Search results for: "Thought"

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  2. Your Territory
     … It also gets you out of your ordinary thought-worlds. And the practice you get in learning how to not recognize the perceptions that would pull you into thought-worlds helps give you some distance from them. When you have distance, that’s when you can see them more clearly. As the Buddha said, discernment comes from seeing things as something separate: The thought … 
  3. Five Steps to Insight
     … But try to notice those moments when the mind drops a thought, and then it’s decision to pick it up again. Sometimes the decision is based on the hormones in the body. Say you have an angry thought, and the hormones go rushing through your blood system, and then the thought drops away, because after all it is something fabricated—it’s inconstant … 
  4. The Energy You Broadcast
     … This is why we try to develop thoughts of goodwill, and all the things that are associated with merit: thoughts of generosity, thoughts of gratitude, thoughts of virtue, thoughts of harmlessness. When you’re sending out that kind of energy, that’s a lot of what gets reflected back. It creates a better atmosphere, a better environment in which to allow the mind to … 
  5. Meditators at Work
     … And what is the work? As Ajaan Lee says, the work of concentration is directed thought and evaluation. When you focus on the breath, that’s directed thought. And then you evaluate the breath. When we hear the factors of jhana explained, it sounds like something new we have to do: We’ve got to start engaging in directed thought and evaluation. But actually … 
  6. Start with Goodwill
     … If a thought appears, you stay on the outside of the thought and look at it from the outside. Where does it come from? Where is it going? Is it worth getting involved in? For the time being, as you’re trying to develop your concentration, no other thoughts are worth going into, aside thoughts related to the breath. So stay right here and … 
  7. Investing Your Happiness
     … For example, a thought comes into the mind. Our tendency is then to just jump with the thought, and go into the thought-world, and ride with it wherever it goes. Or in other words, we get taken wherever it’s going to take us. But if you’re really observant, you begin to notice that it’s possible for a thought to arise … 
  8. Anchored in the Present
     … This way, whatever thoughts do come up, you can watch them simply as things bubbling up and then disappearing. You’re not taking them for real. You’re not getting involved in them. That allows you to focus more and more on where those thoughts are coming from. Thoughts are like a magician. The magician does all these things to distract you so that … 
  9. Clearing Your Space
     … In other words, disentangle yourself from any interest in the thoughts, any connection to those thoughts. Think instead about the breath. How’s the breath going? Give yourself something else to get interested in. The thoughts will continue running on automatic pilot for a while. They’ve got their own momentum, especially the really obsessive thoughts. But you just have to say, “No, I … 
  10. Reflect
     … He looked simply at what motivated a thought—and the reason the motivation was important was because that was going to bend the mind, as he said, to do certain things. So you’ve got to look when a thought comes up: How are you breathing around the thought? That’s form. How are you feeling about the thought? That’s feeling. What are … 
  11. Renunciation Isn’t Deprivation
     … So, when thoughts of sensuality seem attractive, you have to remind yourself that there’s a better way of finding pleasure. And it’s right here, right here with your breath: Focus on the breath, keep your thoughts on the breath, keep your thoughts on nothing but the breath. And evaluate it: “How’s it going right now? What could I do to make … 
  12. Concentration Food
    One of the reasons why we focus on the breath is because it’s so responsive to your thoughts and perceptions. You tell yourself to breathe in long, and it goes long. Tell it to be shorter, it becomes shorter. Deeper, more shallow, heavier, lighter: The breath responds. You can tell it to go to different parts of the body. Here, of course, we … 
  13. Understanding Contentment
    Start with thoughts of goodwill. Make something good out of your mind. As we’re sitting here, you can think about anything you want to think about, but you can ask yourself, “What kind of thoughts would give long-term happiness and well-being?” One kind would be thoughts of goodwill. Start with goodwill for yourself: Tell yourself, “May I understand the causes for … 
  14. Mission Possible
     … Just because a thought pattern seems to be going through your head and is very insistent doesn’t mean that it has to stay there and that you can’t let it go. The Buddha gives you all kinds of instructions on how to let go of unskillful thinking. You either can replace the unskillful thoughts with more skillful thoughts, or you can reflect … 
  15. Focused on the Breath
     … If you find that you drop it and run after a thought, just drop the thought, come back, and try to recreate that feeling of fullness in the body again. If you catch the thought quickly, it doesn’t take too much to recreate that feeling. So try to be really alert as you protect your full-body awareness. And there’s nothing much … 
  16. Evaluation
     … Sometimes when thoughts come up in the mind, he says you’ve got to work through them. In other words, you have to consciously figure out ways of sidestepping the thought, or banishing the thought, or ignoring the thought, replacing it with a better thought, relaxing around the formation of that thought. There are other times, he says, that you can simply watch. He … 
  17. Samvega
     … If you’re doing something unskillful, how can you change what you’re doing? How can you have a change of heart to make yourself realize it’s important not to let yourself indulge in thoughts of sensuality, thoughts of anger, thoughts of ill will? So if you can stir up that sense of samvega, it can really have an impact. It can bring … 
  18. Metta
    It’s good to start and end our meditation with thoughts of goodwill. At the start, as Ajaan Suwat once said, it’s basically for us. We’re trying to get the mind into concentration. Ill-will is one of the hindrances that keeps us out of concentration, so we want to do a little heading off at the pass. This is so that … 
  19. Happy to Be Here
     … Right resolve is basically resolving to put away thoughts of sensuality, to put away thoughts of ill will, and to put away thoughts of harmfulness. The Buddha talks about how he got on the right path by dividing his thinking into two sorts. On the one hand were unskillful thoughts: based on sensuality, harmfulness, ill will. On the other side, there were skillful thoughts … 
  20. Hurtful Memories
     … You make up your mind to stay with the breath and suddenly find yourself overwhelmed with thoughts of the past, thoughts of the future, hurtful memories. You can just sit there and accept the fact that that’s what’s in your mind, or you can do something about it. You’ve got to learn how to step out of the memories. There are … 
  21. Driving Lessons
     … Here’s where you have to drop the breath for a minute and think about that thought: “Where is this thought leading me? If I were to think this thought for 24 hours, where would it take me? Why am I thinking these things?” All too often it’s old stuff coming back again and again and again, things you’ve thought many times … 
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