Search results for: "Thought"
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- Rebirth & Not-Self… As you direct your thoughts to the breath, you can also evaluate it to figure out what feels good, what feels best, what kinds of perceptions are best, what ways of breathing are best, so that you can settle down. The directed thought and evaluation are fabrication. Then you’ve got consciousness, which is aware of all these things. Consciousness, of course, is part …
- The Mirror Inside… Think thoughts of goodwill: goodwill for yourself, goodwill for others. Or think about taking the body apart in your imagination—all the different parts inside. If you’re having a problem with lust or sensual desire, okay, take this apart to see: What is there that’s really worth lusting for? You realize that lust has very little to do with the actual object …
- Right but Wrong… The Buddha thought he’d been right. He thought there were only two alternatives, and this was obviously the right one of the two. It was when he was able to open his mind that maybe there was more out there than just these two alternatives: That was when he was able to get on the right path. He realized that his pride was …
- Fears… You learn that the reality was not as bad as you thought it would be. As this disjunction grows clearer, the fear gets calmer, weaker, more and more manageable. That’s how you handle neurotic fear. Realistic fears require deeper practice. One of the members of our community lost her mother in a war, came to the States, and became a psychotherapist. As part …
- A Trustworthy Mind… It’s not when you have lots of different thoughts and lots of different ideas that the mind has great value. It’s like having a fruit. If the market is full of that particular kind of fruit, it doesn’t have much value at all. If there’s only of one that particular kind of fruit in the market, it can fetch a …
- Only One Person… So you want your examples—the examples you set by your thoughts, words and deeds—to be good ones. That’s one of the ways in which you’re acting for the benefit of others. Always keep that point in mind. The Buddha grants us the dignity of having freedom of choice. Kant, the German philosopher, said that this is what makes human beings …
- The Value of Refuge… So he asked himself, was there another path? He thought of the time he sat under a tree as a child and spontaneously entered the first jhāna: a sense of happiness that didn’t depend on sights, sounds, smells, tastes, or tactile sensations—a happiness that started within the mind and then spread through the body. The happiness of form; the pleasure of form …
- Step Back & Watch… But with Ajaan Suwat, he had trained his mind to step back from his thoughts, to step back from his thought worlds. And that’s what saved him from a lot of suffering. This is one of the reasons why we develop mindfulness, why we practice concentration: to keep in mind the possibility that sometimes our perceptions are off. The concentration gives us a …
- To Comprehend Suffering… You learn how to separate yourself out from it and realize that whatever the thought may be in the mind that’s causing you pain, the pain is one thing, the thought is something else. The awareness is something else still. When you can see that, then you separate yourself from the pain. But to see that, the mind has to get very, very …
- In Touch with Your Fabrications… When the Buddha defines fabrication, he defines it as taking the potentials for a sense of form, feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, or consciousness, and then putting them together into actual experiences of those aggregates for the sake of something. Many of our problems come from the fact that we, in the past, did these things for the sake of what we thought was going …
- Expanding Your Skill Set… You don’t have to the tie up any loose ends of your thoughts. Even if there’s a fascinating thought, you don’t have to remember it. If it’s really worthwhile, it’ll come back to later. Right now is your time to develop this new skill, which is learning how to stay with the breath as continuously as possible. If the …
- Equanimity… That thought is a painful thought—“There’s a freedom I haven’t attained”—but there’s also hope. “Other people can do it. Why can’t I do it?” So it is important to have a goal as you practice. The skill lies simply in learning how to relate to the goal well. If you’re going to go on a weekend retreat …
- Right Livelihood… If there are a lot of hidden agendas and little corners for hiding away in the mind, then the thoughts that are lodged in those corners and hide behind those agendas are hard to deal with. Especially if there are aspects in your life where you have to go into denial in order to justify the way you act: That denial is going to …
- Bless Yourself… So let that thought calm you down, at the same time making you want to practice. This is a large part of the strength of persistence: learning how to motivate yourself and figuring out what kind of motivation you need right now. The strength of persistence is part of a whole set of five strengths. There’s conviction—conviction that the Buddha really was …
- Doing, Maintaining, Using… feeling, perception, thought constructs. And as you learn how to use them in different ways to deal with different situations, they begin to stand out more clearly because you see them in action, you’ve used them in action. This is when you’re going to gain real insight into them, how you can relate to them in a way that’s healthy rather …
- 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 …
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