Search results for: "Thought"

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  2. High Level Metta
     … One is called directed thought and the other is evaluation. Directed thought is when you make up your mind as to what topic you’re going to focus on. Evaluation includes all the comments and questions you address to yourself about that topic. So you ask yourself, “What kind of breathing feels good right now? Does this breathing feel good or does that breathing … 
  3. Turtle Meditation
     … And when a thought first appears, it’s hard to say whether it’s physical or mental. It’s both. Or it has both aspects. And if you’re on the lookout for thoughts, if you’re wanting thoughts, you can turn that little knot of energy or cyst of energy into a full-blown thought world. Once you get into that little world … 
  4. The Stages of Meditation
     … The thoughts will come up: “Well, this is boring. What’s next?” So say, “No. Who’s bored? Who’s saying that?” Start questioning those thoughts. Don’t believe everything that comes through your head. Don’t believe everything you think. Just see the thought as an energy pattern that comes and goes. You don’t have to give it any more reality than … 
  5. Staying on Track
     … There are other passages where the Buddha says that if you find thoughts of regret coming up, things you’ve done in the past that you feel really bad about, realize the best thing you can do is to resolve not to repeat the mistake and to engage in brahmavihara meditation. Think thoughts of goodwill for everybody, thoughts of compassion, thoughts of empathetic joy … 
  6. Lessons of Right Resolve
     … And your acts come from what? They come from your thoughts. Which kinds of thought do you feed in the mind? Which ones do you not feed? Which ones do you encourage? Which ones do you keep in check? There’s a sutta—Majjhima 19—where the Buddha talks about this. You realize that thoughts based on sensuality, based on ill-will, or based … 
  7. A Mind like Wind
     … If a thought comes up, see how it relates to the body. What feelings arise in the body together with the thought, what feelings pass away when the thought passes away? This is a useful insight. You see what you do as you’re thinking. In order to stay, a thought has to have its little niche there in the body, a spot with … 
  8. The Skills of Stillness
    Start your meditation with thoughts of goodwill. Get into a comfortable position, close your eyes, and then tell yourself, “May I be happy. May I be truly happy.” True happiness comes from within, developing qualities you have inside. Which means that your true happiness doesn’t take anything away from anyone else’s. It also means that your true happiness doesn’t conflict with … 
  9. Quiet in Every Way
     … The body’s still, the breath is still, but the mind is like a boom box, broadcasting all kinds of thoughts and concerns. For many of us, meditation is the only time of the day when we get to sit and be with our thoughts without any interruption. But that’s not what it’s for. We’re here to watch, to observe. So … 
  10. The Skill of Renunciation
    The Buddha’s description of concentration is that you seclude your mind from sensuality and unskillful thoughts. For most of us, when we hear that you’re going to drop sensuality, it sounds like a deprivation. But actually it’s not. You’re going to be trading one form of happiness for another: the sense of well-being that comes when the mind can … 
  11. Negativity
     … Every thought to abandon something unskillful inside is a skillful thought. Just the thought that you would like to abandon unskillful thoughts is a skillful thought. Nourish that. See its value. Value your good intentions, because they’re the basis of the path and your ability to stick with it.
  12. Metacognition
     … Observing cause and effect, he could see which thoughts deserved being held in check and which ones should be allowed to have some free rein, judging them by whether they led to affliction or not. That means you don’t hang on to your thoughts simply because they’re your thoughts, your opinions. You look at where they come from and where they lead … 
  13. Get Out of the Way
     … With every little thought that comes up in the mind, we feel we have to look at it, examine it, file it away, pass judgment on it as to whether it’s useful or not. For the time being, though, you don’t have to be responsible for any of these thoughts. You have one thought you want to hold on to. You want … 
  14. Random Word Generators
     … The Buddha said that one of the ways of learning how to gain some control over your thought processes is learning how to ignore thoughts. There are times when you see a thought come up and you can simply direct your attention back to the breath, no problem. Other times that doesn’t work. You’ve got to start thinking about the drawbacks of … 
  15. Good Fences All Around You
     … Any thought that doesn’t relate to the breath, just drop it. Realize that it’s a thought that’s run up against the fence, and you don’t want to help it bore a hole through the fence so it can get out. You want to stay here, right inside. This way, you get to see which of your thoughts are actually skillful … 
  16. The Raft of Jhana
     … But what is jhana made out of? In the passage we chanted just now, from the Analysis of the Path, it says that in the first jhana there’s directed thought, evaluation, pleasure, and rapture. What makes these faculties different from your ordinary directed thought and evaluation, your ordinary feelings of pleasure, and sometimes of rapture? It’s that you’re bringing them together … 
  17. When You’ve Played Enough With the Breath
     … directed thought and evaluation. The Buddha talks about gladdening the mind through the practice of generosity, through the practice of virtue, but you can use your directed thought and evaluation to have a lot of fun with the breath, to play around with the breath as well. Just as generosity provides you with lots of opportunities for exercising your ingenuity in the world outside … 
  18. A Strong Sense of Self
    Start with thoughts of goodwill. Goodwill is a wish for happiness, a wish for true happiness, and you realize that because true happiness comes from within, your true happiness doesn’t have to conflict with anyone else’s. That’s one of the reasons why goodwill is an attitude that can be made limitless. Most of the time, our goodwill is partial. We have … 
  19. Introduction: Meditation as a Skill
     … So it’s important that you realize, when thoughts go out, that it’s not your mind going out. Your attention follows a thought, and thoughts seem to direct your attention someplace else. They’re like pointers, little arrows here in the present moment that point in different directions. But the thoughts themselves occur in the present moment. If they’re thoughts about the … 
  20. At Home in Jhana
     … We’re used to thinking of samsara as going from one lifetime to the next, but it also includes the mind’s wandering from one thought to the next, one thought world to another thought world. It moves on, moves on, moves on, because it can’t stay in any of these worlds. It’s like going into a house that’s ready to … 
  21. Concentration & Insight
     … There’s a list of five ways of dealing with distracting thoughts, but it’s a short checklist for covering a whole variety of approaches. The first approach is that you just replace the distracting thought with a better thought. Give the mind something better to think about than that thought—like the breath. Just bring the mind back to the breath and try … 
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