Search results for: "Thought"

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  2. Not What You Are, What You Do
     … You’re directing your thoughts to the breath and evaluating the breath. You use certain perceptions, and certain feelings get involved. These are all elements in the factor of fabrication, which comes right after ignorance. We breathe ignorantly. We perceive things through ignorance. Our thoughts about things, the way we evaluate things, and our use of language generally are done with ignorance. As a … 
  3. The Mind’s Song
     … This position of the observer is a very important part of the meditation — the observer that doesn’t go singing along with the different rhythms or thoughts coming through the mind, but watches them as events. When you’re watching things as events, you can decide which things are worth following through with and which ones are not. Of course, you sometimes find yourself … 
  4. The Pain of Conviction
     … The Buddha said that simply making the determination that you want to be skillful, even before you act much on it, is, in and of itself, a skillful thought, and you want to encourage that. And the best way to encourage that is follow through with it. As for the thoughts that tend to be self-destructive, you have to ask yourself: Why you … 
  5. Shame & Compunction
     … Your thoughts—you want to have skillful thoughts. Try to approach life the same way that you would approach a craft: You want to perfect your skills. And given that you’ve developed a certain level of skill already, you don’t want to be sloppy in your work. You care. This is a principle you see throughout Asia. I’ve been to Japan … 
  6. Persistence
     … I could use another hour of sleep”? How do you get past that thought? How do you motivate yourself to want to get up in spite of that thought? When the meditation gets difficult, and there’s a voice in the mind that says, “Things are going poorly today; it’d be better to stop meditating”: How do you argue yourself out of that … 
  7. Goodwill in Heart & Mind
     … We think of the example of Ajaan Mun, who would spread thoughts of goodwill to all beings at least three times a day. We give the practice a try. I’ve heard many people complain that they can think thoughts of goodwill, but they don’t get any warm feeling out of it. Well, it’s not necessary to have the warm feeling, as … 
  8. For the Cessation of Dukkha
     … If you thought that thought, what would it accomplish? Where would it lead you? We have this tendency to be fascinated by all our thoughts, to side with whatever thought comes up in the mind. You have to change the alliances, change your allegiance. The whole mind is a complex thing. This is why our suffering bewilders us, because it’s coming out of … 
  9. Control
     … Forms arise, but they have to pass away; the same for feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, consciousness. You can’t always say, “I want my body to be like this. I want my feelings to be like that,” and expect them to be that way. Simply telling them to do things doesn’t necessarily make them do it. You can tell the body not to … 
  10. May I Look After Myself with Ease
     … Even though there are thoughts in the mind, the breath is still here. It’s not destroyed by the thoughts. Just make this your dwelling. This is where you’re going to take your stance. And make it a nice dwelling: Make the breath comfortable. After all, “breath” here doesn’t mean just the in-and-out breath but also the many levels of … 
  11. Self-hatred
     … They’re there to act as checklists, as reminders of some of the alternatives you might not have thought of before, or that you knew before but have since forgotten. As when the Buddha talked about the five aggregates: He said there are people who manage to let go of form, feeling, perceptions, and thought constructs, but they don’t let go of consciousness … 
  12. Creating a World of Concentration
     … If you see that your thoughts are going to a particular place or a particular issue, you’ve got to figure out how to cut that issue through. That’s one of the reasons why we have these contemplations at the beginning of the meditation—there’s the contemplation of aging, illness, death, and separation; there’s the contemplation that the world is swept … 
  13. Tranquility & Insight in Tandem
     … You don’t have to tie up the loose ends of your thinking or work out the implications of that particular thought before you return. You’ve got to drop the thought. No matter what, come right back. Hopefully, you get quicker and quicker at this, to the point where you can actually sense when the mind is about to go. That’s when … 
  14. Equanimity & Exertion
     … He’d been undergoing all sorts of self-torture for six years, but finally reached the point when he realized that “This is not working.” And he thought, “Is there another way?” He’d tried sensual pleasures and that didn’t work. He’d tried self-torment and that didn’t work. What was left? He realized he’d been thinking in terms of … 
  15. Taking Responsibility
     … Then, all of a sudden, you find yourself in another thought world. The world is the process of becoming, and the going into that world is birth. So there’s this process right here. This is what you want to study: how the mind takes birth; how you start taking on an identity in one of these little thought worlds. Before you go into … 
  16. Cosmic Scale, Human Scale
     … When you’ve thought of how large the universe is, think about all the beings in the universe – and wish them goodwill. This helps in several ways. When you think about all the beings in the universe, then when you’re sitting here meditating and the meditation’s not going well, you can remind yourself, “At least I’m meditating. There are a lot … 
  17. Befriending the Breath
     … As soon as a thought gets uninteresting or unpleasant, or you just get tired of it, you jump. And as soon as you land on another thought, part of you has already tensed up to make the next jump. But tell yourself, “Here’s a place where you don’t have to jump up. You can stay here. Relax. You make this your home … 
  18. Asalha Puja
     … First he thought of his two earlier teachers, the ones who had taught him formless attainments. But then he realized that they had died and gone to the formless heavens where they were out of touch. He couldn’t reach them. So then he thought of the five brethren, those who had assisted him when he was undergoing his austerities for six years. He … 
  19. Stay with the Knowing
     … There’s that passage where the Buddha talks about people who touch something that seems really amazing in the meditation, and their first thought is, “I’ve made it. I got there.” And that thought, of course, keeps them from getting there. The proper thought is, “There’s this.” That holds you back from your normal reactions and puts you in a position where … 
  20. Treasure Island
     … the perceptions that’ll give rise to thoughts of goodwill, perceptions to help give rise to thoughts of endurance—the ability to endure, how to talk to yourself when things are difficult. These are the Buddha’s gifts. And so as you take his gifts, you make yourself wealthier in terms of knowledge. Then finally there’s discernment. You start with the discernment that … 
  21. Abandoning Effluents (3)
     … If a thought of sensuality comes up in the mind, a thought of ill will, a thought of harmfulness, or any unskillful quality, you put an end to it. You don’t just sit there and watch it. You may have to watch it for a while to understand it, but you’re watching it as a spy would watch an enemy. You watch … 
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