Search results for: "Thought"
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- Determined on Goodwill… Not, “May you be happy doing whatever you’re doing,” but, “May you act in skillful ways and avoid unskillful ways.” Try to keep that thought in mind. As you’re going through the day, don’t neglect the fact that you, say, chanted passages of goodwill or had a meditation of goodwill earlier in the day. It’s an attitude you have to …
- A Well-thatched Roof… That’s what we do when we engage in directed thought and evaluation, particularly the evaluation. What’s going on when the mind is settling down? What’s working? What’s not working? If it’s not working, you try to figure it out so that it does. To understand that, you’re going to have to look at the mind in terms of …
- The Open Committee… If you sit and watch the thoughts that go through the mind for a while, you begin to realize that a lot of them don’t come from you at all. They come from outside—ideas you’ve picked up from who knows where: your parents, your friends, TV, teachers, radio, magazines. You never can really be sure that the places where these voices …
- Factors for Awakening… If you see that a certain way of breathing, a certain feeling, or a certain mind state is leading to unskillful thoughts, words, or deeds, change it. If any of these things lead to skillful thoughts, words, and deeds, you maintain them and try to develop them. It’s not that these tools we develop as part of right mindfulness are for use only …
- Pleasures & Pains on the Middle Way… That’s a painful thought because it means there’s work you’ve got to do. The Buddha says to think about that, to encourage that thought. All too often you hear we shouldn’t have any goals because if you have goals then you start feeling bad about yourself. That may work on a weekend meditation retreat when they’re afraid that you …
- Prepare to Die… If there are people we’ve harmed in the past, the Buddha says, develop thoughts of goodwill for them. Keep them in mind, keep that attitude in mind, so that you won’t want to harm other people. Because that’s the next step, of course: to develop thoughts of goodwill for everybody. You make up your mind that “Whatever harmful things I did …
- The Heart of the Teachings… Don’t let any unskillful thoughts come into the mind, any thoughts that would pull you away from the breath. And then try to fully develop your skill in how you focus on the breath. One time, when the Buddha said that the monks should practice breath meditation, one monk said, “I already practice breath meditation.” And the Buddha asked him, “Well, how do …
- Gladdening the Mind… Just that thought should inspire you to practice further on the path. The only problem is when the grief gets too heavy, the discouragement gets too heavy — that’s when you need to gladden the mind, by reflecting on all the good things you’ve done as part of the path. And the path is asking you to do only good things, things you …
- Advice for a New Monk… If thoughts come into your head, remind yourself that they’re not destroying your breath. The sensations of breathing are still there. Try to maintain your focus on those sensations and just let the thoughts pass through. Think of body is being like a big window screen. The breeze flows through the screen because the screen doesn’t catch it. It goes right through …
- Guardian Meditations, Right & Wrong… So we spread thoughts of goodwill, not so that we’ll stay around forever with everybody, but so that we’ll be motivated to act in the right way to get out of here with skill, and leave behind a good example for others. Recollection of the foulness of the body is another guardian meditation. And this, too, can be done in a right …
- Forest Bathing… That can be a disturbing thought. You don’t know who they are. You don’t know their intentions. So the next step is to spread lots of goodwill. There’s a passage in the Canon where a monk has been bitten by a snake and he dies. Other monks go and report this to the Buddha, and the Buddha says, “That’s because …
- The Desire to End All Desires… There may be thoughts running around through the mind on many different levels. But you make up your mind to stay with the breath regardless of those other thoughts and you pay them no attention. You don’t have to snuff them out. You don’t have to chase them down and kill them. You just don’t pay them any attention. It’s …
- Little Decisions… A fantasy comes up and you have to decide whether or not to go with the fantasy—a thought about yesterday, a thought about tomorrow. And it’s here where the issue of complacency comes in. As the Buddha pointed out, complacency is often our big enemy as meditators. He said that his awakening depended on two attitudes, both of which tackle complacency head …
- The Value of Concentration… As soon as the thought comes into the mind, you’re right there. The hard part is in staying there, and for that you need to have a strong sense of how valuable it is to have a peace of mind, to have the mind centered in one place. You need to be very protective of what you’ve got. In the beginning it …
- How to Listen to the Dhamma… But if that were so, you wouldn’t be able to listen to the Dhamma talk, you wouldn’t be able to think thoughts of appropriate attention, because appropriate attention involves directed thought and evaluation, which are qualities of the first jhana. You let your thoughts flow along with the talk, and you evaluate what’s being said as it relates to what’s …
- The Buddha’s Protection… The Buddha’s instructions on establishing mindfulness are to protect us from our thoughts that go out into the world and cause us trouble. At the same time, those instructions give us a good, solid place to stay within the mind itself, so that our happiness has a source coming from within. It doesn’t depend on things outside—the word outside here meaning …
- A Foundation for Restraint… You can start by just being aware of the breath here in the present moment, so that when the thoughts go out, you notice they’re going out. This is a theme you hear from the forest ajaans a lot: There are currents that flows out of the mind. And the currents cause all the trouble. They go out your eyes, your ears, nose …
- Keeping Your Values Alive… The first person thought, “Well, this is my property. I can do what I want.” The second person said, “Well, that was my view first.” Of course, they’re both wrong. The property doesn’t really belong to the first person; the view doesn’t belong to the second. But when sensuality is uppermost in your mind, uppermost in your life, you start laying …
- The No Common Sense Zone… Years back, I was reading a book where the author made the point that, regardless of what the religion or denomination of religious thought in America, it all came down to Methodism: the belief that if your heart was good, that’s all that mattered. You don’t have to think much. You don’t have to study or understand anything much. When your …
- Borrowed Goods… the verbal fabrication of directed thought and evaluation, and just the underlying intention even in the higher levels of concentration—the intention to stay here, to stick with one object. And then there’s consciousness: the awareness of all these things. In this way, you’re using all five aggregates to make them into a path, to turn them into concentration. You use them …
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