Search results for: "Thought"

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  2. Evaluating Your Practice
     … One is directed thought, and the other is evaluation. You bring your mind to the object, or as they say in Thai, you lift the mind to the object, you lift the object to the mind. This means that you make them both prominent, that you’re right here in the present moment, you’re going to stay with the breath in the present … 
  3. Bewildered
     … His first thought was, “Who’s looking after whom here?” Then he thought, “Well, they can do what they want. I’ve got to do this on my own.” So he meditated. He realized his problem was that he’d been trying to get rid of the pain instead of comprehending it. So, he set himself the task of comprehending it. And he gained … 
  4. How to Use the Teaching on Kamma
     … It’s an extremely useful teaching for helping you to understand what you’re doing right now, why you’re doing it, to see how you can get past thoughts of bad things that have happened to you in the past, thoughts of bad things you’ve done in the past. You see all these things in the light of a much larger picture … 
  5. All Fabrications Are Stressful
     … Everything else—even the deva worlds, the Brahmā worlds—has to be filtered through form, feeling, perception, thought constructs, consciousness. And the simple fact that they’re fabricated in this way—whatever the experience is—means that they’re going to be stressful. You can’t take them as a place where you can really rest. That’s one level of stress, one level … 
  6. Remembering Ajaan Suwat
     … So when the Buddha says you seclude the mind from sensual thoughts, sensual plans, you do that. You seclude it from unskillful qualities and you direct your thoughts to evaluate one object. It could be the breath; it could be goodwill; it could be the unattractiveness of the body. What happens when you really do this?—when you really do get the mind centered … 
  7. How to Change
     … Verbal fabrication is directed thought and evaluation, how you talk to yourself: You direct your thoughts to a topic and you make comments about it. You may ask questions about it, and when you’ve thought in those ways, that’s when you open your mouth to speak. Finally, mental fabrications are perceptions and feelings: the labels you put on things, the feeling tones … 
  8. Attention & Intention
     … One is what is skillful or unskillful to do with your thoughts, words, and deeds. The other issue is the four noble truths. These two issues are connected in that the four noble truths take the principle of skillful and unskillful action and apply it specifically to the question of why there’s suffering and how you put an end to it. Unskillful actions … 
  9. A Snare of Death Laid Out
     … It means the mind’s fascination with planning them, all the embroidery we create around them, all the perceptions and feelings and thought constructs—verbal and mental fabrications. Often that’s where our craving is focused. Often, when you desire a person, it’s not the person you desire. You desire your perceptions and thoughts of the person. So you want to get the … 
  10. Compassion for People on Fire
     … In the beginning of the meditation, that’s the duty of directed thought and evaluation. Ajaan Lee talks about how directed thought and evaluation, particularly the evaluation, have to do with looking at the way you’re breathing, adjusting it so that it’s just right for the mind, just right for the body. When you get a sense of well-being, you work … 
  11. The Buddha’s Investment Strategy
     … That ability to drop a thought mid-sentence, drop a thought even when it’s all loose ends, is an important skill. You catch yourself in the middle of creating a little reality there but then you can reestablish your frame of reference in the present moment. You get more and more skillful at letting go, able to catch yourself in these various processes … 
  12. Ekaggata
     … directed thought and evaluation. These are precisely the things we’re working on as we meditate. You focus your thoughts on something, and then you observe it, you evaluate it. This is how alertness moves inside the mind. When you think of the breath in a particular way, when you focus on it in a particular way, what happens? Look carefully at this. The … 
  13. Dichotomies
     … by making that distinction in his thoughts. Skillful thoughts, on the one hand, were those that aimed at getting away from sensuality—in other words, renunciation—or that aimed at non-ill will and non-harming. The unskillful ones were aimed at sensuality, ill will, and harmfulness. He realized he couldn’t divide his thoughts in terms of his likes and dislikes. That would … 
  14. Concentration Nurtured with Virtue
     … Ajaan Fuang happened to be a little ways off and said: “Hey, what’s that in your mouth? I thought you were going to take the eight precepts.” She realized she had totally forgotten about her precepts. So he consoled her by saying: “What’s really important is that you observe one precept, and that’s the precept of the mind.” After all, the … 
  15. The Fourth Frame of Reference
     … This is especially true with thoughts. Notice, when a thought comes up, “What’s the appeal of this thought? Why do I go for this particular kind of thinking?” Once you’ve looked at the appeal, then look at the drawbacks. What are the drawbacks of going along with that kind of thinking? If you gave that particular kind of thinking free rein in … 
  16. Distinctions That Make a Difference
     … A thought, a perception, a feeling, our awareness of these things all tend to be one glob, and we hang onto all of them. But if we want to understand them—understand *why *we’re hanging on—we have to make distinctions. We hang on because of clinging. And we cling because we crave. And craving is very precise; it has its location. In … 
  17. Motivation
     … In some cases, it’s through comforting yourself with the thought that this is a good path followed by lots of good people in the past. In other words, you use your compassion, your own desire for happiness to remind yourself, “This is why I’m here, because I want a happiness that’s better than what I’ve had in the past, something … 
  18. Experimental Intelligence
     … Get it into strong states of concentration where everything is very, very still, so that you can observe, when a thought comes into the mind, what it does to the mind; or when you do an action, what it does to the mind. If things aren’t really still, you can’t see the impact of a thought, the impact of an action very … 
  19. The Buddha’s Qualities
     … So ask yourself, do you really want to be entangled over that person, that kind of issue, that kind of thought in your mind? Direct some goodwill to yourself: “May I be happy. I don’t need this thought right now. May that other person be happy as well.” Then it’s a lot easier to get back to the breath. Sometimes you’ll … 
  20. A Quiet Spot
    Time to let all your thoughts about the outside world just fall away. Whatever you’ve been thinking about, whatever places your mind has been scattered, just let them drop, and bring your attention right in, right here, right at the breath. There’s a lot of unfinished business out there in the world, but it’s always going to be unfinished. One job … 
  21. There is This
     … There is the thought of “I,” but is it helpful now? No. If you’re not carrying around the assumption that you’re something, if you’re not objectifying yourself, things are a lot lighter. Stay on the level of, “There is this” and explore, “Well, what is the “this”? How many thises are in here right now? There are lots of thises. And … 
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