Search results for: "Thought"

  1. Page 57
  2. Meditation as Play
     … Where do you want to place the center? What happens when you place it further down in the body? Your directed thought and evaluation—that’s fabrication. How do you talk to yourself about the breath? How do you talk to yourself about the mind? How do you talk to yourself about what you’re doing? And there’s consciousness, which is aware of … 
  3. Looking after Yourself with Ease
     … bodily, through the way we breathe; verbally, through the way we talk to ourselves in what he calls directed thought and evaluation. You direct your thoughts to a topic and you make comments on it, ask questions (and) come to judgements. This is what a lot of what our internal chatter is. Then finally there’s mental fabrication, which consists of perceptions and feelings … 
  4. Be Observant
     … So if you’re not sure what’s happening, what the thoughts are going to do or where they’re going to go, remember that you want to look at your thoughts as actions with results. It’s not that you’re going to believe them or not believe them. You just want to look at them as actions. That means you’ve got … 
  5. Building a Home for the Mind
     … When the work is done—the directed thought and evaluation work—then you can rest in deeper levels of concentration because the whole body has been worked through, cleaned out. It’s as if with directed thought and evaluation you’re sweeping through the body—getting rid of all the cobwebs; getting rid of all the dust. When they’re gone, you can settle … 
  6. The Buddha’s Encouragement
     … Getting the mind calm, with as few thoughts as possible; getting very quiet, not much going on inside—that’s a good thing. Part of us will say, “Yes, that sounds pretty good.” But then when you get there, how many times have you found that it gets boring? Nothing’s happening. You want the insights to come really fast so that you can … 
  7. Don’t Leak Out Your Ears & Eyes
     … Or as Ajaan Lee says, don’t let it leak out of your eyes, ears, nose, tongue, thoughts of the past, or thoughts of the future because if you do, you feel depleted inside. You feel a sense of lack, a sense of hunger. And that makes you want to get more things out of your eyes and ears, nose, tongue, body, sights, sounds … 
  8. The Ivory Intersection
     … As you’ve probably found, when you come here, even when there’s physical seclusion, thoughts about work, thoughts about family—what, in Thai, they call “108 different issues”—all come rushing in. Even if we were to put up seven fortress walls around the monastery, those thoughts could still come in and invade your mind, invade your meditation—even more so when you … 
  9. Safe Haven
     … Just pose that thought in the mind: What kind of breathing would feel good now? And give everything over to the breath. If you need a meditation word to help you stay with the breath, you can use the word buddho, which means awake. Think bud- with the in-breath, and dho with the out-, to help block out any other vagrant thoughts that … 
  10. Serenity
     … These thoughts are soothing to the mind. In the beginning, you have to work through them. Ask yourself, “Is there anybody out there for whom you cannot feel goodwill?” And certain faces will probably appear in your mind. You have to remind yourself: Nobody benefits from seeing those people suffer. Often, if they suffer, they come back and get more vengeful. So it’s … 
  11. Skills for Dying Well
     … Your awareness is one thing, your breath is something else, other thoughts coming into the mind are something else—and it’s good to be able to see those distinctions. In the beginning, though, as you work with the breath, you want to get the breath and your awareness together to the point where they seem to be one and the same thing. But … 
  12. Endurance Training
    It’s always good to start with thoughts of goodwill. It cleans out the mind. There may be issues that come from the day. This person said this; that person did that. You did this or you did that—things you don’t like to think about. If you don’t do a little cleaning out beforehand, it’s going to be hard for … 
  13. Pitching Your Tent in the Present
     … If you’ve been holding on to a particular thought, just remind yourself, “This is not the time for that.” This is one of the reasons why, when we meditate at night, we have those chants that remind you of how much the world gets swept away, and all you have left that’s really your own are your actions. Your actions come from … 
  14. Wise Choices
     … There was one time when a monk said to the Buddha,” I do breath meditation.” The Buddha asked him, “What kind of breath meditation do you do?” The monk said, “I put aside thoughts of past and thoughts of the future, and I learn to develop equanimity around the present as I breathe in and breathe out.” As the Buddha said, there is that … 
  15. No Arrows, Nothing
     … Instead of thinking about our thoughts in terms of their meaning, just look at them as movements in the mind. Try to look at what sponsors them, what causes them, and what supports them to the point where you realize you’d rather take them apart. Then take all these things apart. You begin to realize that the things you thought you needed, you … 
  16. Appreciation
     … They thought, “These poor Buddhists, they don’t understand their own religion, they’ve distorted what the Buddha had to say”—that’s what they thought. But if you look at what the Buddha actually had to say, it’s a very festive message, a very happy message. True happiness is possible. It is possible to totally put an end to suffering. You do … 
  17. Breath Energy
     … If everything in the body feels frazzled, your thoughts will get frazzled, too. And if you can’t feed on a sense of well-being here, you’re going to start feeding on whatever things—thoughts of revenge, thoughts of jealousy, thoughts of whatever—present themselves to the mind. The better your mind is fed, the less likely it is to want to go … 
  18. Timeless
     … Something you haven’t thought of for years suddenly shows up, and the simple fact that you hadn’t thought of it for years will compel you to go look into it. Again, imagine what it’s going to be like when death comes and suddenly your whole life starts flashing before your eyes. All kinds of events could suddenly grab your attention. Have … 
  19. Outside of the Box
    We start the meditation every evening with thoughts of goodwill. When you practice goodwill systematically, you’re told to start first with thoughts of goodwill for yourself, then with thoughts of goodwill for people who are dear to your heart, and then you work out gradually in ever widening circles: people you like, people you’re neutral about, and then even people you don … 
  20. To Have a Purpose
     … There’s listening, there’s thinking, and then there’s actually developing the qualities of the mind that are talked about in what you’ve listened to and what you’ve thought about. **All three of those types of discernment have to go together. Your discernment gets sharper as you put what you’ve learned and thought about into practice, and then reflect on … 
  21. Truthfulness
     … How do you test them? He said to shape your words and your thoughts and your deeds in line with them. And that’s not always easy. That’s why this is called being true. This is why it take strength of character, because sometimes the easy task is just to lie down and let things take their course. Or to just do what … 
  22. Load next page...