And when you learn humility, you’re ready to learn what you really need to know. So it’s good to come to the practice with an attitude of humility. We’ve been making mistakes all along. It …
- The Energy to Be Generous… You’ve got burdensome thoughts, burdensome attitudes. That’s already weighing down the mind. Then when someone else says something you don’t like, you feel like you’re being oppressed. Well, part of the human world is that people are going to say a lot of things you don’t like. That’s one of the reflections that the Buddha has you think …
- Put Some Heart into Your Practice… You see this especially when the Buddha talks about thoughts of goodwill. He says that if you think that ill will is appropriate in any situation, that’s wrong view. Your tendency to dismiss other people, to say that they’re not worth your attention, they don’t deserve to be happy: That’s wrong view. It makes it impossible to get on the …
- Becomings… That’s a scary thought. Just as scary is the thought that you could actually go where you really crave to go, but then you learn the fine print only after you get there, and the fine print is all about more aging, illness, and death. So you want to be able to understand these processes as they’re happening right now so that …
- The Field Hospital… And we’re attached especially to our thoughts about those things, our plans for those things—we crave the craving. This is where craving gets tricky: We have to deal with many layers all at once, even with just this one kind of craving. As the Buddha said, you can’t get past it unless you have a pleasure that’s not sensual: in …
- Skillful Effort… There’s a very common line of thought here saying that there are two ways of approaching the practice. One is trying very hard, exerting an effort, and being miserable, with all your thoughts focused on the future. The other is relaxing into the present, into the Dhamma that’s already here. Now, if those were the only two choices, it’s obvious which …
- The Mind Like Water… Just because a thought labels itself as your thought, that this is what you think, doesn’t mean that you have to believe the label. There are some thoughts that keep coming through the mind and you’re familiar with them because they come so many times that there’s the attitude that, “Of course, these are my thoughts; of course, these are my …
- Concentration Teamwork… In other words, you’re secluding your mind from thoughts about the sensual pleasures you might want to enjoy. You’re secluding it from unskillful states. And the fact that you’re not bothering the mind with those things gives you a sense of ease, a sense of well-being. In Ajaan Lee’s explanation, the sense of rapture and pleasure comes from the …
- Worlds… Our bodies are filled with thoughts. We ordinarily think of thoughts as filling the mind, but they also take place in the body as well. The mind is what does the thinking, but parts of the body get involved in the process. This is how we carry those whole worlds around. You sit here with your body, and all of the sudden it turns …
- Ajaan Suwat’s Gift… We’re responsible for our thoughts, our words, our deeds. We can’t be responsible for anybody else’s. Yet all too often that’s what we’re concerned about. We want to stop somebody else from doing this, or encourage them to do that, without turning around to look, well, are we doing what’s right? This is why we train our minds …
- Skilled in Aims… In fact, it’s when the mind gets past sensual thoughts, secluded from sensual thoughts and secluded from all types of unskillful dhammas—unskillful qualities from wrong view all the way up through wrong mindfulness—that you lift the level of your mind. You give it a good foundation inside—a sense of well-being inside—that doesn’t have to depend on any …
- Knowing the Body from Within… But you also want to be able to pull yourself out at any time, in case a thought world turns vicious, so it’s good to gain practice in just staying with the body. Think of “body, body, body,” keeping the body in and of itself as your frame of reference. If a thought does arise, and you can sense where in the body …
- Damming & Diverting… In other words, take the energy in the emotion and have it flow into something that’s actually skillful, like the skillful practice of concentration or other skillful thoughts outside. If there’s passion, divert the passion into doing your practice well. As you keep the mind in control like this, you begin to get a better sense of what’s going on: how …
- Noble Conversation… We’re dealing with directed thought and evaluation in both cases. And the more you can control your directed thoughts—directing them to topics that are useful, and evaluating how much is enough conversation—then the easier it gets to exercise the same discretion while you’re meditating. What should you be talking to yourself about? How should you be analyzing it? When you …
- The Power of Present Kamma… And then you engage in the second kind of fabrication, verbal fabrication, which is directed thought and evaluation, vitakka and vicara in Pali. Directed thought means choosing a topic. Evaluation means expanding on it, either making comments or asking questions. These two activities constitute the way we talk to ourselves. We focus on a topic and then we make comments about it. So here …
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