Search results for: "Thought"

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  2. Desire
     … Either we don’t get what we want; or when we get it, we find that it’s something different from what we thought it was; or it seems to be what we thought was, but it doesn’t last. All of which is frustrating. So the Buddha said that the only way out is to go beyond desire. But desire’s not something … 
  3. Practicing in Solitude
     … Other ways you get help from reading the Dhamma include the fact that it gives you ideas for meditation you may not have thought of, like ways of dealing with the breath in the different parts of the body so that you have some variety. It’s not just in, out, in, out. It’s in here and out there. If you’ve got … 
  4. Joyous Endurance
    Direct your thoughts to the breath. Direct your attention to the breath. Direct your whole mind to the breath. And try to keep it in that direction. In the Mangala Sutta, this is called having yourself rightly directed. It’s one of the ways that you bless yourself, protect yourself. The nature of the mind is that it doesn’t just sit in one … 
  5. Easy to Instruct
     … With that first line—this is what should be done—someone in the group raised his hand: “Wait a minute, I thought Buddhism didn’t have any shoulds.” They spent the whole morning discussing that point. It’s not as if the Buddha was a lawgiver enforcing people to do things. Everything in his teachings is voluntary. Take the altar here in front of … 
  6. Solidly Established
     … Other thoughts may come into the mind, but you have to learn how to pay them no attention. Think of them as people passing by when you have work to do. You don’t have to identify with the thought, thinking that it’s your thought or something you have to look into. What you’re here to do right now is to stay … 
  7. Gladdening
     … You can sit here and you can think thoughts of goodwill, but primarily, when you’re sitting here with your eyes closed, it’s a matter of training the mind side, trying to understand cause and effect in your mind, first with an eye to getting the mind to settle down. What would provide the mind a good place to settle down? What kind … 
  8. Layers of Selves
     … When you begin to see that the pain and the body really are two separate things, you begin to realize that the pain moves around a lot more than you originally thought. You thought it was kind of a dull ache right there and it had a particular location with clear boundaries. But now the boundaries begin to get a little bit more fluid … 
  9. Wealth & Strength
     … Soon after we set up the monastery here, this monk came one evening with a group of lay people to give a donation, thinking that he would be able to worm his way back into Ajaan Suwat’s graces and at the very least, if Ajaan Suwat accepted him as a monk, everybody would see that Ajaan Suwat thought he was innocent. He also … 
  10. Ask Yourself the Buddha’s Question
     … This part of concentration is called directed thought and evaluation. The Pali terms are vitakka and vicāra, and they basically constitute your mind’s conversation with itself. You want to train them so that they engage in an interesting conversation—a useful conversation. Of course, a lot of every conversation lies in the questions you ask. They’re actually what directs the conversation. This … 
  11. The Questions of Suffering
     … different perceptions; different thought fabrications. You learn how to perceive the breath continually. You direct your thoughts to the breath. You evaluate the breath—that’s fabrication—so that you can create a feeling of well-being. The breath feels smooth, silken, diffuse throughout the body, energizing the body, nourishing the body. The sense of the body from within changes because you’ve changed … 
  12. Consciousness, Name, & Form
     … Then, building on the present moment, we can use mental events to create thoughts of past and future. But right now we’re trying to keep away from getting involved in the past and future, and just trying to see what’s happening right here, right now, simply as events. If you add your sense of “you” to it all, then it becomes a … 
  13. Moods Are Not-Self
     … We hold to them very tightly, because they seem to be us even more than our thoughts. We know that we get a lot of our thoughts from other people, but our moods seem to be totally coming from within. They’re totally ours. Yet as long as you identify with them, they’re going to color everything. You’ve got to see that … 
  14. Persistence
     … So as thoughts of sensuality come up, you have to say “No.” Interesting thoughts about your work, interesting theories about the world, about politics: You have to say No to them right now. Your ideas may seem very intelligent, very insightful, but they’re not what’s wanted right now. You’ve got to work on this other skill, the skill of being very … 
  15. Useful Thinking
     … And when it’s expansive like this, it’s easier to stay in the present moment, because to create a thought about the past or the future, the mind has to shrink down. Your awareness has to shrink down so you can get inside that little thought balloon. As long as you stay aware of your hands, your feet, your head, every part of … 
  16. Establishing Priorities
     … If you’re really alert, you can catch it before a distracting thought is fully formed. The more quickly you can see that process, the better. You can feel that stirring of a form or a thought beginning to occur, like a little tingling or a little stirring around, a little knot in the breath energy. At that point, it’s hard to say … 
  17. A Position of Strength
     … As soon as a thought begins to move in the direction of any of those things, just cut it off. And when you cut it off, have a sense that you’ve liberated the mind, not that you’ve cut off anything vital. You’ve cut off all the vines that come to entangle and pull you down. The mind can now stand tall … 
  18. A Generosity of Spirit
    Every day we extend thoughts of goodwill to all beings. It’s a basis for concentration; it’s a basis for meditation. Even if we don’t take goodwill as the object of our meditation, it reminds us of why we’re here: to find a happiness that doesn’t harm anybody, a happiness that spreads its goodness around. Because when the mind is … 
  19. Licking Yourself Clean
     … Thoughts of goodwill are good thoughts to think. They feel good. They put the mind at ease. You don’t have to struggle with anybody. You don’t have to settle any old scores. It feels good to be thinking good thoughts. It helps put you in the right mood to meditate. Physically, you work first with your posture. You want to sit straight … 
  20. Clinging & Feeding
     … to develop that sense of no longer wanting to eat these things, seeing that they have their dangers and that they don’t provide the satisfaction that you thought that they would. But those aren’t the only perceptions he has you apply. Sometimes there’s the perception of seeing these things as a wound, a dart, cancer, a void, a dissolution. In other … 
  21. Delusion Concentration
     … The primary thought in people’s minds is: “How can I get through these hours as pleasantly as possible?” The mind finds a little place—it’s called delusion concentration—where there’s a sense of ease, and the mind’s not doing any work at all. It’s just very, very still. You go to hide out there, but you don’t really … 
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