Search results for: "Thought"
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- High-Level Dhamma… I thought the stories were inspiring, because seeing that he had made mistakes, I could look at my own mistakes and not get too flustered by them, realizing that we all make mistakes in the path. Learning about his mistakes and how he finally worked his way around them, I found inspiring. The Thais were surprised that I included that. Some people actually thought …
- A Post-goodness World?… So as you’re trying to get the mind into concentration and other thoughts come in, you can ask yourself which is going to lead to longer-term happiness: those distracting thoughts, or the state of concentration you can develop if you really stuck with the breath? This is one of the reasons why the Buddha recommends you develop the perception of inconstancy before …
- A Clear, Calm Lake… So when anxious thoughts come up—and they will, as I said, given the fact that you have a body, there’s a lot to be anxious about, and if you’re concerned about its survival—you can remember that the survival of your goodness is most important, and that allows you to become calmer in the face of dangers. After all, your goodness …
- Sensitive in Seven Ways… At what point are they enough? When you have a true sense of enough, you realize that you need less money than you thought you did. This means that you can work less at your job and devote more time to the Dhamma instead. But this point of enough is something each of us has to find for him or herself. You have to …
- Basics… With that thought, spread thoughts of goodwill to people you don’t even know — and not just people: all living beings of all kinds, east, west, north, south, above, and below, out to infinity. May we all find true happiness. The next step is to bring your awareness back to the present moment. What have you got here? You’ve got the body sitting …
- Nurturing Your Inner Adult… There’s the breath, which is bodily fabrication; directed thought and evaluation—in other words, the way you talk to yourself about an issue—are verbal fabrications; and then there are perceptions and feelings, which are mental fabrications. Feelings here are not so much emotions. They’re more feeling tones: pleasure, pain, neither-pleasure-nor-pain. Perceptions are the images that underlie the thoughts …
- The Four Noble Truths from Within… There are thought fabrications, the thoughts you put together, the intentions you have. Then there’s your consciousness of all this. When he uses these terms, he’s talking about right here. And he wants you to look at how you’re creating suffering out of these things right here. The word he uses for the essential part of suffering is *upadana, *which can …
- The Best Use of Your Time… The mind has is to learn how to put its thoughts aside when it sees that they’re going in the wrong direction. This is one of the basic definitions of wisdom, realizing that things you do and say and think have consequences, and that sometimes things that you like to do or say or think can have unfortunate consequences, and things that you …
- The Dhamma Points Inside… Sometimes papañca is translated as “mental proliferation,” meaning that your thoughts run rampant all over the place**. When people nowadays talk about having a papañca attack, they mean they got started thinking about a topic and they couldn’t stop. But that’s not what the Buddha’s talking about. **The way he uses the term **papañca, it’s not a question of how …
- The Language of the Heart (2)… But for this group of people—they were from the Ministry of Education—I decided to say something more important, which was that I thought it was miraculous that during all those years I was with him, even though I was a Westerner and he was a Thai, he always treated me as a human being, and our communication was always on a human …
- The Balance of Power… In terms of right concentration or what they call jhana, these then develop into directed thought and evaluation. Directed thought is when you keep your thoughts on one topic. And then evaluation is that you check how things are going and making adjustments as you need to. Then the other factor is singleness of preoccupation, means you really are one with the breath. It …
- Two Things to Keep in Mind… the thoughts you’ve had, the intentions, the various ways you have of looking at things. These are going to shape whether you’re going to suffer because of the world or not. So as we’re meditating, we’re going to back off from the world and get back into the mind to see if we can change a few of these processes …
- Giving Weight… You’ll notice a lot of resistance, because most of the time when we deal with other people, our mind is focused on what their reactions are, what their thoughts may be. But think about it: How much do you know about another person’s thoughts? You’re trying to read all the signs of what they may be thinking, but that’s not …
- Rivers of Craving… Sometimes you find that other thoughts come up. In fact, it’s rare that other thoughts don’t come up. One of the skills you want to learn is how not to go with those other thoughts. You’ve made up your mind that the breath is where you really want to stay, and the more you can stick with it, the more you …
- Beginner’s Mind… Or your experience of the in-breath and the out-breath is not quite what you thought it was. And unless you’re willing to look again and look again and look again like this, it’s hard to see anything new. So from that point of view, you need the attitude that you’re coming new to the breath, coming new to the …
- The Evening News… So instead of letting yourself think about what’s going on someplace else or create thought worlds and get lost in the thought worlds—as if there were really nothing important to look at right here and right now—you have to realize the important thing in life is what’s going on right here right now. There’s always some fabrication and there …
- Put the Other Person’s Heart in Yours… What’s unbearable is your thought, “This is unbearable.” That weighs you down. But if you can focus on what’s good in that person, and you can focus on what’s bearable in the situation, then you’re not going to react out of anger. Now, the Buddha’s not saying that you don’t try to correct people when they do something …
- What’s Real… We take these things that we normally do—bodily fabrication, or the breath; verbal fabrication—directed thought and evaluation, i.e., the way you talk to yourself; and then mental fabrication, your feelings and perceptions: We take these things and turn them into our path. When we engage in these fabrications out of ignorance, they’re going to cause suffering. But when we fabricate …
- Pay Careful Attention… I read thao nan, and thought it meant that you use the breath syllable only with a long breath, and not with a short one. So that’s what I did. Now that wasn’t too serious a mistake. I was still able to get the mind to settle down that way. But when I went back and read it afterwards, I realized, “Oh …
- The Forerunner of All Things… Verbal is the way you talk to yourself, what the Buddha calls directed thought and evaluation: You focus on a topic and then you comment on it. And finally there’s mental fabrication, which is composed of feelings and perceptions. Feelings are feelings of pleasure, pain, or neither-pleasure-nor-pain. Perceptions are the images or labels that you apply to things—the messages …
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