Search results for: "Thought"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. A Refuge from Death
     … Especially if you can sense where in the body there’s the tension that corresponds to the thought, just zap the tension, breathe right through it, and the thought doesn’t have any foundation. It collapses. If that doesn’t work, then, as the Buddha said, grit your teeth, press your tongue against the roof of your mouth, and just determine that you’re … 
  10. Goodness Comes from Heedfulness
     … The mind does have this tendency to blank out when it’s switching from one thought world to the next. It’s almost as if the blanking out is intentionally meant for you to forget the old world and be in the new one. So when you realize this has happened, you bring the mind back to the breath and you make up your … 
  11. What We’re Here to See
     … What are the stages in getting the mind to settle down? The Buddha says you’re going to use some directed thought and evaluation, and this is nothing new. It’s not like you have to suddenly invent directed thought and evaluation. The mind’s doing that all the time. It’s its basic way of conversing with itself: You choose the topic and … 
  12. Alighting on the Dhamma
     … This is why the Buddha said that the first step of right concentration includes directed thought and evaluation. It’s not as if you haven’t been doing directed thought and evaluation, and suddenly you have to do it to get concentrated. You’ve been doing it all along. It’s your internal chatter, which is the basis for all speech. What we’re … 
  13. Patterns to Happiness
     … One is directed thought., when you direct your thoughts, you direct your attention, to a particular object. The second is evaluation. You evaluate the object to see what’s working in the sense of getting the mind to settle down. For instance, when you’re focused on the breath, you can play with the breath in different ways: long in, long out, short in … 
  14. The Power of Truth
     … They demand that you look at your thoughts, your words, and your deeds—and particularly your thoughts—in a way that often will require you to let go of things you really like. That’s because you learn how to look at the thoughts as part of a causal process. When you think in this particular way, where does it lead? When you think … 
  15. No Running Away
     … It’s all too easy, when you think thoughts of goodwill for everybody out there, for it to be as if you’re spreading marshmallow cream over the whole world. The people you like and the people you don’t like all become buried in the marshmallow cream. As a result, everybody gets invisible. All you see is the marshmallow cream. But that’s … 
  16. Skills to Take Home
     … Just as when you’re meditating and a thought comes up and you say: “Well, is that so? Is that so?” you can ask the same thing of other people. Of course you don’t ask it right out loud, you just pose the question in your mind—“To what extent is that so?” If you can’t do that with other people’s … 
  17. Respect for Concentration
     … We’re taking the khandhas — these aggregates of body, feeling, perception, thought-fabrications, and consciousness — and instead of identifying with them, we use them as tools. And as part of the process of mastering them as tools, there will have to be a sense of identification. You identify with the state of concentration, whatever sense of the body is present in the concentration, whatever … 
  18. Virtue, Concentration, Discernment
     … You’re not killing your good qualities; you’re not stealing the bad qualities of other people to think about; you’re not engaging in illicit thoughts about sex; you’re not lying to yourself; and you’re not intoxicated. You’re alert; you’re mindful. At the same time, as you develop your discernment, you bring the mind to deeper and deeper levels … 
  19. Up for the Challenge
     … One of the people in the audience raised his hand and said, “Wait a minute, wherever there’s desire there’s going to be suffering, right?” “Yeah.” He thought he caught me in a contradiction: How can suffering be part of the fourth noble truth when it’s the first? “But look at your practice,” I told him. “Has your practice been constantly smooth … 
  20. Practice Without Gaps
     … Then you try to put aside all thoughts of greed and distress with reference to the world. That means any thoughts about the world, what you like about it, what you don’t like about it—just put those aside. Maintain your original frame of reference. As it gets more and more solid, that’s when the mindfulness practice turns into concentration practice. As … 
  21. Appropriate Attention
     … These include actions in thought, word, and deed. So that there are some shoulds there. The other categorical teaching builds on that: the four noble truths. Craving, the second truth, is an unskillful action. The noble eightfold path, the fourth truth, is a skillful way of acting. And here, too, there are shoulds. Each truth is not just something to sit around and talk … 
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