Search results for: "Thought"

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  2. On Human Nature
     … If you find yourself thinking any petty or unwise or selfish thoughts, that’s not necessarily your nature. Those are just habits you’ve picked up from your past ways of looking for happiness, but you’re not stuck there. On the other hand, though, when you’re thinking nice, kind thoughts, that’s not necessarily your innate nature, either. So you can’t … 
  3. The Skill of Stillness
     … If that thought of, “This is boring,” tries to pull you away, well, resist the thought that it’s boring. If it sounds like you’re saying that it’s boring, just assume that it’s somebody else assuming your voice. You don’t have to believe it. You don’t have to identify with it. The skill of not identifying with your thoughts … 
  4. The Forerunner of All Things
     … You can say, “Yes, I really do feel this, I really do think this,” but are those feelings and thoughts something you want to go with? After all, if the mind is capable of so many things, good and bad, you can’t trust everything that comes up out of the murk; or that whenever you shine a light down into the murk, whatever … 
  5. Choices
     … There are thoughts behind your feelings, and feelings behind your thoughts. A feeling is simply a thought that’s gotten more into the body. When you think that the body is telling you something, actually the body is not telling you anything. It’s simply conveying a message from one part of the mind to another. And just because the message goes through the … 
  6. Freedom Through Painful Practice
     … What would you do if you didn’t have it? What would you do if parts of it were paralyzed? Unusable? The immediate thought that comes in, of course, is that you really are attached to the body after all. The next question is, can you use that thought to help spur you in the practice? After all, there will come a time when … 
  7. Heedful of Ruts in the Mind
     … When you’re careless—you go through the day here, you say, “Well, I can think a few unskillful thoughts now and then, as a reward for all that time I spent meditating”—you’re just putting more ruts in the mind, so that when mindfulness lapses, that’s where you’re going to go. You have to think about this. The places where … 
  8. Your Ancestral Territory
    We begin each meditation session with chants about the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha, developing thoughts of goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity, partly so that you can develop the right environment, the right mental environment, for the practice as you’re sitting here right now, but also so that you can associate these ideas with your breath. That way—when, in the course … 
  9. Matters of Life & Death
     … Whatever thought comes into the mind that disturbs the balance, just drop it, drop it, drop it. This is where you have to learn how to strip away all the Velcro of your thoughts, so that they don’t stick, they don’t grab you. A thought can come, and you find that if you don’t grab it, it can just go right … 
  10. Thinking & Evaluating
     … What kind of thinking would actually help you put that lust aside? And what thought in the mind is resisting the idea? OFten the techniques will work if you want them to work. So you’ve got to work on the part of the mind that says, “I don’t want this to work. I want to stay with the lust.” You have to … 
  11. Admirable Friendship
     … He thought dictatorship was the best kind of government for Thailand. But that was beside the point as far as I was concerned. The point was: What were the good Dhamma lessons he had to give? What were the good things in his way of speaking, acting; the way he looked at things that I could learn from? I picked that up as best … 
  12. Honest & Observant
     … And the best way of doing that is trying to catch the distraction more and more quickly until you can see the moments where decisions are being made even before the thought is clearly a thought. This is where the discernment comes in, because you can see where the thought is going to go. It’s determined by the intention that oftentimes precedes the … 
  13. Dhamma Books & the Actuality
     … If you’re going to look for happiness, especially a happiness that’s solid and secure, the mind needs to be trained so that its thoughts don’t go and destroy its happiness. So that’s the orientation part – the directing part. But just being directed is not enough. You actually have to get down and do the work. That’s where the ardency … 
  14. Analyzing Anger
     … And then you look at the drawbacks: “If I actually acted on this anger, even if I just thought these thoughts of anger, where would they lead me? What would be the results?” You have to rub your nose in all the stupid things you’ve done under the power of anger or you’ve seen other people do under the power of anger … 
  15. Patience
     … The first thought that went through his head was that those fish would be good to eat. Immediately, it was like the ground opened beneath him, and he fell back down to earth, woke up. Just because he had that one thought, he couldn’t stay in heaven. The Buddha talks about living with virtuous people as a kind of heaven. He says it … 
  16. Messaging Your Mind
     … One, the Buddha calls directed thought and evaluation. In other words, you direct your thoughts to something and you make comments on it. It’s basically the way you talk to yourself. The other way is through perceptions. Perceptions are either individual words or images. They’re the quick way of getting a message across: the mind’s instant messaging. And these messages can … 
  17. Giving Ballast to the Mind
     … Here’s the main factor in our lives, the factor that shapes our thoughts, our words, and deeds, and through our thoughts, words, and deeds shapes the pleasures and pains we experience, yet it can turn on us in an instant. It can turn from peaceful to enraged, inflamed, and lustful. Things you used to believe, suddenly your drop. Standards you used to hold … 
  18. The Mind in Good Shape
     … Think thoughts of goodwill for yourself, as in the chant we had just now. Tell yourself, “May I be happy. May I find true happiness.” Reflect on the fact that true happiness has to come from training the mind, because no matter how good things may be outside, if your mind is in bad shape, you’re not going to be happy. Whereas if … 
  19. Take Nothing for Granted
     … directed thought, evaluation, and singleness of preoccupation. Now, directed thought and evaluation are nothing mysterious or mystical. They’re things you’re doing all the time. To direct your thoughts means you choose a topic to think about. To evaluate means you make comments on it, you ask questions about it. The mind is doing this all the time. It’s simply that now … 
  20. There’s Work to Be Done
     … The fact that your awareness is so broad helps prevent it from shrinking down so that it can enter into one of your little thought worlds. So there’s work to be done, but it’s good work—work with a sense of ease, a sense of well-being. Only when you’ve done this work can you then start letting go, first of … 
  21. Protest Your Virtue & Right View
     … You could sit here and follow your thoughts for the hour. That wouldn’t accomplish much. But you can also watch the mind as it creates a thought and see the processes, and that’s where it gets interesting because that’s where you understand how you process things—and it’s how you process things that is causing the suffering. It’s like … 
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