Search results for: "Thought"
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- How the Breath Helps You to Die Well… I’m going to breathe that way.” And then you evaluate: “What way of breathing actually does give rise to rapture; gives rise to pleasure? What way of dealing with feelings and perceptions allows the mind to calm down?” All of these thoughts comes under the way you talk to yourself—the technical term is directed thought and evaluation. So there you are: You …
- Refuge for All Beings… If you get down on yourself for things you’ve done in the past that are not honorable, you can think about that only for so long, and then you start lashing back, saying, “Well, maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.” Or if you start thinking of yourself as being a miserable person, and again, you can think that thought only for …
- All-around Knowing… Another image is that when you’re thinking about something, you have to narrow down your awareness of the body so that you can create your little thought world. But as long as you can maintain this full-body awareness, when it’s really solid, there’s no space for the thought worlds to appear, or if they do appear, there’s no space …
- The Time & Place to Let Go… When you’re engaged in mental activity, the body gets put aside and you identify with your thoughts or your feelings. Then there are the times when you’re very much your body. So as long as our sense of who we are keeps changing all the time—you might say it’s a verb, “selfing,” we self in different ways—an important part …
- Learning How to Talk to Yourself… One is directed thought, where you direct your thoughts to a particular topic. You’re going to think about the breath right now. Then there’s evaluation: Whatever you’re thinking about, you make comments on it, whether it’s good or bad, how it might be changed, how it might not be changed, that kind of thing. In this case, evaluate how you …
- Strong Through Admirable Friendship… Thoughts of ill will, thoughts of sensuality: You don’t have to hold on to them. You don’t have to follow them. As for whatever mindfulness you may have, any concentration you may have, you try to make sure that it develops and takes hold. You don’t just watch it come and watch it go. But there’s more to right effort …
- Memory & Motivation… So a very good way of motivating yourself to do the skillful thing and avoid the unskillful thing is to develop thoughts of goodwill. You may have heard the question: Do other people deserve your goodwill? But that’s not the real question. The real question is: Can you trust yourself if you don’t develop goodwill? It’s primarily for the sake of …
- Common Sense… simply noticing that thoughts and feelings have an effect on the mind, and that some thoughts and some feelings have a better effect than others. That’s the whole principle of the path. You try to develop thoughts and feelings that lead to an end of suffering. As for the ones that lead to more suffering, you learn to let them go. It’s …
- Write It Down in Your Heart… Otherwise, the speaker is just a babysitter in the background, making sure that the babies in the room don’t go wandering off in their thoughts to places they shouldn’t go. Hopefully, the talk actually gives information that’s useful, that’s worth taking to heart, worth attending to well. Not only while you’re listening, but also after you’ve gotten up …
- Fabricating with Awareness… You apply your knowledge to the way you fabricate the body through the breath, the way you fabricate speech through your mental chatter—which is basically directed thought and evaluation—and then the way you fabricate the mind through feelings and perceptions. You bring knowledge to these practices so that you get a sense of where they’re causing suffering and where they’re …
- Instructions for a New Monk… So I thought I’d recap a few of the instructions. The first set of instructions had to do with the act of taking refuge. We take refuge in what’s called the Triple Gem. This is related to the fact that back in the time of the Buddha, they thought that gems had protective powers. In this case, though, the protective powers are …
- True for What Purpose?… You have to ask yourself, why are you engaging in thoughts about them? If you’re engaging in thoughts about them for the sake of putting an end to suffering, okay, you focus on their drawbacks, at the right time. When you’re trying to get the mind into concentration, though, you focus on the ways in which you can, at least to some …
- The Gift of Discernment… He provided us with admirable friendship so that we would be inspired to adopt what he thought was the most important internal factor, which was appropriate attention: applying discernment to the present moment. In his first sermon, he starts out with the important takeaway, which is right view—learning how to see things in terms of suffering, its cause, its cessation, and the path …
- A Pure Happiness… But if you realize you can break it down into little bits and pieces—just this particular thought right here, right now—you realize that that particular thought is not so difficult, not so hard to overcome. It’s the same when dealing with pain. If you think about how much pain you’ve been through or how much pain you’re going to …
- Mindful & Grateful for Lessons in Freedom… There’s verbal fabrication, directed thought and evaluation. You’re free to direct your thoughts anywhere. Well, direct them to the breath, because it’s going to be a useful place to direct them. And evaluate the breath. What kind of breathing is comfortable? What kind of breathing is the mind willing to stay with for long periods of time? When you get a …
- For Your Good the Good of Others… As for other thoughts that come in, use whatever discernment you have to deal with them. When I was staying with Ajaan Fuang, there was one point where he said, “Use your pañña.” That was back in the days when I thought pañña was best translated as wisdom. I said, “I don’t have any pañña, that’s why I’m here trying to …
- Push Yourself… The more thought you put into the gift, the more happiness you’re going to get out of it, because that’s what merit is. It’s the happiness that comes from something good. The same with the precepts: You’re sure to run up against some situations where it’ll be hard to hold by the precepts. If you simply say, “Well, this …
- Concentration Work… Consider the issue of directed thought and evaluation. Ajaan Lee recommended that you go through the body in quite a lot of detail to settle things down and to clear things up to create a good place where you can feel at home. People complain that it’s not quieting to think about the breath and work with the breath energy in different parts …
- Everybody Suffers… That’s what allows you to turn yourself, turn your thoughts, in another direction: What is it in the mind that keeps giving rise to this spark that desires birth? The Buddha said that that’s the cause of suffering: this drive for becoming. I was talking this evening to someone about the Buddha’s take on happiness: Normal happiness is based on feeding …
- Right Effort & Right Mindfulness… Any greed or distress with reference to the world, any desires you have for the world, or any thoughts where you’re upset with the world, you just put them aside. Now, to these two activities—keeping the right frame of reference and putting aside any thoughts that go into the reference to the world—you bring three qualities. One of them, of course …
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