Search results for: "Thought"

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  2. Using Right View Rightly
     … There’s a passage where the Buddha’s talking to a monk, saying, “Do you have any desire for things you haven’t seen, heard, smelled, tasted, touched, or thought about?” The purpose being to point you to the fact that desires come totally out of your sensory experience—just these six senses right here. Then, from those desires, you build all kinds of … 
  3. Food Insecurity
     … You talk to yourself, telling yourself that “Something’s going to come of this generosity that I’m developing.” You have to talk to yourself while you’re doing these practices to get the full benefit out of them, because they’re giving you training in what? Directed thought and evaluation, turning your thinking to a positive direction so that you get more and … 
  4. Educating Equanimity
     … Often we think of our emotions as being a given, “This is what I truly feel, this is the way I really feel, this is my identity.” We tend to trust our emotions more than our thoughts, perhaps because we know that a lot of our thoughts are just picked up from other people, but somehow we feel that our emotions are innate to … 
  5. Free from Animosity
     … But if you have vera, it means not only that you have thoughts about revenge concerning somebody else, but also that somebody else has thoughts like that concerning you. It’s as if you’re both tying each other down. You’re holding on to the grudge and it’s weighing you down. The way out is not to try to figure out who … 
  6. How to Listen
     … When you first get the mind to settle down, your thought is, “How can I make this last?” There’s nothing wrong with that thought. Learning how to appreciate the pleasure of getting the mind into oneness, finding pleasure apart from sensuality, is an important skill—one that should be cultivated, one that should be appreciated. But you have to realize that it’s … 
  7. Mindfulness + Discernment = Intelligence
     … He developed right resolve to keep in check any thoughts that might wander off out of sensuality, ill will, harmfulness, and he allowed his mind to think only thoughts that were coming out of renunciation, non-ill will, and harmlessness, because of the effect that they would have on the mind. He looked at his thoughts in terms of cause and effect, not in … 
  8. Getting the Most Out of Now
     … If we didn’t have some control over our thoughts, some control over our minds, we would never have thought that we could have any control at all, or as much control as we’d like. The fact is that we do have some control, and we can take advantage of that. As the Buddha said, if we couldn’t abandon unskillful qualities or … 
  9. The Dhamma Wheel
     … Thought constructs or fabrications, where you put thoughts together. And then consciousness, which is aware of all these things. He says we cling to these things, and that’s the suffering. The word for “clinging,” upādāna, can also mean, “to feed, to take sustenance.” We go around feeding all the time, trying to find happiness in these things. Yet there’s always a sense … 
  10. You Can’t Clone Awakening
     … This means, at the very beginning, that if you find the mind is thinking unskillful thoughts imbued with sensuality, ill will, or harmfulness, you try to replace them. And you realize that you can. Sometimes it’s harder than other times, but still it’s something that can be done. If you recognize that a thought has come from an unskillful intention, you hold … 
  11. Loving Yourself Wisely
     … And although there may be a little bit of comparing yourself with others in that thought, what it comes down to is that you realize that your goodness doesn’t have to depend on other people’s goodness. There was a debate recently over the question of whether there are times when it’s justified to go out and kill people if they’re … 
  12. Ideals
     … This is an area where you have to practice what the Buddha calls “guarding the truth.” When you approach the practice with ideals, you have to ask yourself, “What are your ideals based on?” What you’ve heard, what you’ve read, what you’ve thought out on your own? None of those are totally reliable. You have to test these things. You have … 
  13. A Path Rooted in Desire
     … We cling to the aggregates of form, feeling, perception, thought constructs, consciousness—and that’s the suffering. It’s the passion and desire that wants to hold on to these things as you’re feeding on them. There’s a hunger, and the hunger is not yet satisfied—that’s where the suffering is. That’s to be comprehended. The cause is the craving … 
  14. Thinking Seriously about Happiness
     … At the very least, you can spread thoughts of goodwill. Goodwill is a wish for happiness. The Buddha calls it “a monk’s wealth.” In other words, when you become a monk, everything you have is somebody else’s gift. If you’ve been a monk for a couple years, every cell in your body is the result of somebody’s generosity, of the … 
  15. Strategies for Happiness
     … The thought that “I am,” the thought of identification, is an act of putting things together. It’s a fabrication, an activity, aimed at happiness. And to some extent it works. People who have a very poorly formed sense of self have trouble managing their lives. A certain level of identification is needed, a certain sense of self is needed, just to function properly … 
  16. Undefeated Goodwill
     … Once we have thoughts of goodwill for ourselves and for others, we have to carry through with actions and words of goodwill. We don’t just sit here spinning cotton candy and sending nice pink thoughts out around the world. We have to think, when we act on an intention: Is it going to be for our true well-being or not? Is it … 
  17. Ending Suffering
    We begin each session with the chant spreading thoughts of goodwill because that’s the motivation that underlies the whole practice. Goodwill for ourselves, goodwill for other people: This is what underlies the practice for trying to put an end to suffering. If we didn’t feel goodwill for ourselves, why would we care whether there was suffering or not? It wouldn’t be … 
  18. Step Outside the World
     … Some of our thoughts really are worthwhile. There are things we have to do, things we have to say, things we have to plan for. But a lot of our thoughts are just random bubbles. Some of them are actually harmful. For the most part, people just let themselves get sucked into whatever comes up and attracts their attention. They go with it without … 
  19. Ups & Downs
     … You ask yourself, “I thought I dealt with that before. Why is it coming back?” If the thought comes up, “Maybe this is something I can never give up,” don’t ever give in to that thought. It’s possible to give up any kind of unskillful activity. As the Buddha said, if it weren’t possible to do that, he wouldn’t have … 
  20. A Total Training
    Start each meditation session with thoughts of goodwill. Goodwill is a wish for happiness, true happiness here. This is to remind you of why you’re meditating. You want to find true happiness and you want a happiness that doesn’t harm other people’s happiness. So you tell yourself, “May I find true happiness. May all living beings be happy,” as we chanted … 
  21. Concentration Work
     … directed thought, evaluation. You have the directed thought and evaluation in the first jhana. Then the reflective self hovers around all the levels of concentration when you’re contemplating them. That fifth factor the Buddha talks about—where the analogy is of a person sitting, looking at someone lying down, or of a person standing, looking at a person sitting—is an analogy for … 
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