Search results for: "Thought"

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  2. The Dhamma Is in the Method
     … Leaning forward, of course, means leaning into thoughts of the future. Leaning back means leaning into thoughts of the past. Leaning left or right means leaning to things you like and don’t like. Just try to be balanced and aware. But the awareness itself isn’t enough. It’s just the beginning. You want to be able to watch your mind thoroughly, so … 
  3. Tranquility, Insight, & Concentration
     … As for any thoughts that come into the mind, you don’t have to pay them any attention. Just pay attention to the thoughts about the breath, because you *will *have to think about the breath as you’re investigating how it feels, and how it might feel better. Then, when you have a rhythm of breathing that feels good, maintain it as long … 
  4. The Dhamma Eye
     … The first people he thought of were the two teachers he had studied with way back when he first went into the wilderness. Then he realized that both of them had recently died and gone to the formless realms, where they couldn’t hear him teach. Next he thought about the five young monks who had stayed with him when he was practicing austerities … 
  5. Nourishing & Interesting
     … You also get to see the processes of how thoughts form. Thoughts will come that having nothing to do with the breath. In the beginning, it’s hard not to fall into them because that’s the way the mind has been acting all along. But if you decide that you’re not going to fall into them and you’re going to watch … 
  6. Your Intentions Come First
     … Something may come up—a pain or a particularly interesting thought. You have to keep reminding yourself: You’re here for the skill of dealing with the breath. You’re not here for those other things. You’ve had thoughts before; you’ve had pains before. You don’t have to get all excited about them. Even if it’s an amazing and original … 
  7. Ingenuity
     … You can see thoughts of irritation coming and going, and you don’t come down hard on yourself for having those thoughts. You realize, “Well, I do have some goodness to me. So these thoughts are just something that come and they go, and they don’t reflect on what kind of person I am. So I can watch them.” You learn a lot … 
  8. Your Breath, Your Territory
     … You learn how to observe the mind so that you’re not simply in the thoughts that come to the mind. You can step out of them a little bit and see the thoughts as processes. It’s one of the reasons why we focus on the body. It gives you a place to stay so that you can do this sort of work … 
  9. Take Good Aim
     … But if you get the person, things often don’t go the way you thought they would. “This is not the person I thought I was getting. This is not the story I was imagining.” So you have to look back again. What was it that you were actually desiring? What was your craving really aimed at? These things shift very quickly—the narrative … 
  10. Chanting Before Meditation
    Try to gather your thoughts, gather your attention, right here, right now. There’s just your awareness, your body, and the feeling of the breath coming in, going out. Notice where you feel the breath and notice how it feels. You can try some long breathing to start out with, and if long breathing feels good, keep it up. If it doesn’t, you … 
  11. After-work Meditation
     … This is what directed thought and evaluation are about. To get the mind to settle down, you have to talk to it, to get it in the right mood. Talk to it in ways that will allow it to let go. So take a couple of good, long, deep, in-and-out breaths. Make that your foundation. Then remind yourself of some of the … 
  12. One Foot in the Present
     … Two, develop thoughts of unlimited goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity directed to the person you harmed, directed to yourself, and directed to all beings. These attitudes help to ensure that you’ll be more likely to work from skillful motivations, skillful intentions as you act. This way, having the proper attitude toward the present moment, toward what comes up in the present moment … 
  13. Developing the Heart
     … We usually translate citta as “mind,” which gives one sense of what the word means, but it’s only one sense, because the word citta can also mean “heart.” When we talk about a citta of metta—metta-cittena—it’s not just thinking thoughts of goodwill, it’s feeling thoughts of goodwill and willing thoughts of goodwill. So what we’re training here … 
  14. No Mistakes Are Fatal
     … the breath, and the mental qualities that are called “directed thought” and “evaluation,” the ones that do all that chattering in your mind. You direct your thoughts to a particular topic and then you think about it, you evaluate it. You say, “This is this, and that’s that, and this is good, and that’s bad.” So you take those very basic building … 
  15. Analysis of Dhammas
     … Which thoughts side with the dark side of the mind? Which ones side with the bright side of the mind? Here again, there’s an assumption—that the mind is the cause of the actions, and you do have choice. There will be some actions that lead to good results, and others that won’t lead to good results. If you pay appropriate attention … 
  16. Making a Difference
    Every night, we start the meditation with that chant on thoughts of goodwill. And you notice it begins with goodwill for yourself. Some people feel embarrassed about this, but it’s based on an important principle. You can’t feel goodwill for other people if you can’t feel goodwill for yourself. This is where it has to start. Once you remind yourself of … 
  17. Turn Off the Automatic Pilot
     … We thought we were doing the right thing, we thought we were actually getting pleasure out of it. There are lots of different reasons why we go along with the default settings. But we’re not paying careful attention. If you really start paying careful attention, you start seeing that there are areas where you’re adding a lot of stress where you don … 
  18. The Power of Perception
     … But if you think of the whole body as a breath energy field, you can breathe in and out of various places that you might not have thought of before: breathing out of the sides of your rib cage; thinking of the breath coming in from the left and the right as you breathe in and going out the chest you breathe out. Or … 
  19. Fear & Anger
     … Even though scary thoughts or infuriating thoughts are coming through the mind, you can still breathe calmly. They don’t need to have such a total impact. So while we’re meditating here, it’s good to gain practice in being sensitive to what kind of breathing feels good, and where the different parts of the body are getting caught in unskillful energy patterns … 
  20. True Friends
     … getting some control over your mind, some control over your thoughts. It’s so easy for your thoughts to run wild, and you can make yourself miserable. Years back we had a meditation session. We were sitting outside under the trees, and one woman had brought a friend who had never meditated before. It was a beautiful day: not too hot, not too cold … 
  21. Perceptions of Self & Not-Self
     … As for things that you do want to do and you know will give good results, you identify with them: “That’s a thought I want to take on. I want to adopt that thought.’ So, you’re already using these perceptions as you need them. There comes a point in the practice, though, where you don’t need the perception of self anymore … 
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