Search results for: "Thought"

  1. Page 77
  2. A Multilingual Mind
    A Multilingual Mind April 2, 2005 One of the things you notice in meditation as you start looking at your thoughts, looking at your feelings, looking at sensory input, is that the solidity of your world starts dissolving away — both your sense of the world outside and your sense of yourself inside. And in some cases, just that much feels liberating — free from the … 
  3. Discernment Is in the Details
     … But the two most important in getting you to be with the breath and stay with the breath are directed thought and evaluation. Directed thought is when you keep reminding yourself to keep coming back to the breath: “Breath, breath”—this is what you’re going to be thinking about. And evaluation is where you develop your discernment around the breath. You start out … 
  4. Constructing & Deconstructing
     … The problem is the perceptions and thought constructs that go around it: how you talk to yourself about the pain, the images you have in mind about the pain, how it’s invaded your space, and how you’re being oppressed by it. Then the mind starts sending messages back and forth into the past and the future. Into the past, it starts talking … 
  5. Suffering is an Addiction
     … clinging to sensual thoughts; clinging to certain views about who you are, what the world is like; clinging to certain ways of thinking that things should be done this way and shouldn’t be done that way, regardless of whether it’s actually true or not; and then clinging to ideas about who you are. These are all activities. They’re things we do … 
  6. Mind the Gap
     … The connections from one train of thought to another train of thought are very tenuous. And often there are lots of gaps. It’s not too bad as you’re still alive. Your body’s still here, your circumstances around you are still here. We live in a community where we rely on one another. We live in a society where things may be … 
  7. Exercising Discernment
     … Instead of getting tied up in the idea that “I’m a horrible meditator, I can never do this,” just put those thoughts aside. They’ve never helped anybody. Everybody has thought them, but they’ve never ever helped anybody. So reflect on your meditation, remembering these factors. The set of three: mindfulness, ardency, alertness. And the set of four: desire, persistence, intent, analysis … 
  8. A Full Life
     … There are things we’ve got to give up—such as our fascination with our wandering thoughts, because these wandering thoughts have taken us wandering astray for a long, long time. Actions don’t just stay in the mind. They come out and they affect the world outside. Sometimes you hear some people say, “Karma is simply a matter of the mind affecting the … 
  9. Ajaan Suwat 100 Years
     … So, putting aside sensual thoughts, putting aside unskilful qualities, talk to yourself about the breath. Watch the breath. Breathe in a way that gives rise to a sense of ease. And then maintain that. We’ve all read the maps. We know how many jhanas there are. We’ve read the maps of the *vipassana-ñanas. *But you have to throw those maps away … 
  10. The Path Is in the Details
     … particular thoughts, particular experiences, and especially particular intentions. Those are the crucial things. So it’s important, as you meditate, as you get to know your mind, to look for the particulars. The path comes down to something very basic: being honest about your intentions. Often this is difficult, but it’s the most important work. After all, each intention is the potential for … 
  11. Helping Others
     … There’s a story Ajaan Lee tells of the old monk who’d practiced “Buddho, Buddho, Buddho,” nothing but *Buddho *and the breath—hadn’t done any adjustment of the breath, hadn’t engaged in any directed thought and evaluation—and it didn’t go anywhere. It takes some discernment to see, when you’re sitting down to meditate, what’s in the way … 
  12. Resources for Endurance
     … In this tradition, what’s the role of a teacher? One of those roles is to remind you that you have more potentials than you might have thought, more possibilities in any one situation than you might have thought. If you want to internalize a teacher, that’s one message that you can carry around with you: There are more potentials here in any … 
  13. Taking Responsibility
     … Some questions can go unasked for generations until somebody has a crazy idea to start asking a question everybody else thought was too unimportant to ask. And it turns out then though that great discoveries come as a result of asking the new question. People in the Buddha’s time thought that getting into strong states of concentration was an end in and of … 
  14. Where to Look in the Present
     … A thought will come into the mind, and you go off into it, someplace else. You have to say, “No, come right back here.” Sometimes the intention to move will be conscious, but most often it’ll be unconscious. You suddenly find yourself someplace else, and you don’t know how you got there. But for the time being, you don’t have to … 
  15. Energy & Efficiency
     … He thought to himself, “Here I’ve given all the effort I can, and nothing is coming of it.” He thought of disrobing. The Buddha sensed this and appeared right in front of him, and asked him, “Back when you were a layperson, did you play the lute?” The monk said he had. He was skilled at playing the lute. And the Buddha asked … 
  16. Again & Again
     … And try to get those distractions more and more quickly, until there’s just a brief little stirring in the mind, you can untangle it, breathe through it, and the potential for a thought goes away. Then try to maintain that stillness as best you can. Think of a spider on a web. It’s at one spot on the web but it’s … 
  17. A Good Example for the World
    We spread thoughts of goodwill every morning, every evening, making it our resolve that we want to act in a way that’s conducive to everyone’s true happiness. If there’s anybody out there who’s suffering, whom we can help, we’d be happy to help; anyone who’s already happy or acting on the causes of happiness, we’re happy for … 
  18. Sensitivity & Skill
     … One of the brahmas, out of wantonness, thought, “What’s that?” He tasted it with his finger. It tasted like wild honey. So he ate more and more. The other brahmas saw this, so they started eating, too. They fell on the flavor-earth, consuming it, and as they did they lost their self-luminosity. The sun and the moon appeared. The stars appeared … 
  19. In the Mood to Meditate
     … Those thoughts can gladden the mind. Of course, there’s the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. You’ve got this teaching that was discovered by someone who was really wise, very principled. He’d attained true happiness and didn’t need anything more for the sake of his own happiness. So after his awakening, he gave his life to helping other people find … 
  20. For Goodness’ Sake
     … But actually, the first jhana contains directed thought and evaluation: These are things you do. You direct your thoughts to the breath and then you evaluate it. How does it feel? Does it feel good enough to stay with for a while? If it doesn’t, how could it be made to feel that good? You experiment. You try things out. You ask questions … 
  21. Giving Meaning to Life
     … As you work on the path, you begin to see how the mind creates a thought world and you realize that you have the choice to go into that thought world or not. As you develop more and more mindfulness, more and more alertness, you understand these processes of the mind. Through understanding them, you can free yourself from them. You don’t have … 
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