Search results for: "Thought"
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- For the Good of the World… But when you think about the unhealthy energies people are putting out in the world all day, every day, through their thoughts, words, and deeds, the world really needs people who are putting out peaceful energy. That’s where meditation has a lot to offer. The mind is like a broadcast station. It sends out currents. If we create a peaceful, steady, calming current …
- The Buddha Didn’t Play Gotcha… Is there an alternative way? He thought of the time when he was a child sitting under a tree while his father was plowing, and his mind entered the first jhana. So he asked himself: “Why am I afraid of that pleasure? Why am I afraid of that rapture? Is there anything blameworthy about it? Anything harmful about it?” And the answer he came …
- A Mind Larger than the World… She thought that the perfections were a Mahayana invention. Actually, they came before Mahayana split off, and they really are a powerful way of understanding how Buddhism is practiced in Southeast Asian Theravada countries, because they deal with the virtues you need, the virtues you develop, as you go through daily life. Some of them are related to meditation, like renunciation, which doesn’t …
- See Yourself as Active Verbs… the perceptions, the thoughts. How do you get these things to stay together so that breath and mind are acting in concert? That’s the skill we’re trying to develop right now, because when they act together we become more sensitive to them. It’s as if the mind had lots of little minds, and they’re all headed out in different directions …
- All Dhamma, All the Time… Here you want to learn how to question your own mind, and in particular, the things you’ve always accepted about your thoughts. When you think in a certain way, you have to question yourself: “Is this really the right way to think? What happens as a result? Have I ever noticed what the result of my thinking is?” All too often, we get …
- Investment Strategies… Some of the chants we repeat, many, many times because it’s a way of drumming particular messages into the fabric of your thought. “May I be happy, i.e. may I be truly happy.” That’s a useful thought to keep in the back of your mind, to remind yourself that this is your motivation, so that when there’s a temptation to …
- Three Levels of Concentration… You get here by letting go of other thoughts, but also by being very focused on the breath. This is where it’s different from falling asleep. When you fall asleep, things get still and then you just let go totally, let go of all your mindfulness, all your alertness, and move off into another stage of becoming, as the texts call it. Whatever …
- A Path Under the Trees… Any thoughts of the world, you just let them go. As your focus gets more solidly established, it turns into right concentration. There’ll be a sense of ease, a sense of pleasure. Then there’s p*īti, *which we translate either as rapture or refreshment. These sensations come simply from the fact that your mind has withdrawn from unskillful thoughts, and it’s …
- Keep the Mind from Wandering… We tend to do this in a very unskillful way because we’ve never thought about it systematically. We’ve never really explored it to see what can be done in order to master these different potentials. That’s one of the things you do as you meditate. You start out with the breath element—the potential for breath in the whole body, a …
- The Heart to Keep Going… Each time you pull out of a thought world, you strengthen that sense of the separate observer. And that’s a very useful skill as you go through the day. Sometimes it’s difficult to take the sense of ease you get in meditation and carry it off the cushion back into daily life. Sometimes it happens easily, but sometimes it’s hard. But …
- The Rewards of Right View… This is the pain that comes with the thought, “Okay, there is a way out. There is a deathless element. The Buddha guarantees that. Other people have reached it, but I’m not there yet.” That’s a painful thought: There’s work to be done. This is where you bring in the next perception: the perception of stress or suffering in what is …
- Choices… A thought may move but you can see it simply as an event. You don’t get into the thought-world. That’s a choice you can make, too. Realize that the mind is making choices all the time, so make them as skillful as possible. At the very least, tell yourself that you’re going to sit here and watch the breath, and …
- Not-self in Context… If any distracting thought comes up, you realize, “Okay, it’s there, but it’s not going to be there after a while. Why latch on to it if latching on is going to involve suffering?” You’ve probably realized that thoughts come up in the mind, and at first they seem interesting and entertaining. They have a lot of potential, so you go …
- Attahi Attano Natho… So it’s good to extend thoughts of gratitude his way. Of course, the best expression of gratitude is to continue the practice every day, to take his teachings and make them your own. Each of us fabricates his or her experience, so our understanding of what he had to say, what he had to teach, is going to be filtered by the way …
- Mind Reading… Use that thought to give yourself a sense of confidence, a sense of uplifting joy: calm joy, but joy nevertheless. Joy over the fact that the way is still open. These are some perceptions you can use to gladden the mind. If, however, you find the mind is too active, too wired, you’ve got to steady it. Here again you might use different …
- Breathing to Awakening… This allows you to recognize, when thoughts come up: If it’s a thought related to the breath, you want to encourage it; if it’s one that’s not related to the breath, you want to let it go. As for thoughts that are related to the breath, that’s where you come into the second factor for awakening, which is analysis of …
- True Protection for the World… In other words, when you internalize the example of the Buddha, and the Dharma becomes part of your daily behavior in your thoughts, your words, and your deeds, there will come a point where you touch the Deathless. And from that point on you become a true refuge for yourself, and a refuge for others. Again, you can’t save them from their unskillful …
- Single-minded… As soon as there’s a thought that you need some more in-breath, it’s right there. As soon as there’s the thought that the breath can go out, you don’t have to push it out from anywhere. It’ll go out from right there. Think of it in that way so as to minimize the amount of effort or tension …
- The View from the Mountaintop… appreciating the value of mental stillness and learning how to protect it and not let all the other thoughts interfere that keep yelling at you like insistent children, “Mommy, mommy, mommy, I’ve got a crisis right now.” Everything for a little child is a crisis. Everything for our thoughts seems to be a crisis as well: This has to be taken care of …
- What You’re Bringing… It’s not the case that a thought pulls you away with some sort of magnetic power. You’re actually the one who pursues things. But again, it’s based on the things you bring to the meditation. In this case, it might be something that’s lying around there unconscious in an area you’re not aware of. So be prepared for the …
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