Search results for: "Thought"

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  2. Rehab Work
     … Do healing actions, think healing thoughts, think healing perceptions. You start by training your thoughts or perceptions and learning how to breathe in a healing way. This is rehab work for the mind; it’s rehab work for the way you approach experience in general. So the Buddha wasn’t the kind of doctor who would have you lie in bed and remain immobile … 
  3. Learning by Doing
     … So, now, you’re using the breath, using your perceptions of the breath and your thoughts about the breath, to create a good feeling in here—one that can be a home for your mind. Give yourself a good home to stay in. As you get well settled here, there comes a point where you start taking a interest in what you’re doing … 
  4. The Carrot & the Stick
     … Like the passage we chanted several days ago: “Those who see danger and respect being heedful”—realizing that you can’t let your guard down, because sometimes just a tiny little thought comes into the mind, and you give it room. You feed it. You nourish it. You allow it to take root. And then, as it takes root, it destroys things. It’s … 
  5. A Clean Break at Death
     … If you can’t reach that person any longer, spread thoughts of goodwill in that person’s direction. Do that many, many times, so that it becomes your automatic reaction to thoughts about that person. That way, when the time comes to go, you can make a clean break. The same principle applies to your attachments You want to make a clean break here … 
  6. Limitless is the Buddha
     … Are you willing to put your preferences aside for right now and give yourself to the practice? The thoughts you like to think about and other things that lie outside the path, you’re going to put them down for the time being. You’re going to focus right here. Fortunately, the work required by the path is not all unpleasant. There are times … 
  7. Karma & the Sublime Attitudes
     … If you see somebody suffering and people think that karma is just, the thought is, “They simply deserve to suffer, so leave them be.” But that’s not the case. Karma is complex. Think about all the many actions you do in the course of the day—all the different intentions and choices you act on. You’re creating all kinds of karma all … 
  8. Time Well Spent
     … After all, directed thought and evaluation are what help you decide what you’re going to say out loud, and directed thought and evaluation are what you’re trying to practice here as you meditate. So direct your thought to worthwhile things, evaluate them in a way that actually leads to abandoning unskillful qualities and developing skillful ones. This way, the mind has a … 
  9. Fabricating against Defilement
     … Verbal fabrication is directed thought and evaluation. Your anger may direct your thoughts at what a bad person that is, but you can consciously direct them in another direction, thinking for instance of the person’s good points. Then you can evaluate the situation to see which way of thinking is better for you, better for the situation. In other words, you learn how … 
  10. Discernment
     … The mental side is made up of lots of little thoughts that are all glommed together. So the Buddha recommends that you take it apart in terms of the khandhas, in terms of the aggregates. Look for the feeling, and then look for the perception. An important perception is saying, “This is my suffering, this is happening to me,” which may be true but … 
  11. Expanding Your Awareness
     … Whatever they do, for good or for evil, to that will they fall heir.” We apply these thoughts to everybody, all living beings of all kinds. There’s also a chant that specifically directs you to think these thoughts in specific directions: first to the East, then West, North, South, Northeast, Southwest, Southeast, Northwest, above and below—all ten directions. Sometimes it’s a … 
  12. Generosity & Gratitude
    Every night we have the chant on developing thoughts of goodwill. We start with goodwill for ourselves, although it’s interesting that the discussions of this topic in the Canon never talk about what order you should do this in. It’s only in the later texts where they say that you should start with yourself, then go to people who’ve been kind … 
  13. The Buddha’s Standards or Yours?
     … Verbal fabrication is directed thought and evaluation—the way the mind talks to itself. Mental fabrication consists of perceptions and feelings—feelings here not so much as emotions, but rather as feeling tones of pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain. Now, the way these things are defined, you can see that they don’t happen only when you’re meditating. It’s not that … 
  14. The Uses of the Breath
     … Technically, this is directed thought and evaluation. When you’re focused on the breath, you’re directing your thoughts there and you evaluate the breath as it’s coming in, going out. You also evaluate the mind as it relates to the breath so that you get them to fit snugly together. Finally, there’s mental fabrication: feelings and perceptions. Perceptions are the labels … 
  15. Focus on What’s Important
     … So he reflected, “Could there be another way?” He thought back to a time when he was a child, sitting under a tree, spontaneously entering the first jhāna: rapture and pleasure born of seclusion, accompanied by a direct thought and evaluation. He asked himself, “Is there anything blameworthy about that pleasure?” No. “Would it be intoxicating?” No. So he realized that he had misinterpreted … 
  16. Doing Meditation
     … Sometimes you notice when a thought appears. When you’re conscious of the whole body like this, you’ll also notice that there’s a pattern of tension that corresponds to the thought appearing in your sense of the body. If you try relaxing that pattern of tension, the thought goes away. That provides you with another interesting insight into the connection between mind … 
  17. Appropriate Attention
     … What you thought was your friend is not your friend; what you thought you could rely on, you can’t rely on. That’s when you let go. You can’t determine ahead of time which of the aggregates is going to be the trigger, or which of the perceptions that you apply. The clinging-aggregates, as the Buddha said, are the first noble … 
  18. Shifting Your Paradigm
     … You see how much there is to explore here, this territory that you thought you knew, but when you really look at it very carefully, you realize it contains a lot going on that you didn’t know before. This is what makes the meditation fascinating. There’s always a lot to learn about the breath, new ways of conceiving how it goes in … 
  19. Ignorance & Deception
     … That’s how it moves from one thought world into another one. That right there contains a lot of ignorance. It’s like when they put on a play: When they’re going to change the scenery, they close the curtains, because if you could see the old scenery being moved away and new scenery being put in place, it would destroy some of … 
  20. To Comprehend Suffering
     … These are the activities of form, feelings, perceptions, thought-fabrications, and consciousness. But theimportant word there is the clinging, because there are places where he says that the aggregates on their own are experienced by arahants. Arahants have form, feelings, perceptions, thought-fabrications, consciousness, but they don’t suffer, because they don’t have the clinging. So, the first noble truth: To comprehend dukkha … 
  21. When Aging Closes In
     … I was just struck by the thought.” So Sariputta explained. It’s a matter developing the mind to the point where you no longer have to identify with the body, with feelings, perceptions, thought-constructs, or consciousness. That way, when these things change, as they inevitably will, the mind won’t be affected by the change. That’s a really healthy mind. This is … 
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