Search results for: "Thought"

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  2. Strength of Conviction
     … But you also know that the best way not to get sucked into your* own* thought worlds is to be able to stand apart from them a bit, observe them as events, and see where they come from so that you can actually do something about them. The same principle applies to other people’s thought worlds and emotional worlds as well. You don … 
  3. Reading Your Meditation
     … You don’t have to push it, you don’t have to force it, just allow that thought to open that possibility, and you’ll be surprised at how much the body can respond simply to the power of thought. Do the different parts of the body seem to be working together as you’re breathing in or are they working at cross purposes … 
  4. No One Size Fits All
     … Radiating out some thoughts of harmlessness, thoughts of goodwill, from a more concentrated mind gives them more force. Of course, this too is not solely for their sake. When you come out of meditation with a sense of ease and well-being, it helps direct how you’re going to deal with other people. Remind yourself, “Okay, bring goodwill to all your activities, to … 
  5. Admitting Mistakes
     … siding with an unskillful thought as opposed to a skillful one, taking up an unskillful practice and refusing to see the harm it creates. These are things we really have to be on the lookout for, because often they’re the things nobody else can see, the things that go on inside our mind. Other people may be able to see some of the … 
  6. Everyday Feeding Habits
     … the idea that you’re going to gain something important by going out and nibbling on these thoughts of lust, thoughts of anger, or thoughts of jealousy and resentment. You’re got to look into these things to see where you’re getting some sort of satisfaction out of them, and what a miserable satisfaction it is. It’s only then that you realize … 
  7. Your World to Practice In
     … If you can’t go out and get some physical seclusion, at the very least develop some mental seclusion, where you’re far away from thoughts of sensuality, far away from unskillful thoughts. They might be there nibbling at the edge of your awareness, but you don’t try to feed on them. Feed on the sense of well-being that comes from the … 
  8. Training the Whole Mind
     … So it’s an all-around training, not just learning to relate to the breath, but learning how to relate to everything else going on in the mind as well, so that skillful thoughts take over and unskillful thoughts get left behind. That’s when you can say that the meditation is a whole-mind process. That’s when it gives results penetrating throughout … 
  9. When You Hit a Plateau
     … He asked the right questions. “How am I putting this together? What are my intentions right now? What views are they based on?” We go through life being driven by thoughts and attitudes that we don’t really comprehend. And although there are some things that you see more clearly the higher you get on the mountain, there are other things you’re not … 
  10. The Buddha’s Filters
     … When a situation comes up that requires reflected thought, the first reflection should be, “Where is the suffering here? What’s causing it? And what can I do to put an end to it by attacking the cause?” Try to comprehend the suffering, abandon its cause, and develop the path so that you can realize the cessation of suffering. That should be how you … 
  11. The Not-Self Discourse
     … There’s dis-ease in the body, dis-ease in your feelings, in your perceptions, in your thought fabrications, even in your consciousness. If these aggregates really were you or yours, you could totally control them. Now, this doesn’t mean you have no control at all. As the Buddha admitted in other places, the aggregates do offer some pleasure. If they didn’t … 
  12. Up for the Challenge
     … Say, when the ship goes down, it goes down at a different angle than you thought it would. You thought you could get out the right side, but no, the right side is sinking, so you’ve got to go out the left side. Learn how to look at the situation and make your choices. These are the strengths you’ll need, and these … 
  13. The Fetter of Perceptions
    When I first went to stay with the Ajaan Fuang and read Ajaan Lee’s instructions on the breath energy going through the nerves, around the muscles of the body, and through the different organs of the torso, I didn’t realize it, but part of me thought of it as kind of make-believe. Until one day I was sitting, meditating and noticed … 
  14. Basic Meditation Instructions
     … You want to be in the driver seat, so that when the time comes to think about things, you can direct your thoughts in the direction that’s going to be useful. When you realize you’ve thought something through, then you can rest the mind, so that it’s not wasting its energy in idle inner chatter. And when its energy isn’t … 
  15. Sense Restraint
     … As the Buddha says, you’re secluded or withdrawn from sensuality; you pull out of those thoughts—and only then can you can get into right concentration. So an important part of the practice is how you go through the day and how you manage your senses. It’s one of the reasons why we have the eight precepts. Ajaan Suwat made the comment … 
  16. Succeeding at Happiness
     … He thought it didn’t seem natural. It was more natural—and therefore better, he thought—when it was spontaneous. Of course, that had to do with the author’s ideas about who was behind all these feelings of unity and consciousness. He saw it as a gift from above, and it didn’t seem right to him that people were actually learning how … 
  17. Heedful of Death
     … It builds thought-worlds that don’t seem totally real unless you can close off your awareness of how the thought-world was built. It’s in those gaps of alertness that the actual machinations of fabrication are going on, so those are precisely the things you want to see. As soon as you realize you’ve slipped off the breath, come right back … 
  18. Surveying the World
     … If you can stay on this level, then when you see thoughts that would go out into the world again, you put them aside. Try to stay just on this level of events happening right here, right now. You’re doing this to clear the decks, because eventually you’ll want to see how those thoughts form—the ones that pull you away, that … 
  19. A Mirror for the Mind
     … In terms of concentration, your acts are directed thought and evaluation, plus the effort to bring that directed thought and evaluation to one object. So keep your eye on those activities. Direct your thoughts to the breath. Evaluate the breath. Be mindful of the breath. Be alert to the breath. Be ardent in trying to create a sense of well-being, a sense of … 
  20. Antidotes
     … Just as when you sit here and a thought comes into the mind you learn not to run with it, you’ve got to learn to use this skill in other areas, other parts of your life, where things are more rushed, where there’s a lot more going on. If you forget the skills you’ve developed here, you’re going to get … 
  21. Cross-questioning
     … When you take abstract thought and you trace it back, you find it refers to very concrete things. The abstractions we deal with tend to have a basis in concrete activities. For instance, when we talk about grasping the concept, we’re thinking about the hand grasping an object. When talk about resonating with an idea, that’s an analogy to music. If you … 
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