Search results for: "Thought"

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  2. Self-Hatred
     … The unskillful thought patterns that go along with the sense of “you” don’t have to grip you so tightly—because you don’t have to grip them. So remember: As we’re meditating, it’s not just a technique. The technique is important, but the values that go along with the technique are important to learn as well. Often this involves unlearning a … 
  3. Worthy of Trust
     … Sit down and try to trace through your train of thought, say, for the past five or ten minutes. Often you find it hard to do, because the mind was so thoroughly blacked out, even if it was just for a moment, when it went from one frame of reference to the next. Just as the people on the ship could do all kinds … 
  4. To Disturb Your Complacency
     … someone saying that he thought he could detect a subtle goal orientation in some of my writings, as if that were a blemish. Well, look at the Buddha. He was extremely goal-oriented, probably the most goal-oriented person who ever was. He was willing to leave his home, leave his palace, go into the wilderness because he had a goal. When he attained … 
  5. Wilderness Lessons
     … When Ajaan Mun went to caves and mountains and forests, he would give thought to the other beings there. He would chant for them, he would spread good will, so that he was actually bringing something to them. And he’d often have to be careful not to offend them. There are stories of his going into caves where monks who had been there … 
  6. Guardian Meditations
     … This requires that when you think about this topic, it really is an active form of thinking, not just repeating a word in your head, like buddho, buddho, or whatever, or simply spreading thoughts of goodwill without thinking about what you’re doing. You have to evaluate as well, to see how that particular topic is relevant to the problem in your mind—first … 
  7. Delight in the Breath
     … It starts with dropping your thoughts of sensuality, all your plans for the pleasures you can find outside. Focus on the breath inside. He says if you can find a pleasure in here, then no matter how tempting the pleasures will be outside, you have something to counteract them from within. If you don’t have this pleasure inside, he said, then no matter … 
  8. Equanimity & Karma
     … There may be pains in the body as a result of past actions, and a lot of tormenting thoughts may come up in the mind as a result of past actions, but you have the choice of how you’re going to relate to those things. This is one of the reasons why we meditate: to develop more skill in how to relate to … 
  9. Disenchantment
     … You look for the origination of whatever desire you have—for forms, feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, and consciousness—and you see that it originates in the mind. What is it in the mind that wants these things? What wants to take the raw materials, the potentials in the present moment for these things, and turn them into actual aggregates? And then from the aggregates … 
  10. Protection
     … Now, at the same time that you focus on the breath, you’re also putting aside any thoughts that would pull you out into the world. This is your frame of reference right here. Again, sometimes we hear that mindfulness doesn’t mean just non-judging awareness. It’s also all-encompassing, allowing you to go wherever you want. But the Buddha says that … 
  11. The Lessons of Good Kamma
     … You have the perfect right to sit here and think lustful thoughts for an hour, or angry thoughts for an hour, but then what would you gain? The mind would get even more lustful, get even more likely to be angry. You’d shorten your fuse. But once you learn to give these things up of your own free will and learn how to … 
  12. To Escape the Prison of Time
     … And one of the basic premises of intellectual history is that if you want to understand a person’s thought, you have to know when he or she lived, and what the other people of the time were thinking. The underlying premise there, of course, is that each person is a prisoner of his or her own time. It was a rare individual who … 
  13. Undividing the Mind
     … You can use those thoughts to put you in a positive frame of mind. Then it’s simply a matter of learning how to apply them at the appropriate times and to develop an enthusiasm for your meditation object, an enthusiasm for the training, along with a sense of wariness and heedfulness around anything that would pull you away. As the Buddha said, heedfulness … 
  14. Reflect on What You’re Doing
     … It starts out with directed thought and evaluation as you talk to yourself to get the mind to settle down, but even as you drop those activities, you’ve still got the fabrication of intention to keep it going. And then there’s consciousness, which is aware of all these things. You begin to see that the state of ease and well-being even … 
  15. To Be an Adult
     … When you’re learning a skill—how to be skillful in your thoughts, your words, and your deeds—both the motivation and the results are relevant, because you can learn from both. You’re judging a work in progress. So the Buddha is teaching Rāhula to be honest, to have integrity, to have compassion, to show restraint—all the signs of a good healthy … 
  16. Three Weapons
     … Instead of directing your thoughts to sensuality and evaluating different sensual plans, you direct your thoughts to your breath, you evaluate the breath, and you take an interest in what’s going on inside here. The more you can take an interest here, the more you see. It is like physicists. They look at light and they can study light for their whole lives … 
  17. Abandoning & Developing
     … Do they really lead to the results that the Buddha said they would? In other words, you think unskillful thoughts—what does it do to your mind? You think skillful thoughts—what does it do to the mind? As you begin to see for yourself that you’re much better off developing skillful qualities, then you have something more solid to base your decisions … 
  18. What Am I Becoming as Days & Nights Fly Past?
     … What am I becoming as days and nights fly past, fly past? In other words, how are you changing? In what direction are you developing? Are you just staying stuck in your old ways or are you moving in a good new direction? Look at the kind of person you’re becoming in your thoughts, your words, and your deeds, to see if that … 
  19. All Your Old Baggage
     … Put all those thoughts aside and just be with what you’ve got right here. And what have you got right here? You’ve got the body sitting here breathing, you’ve got the mind thinking and aware. So you’ve got all the raw materials you need, all the tools you need for a good meditation. And regardless of however well it’s … 
  20. Finding Your Own Balance
     … Concentration does require some thought. It’s not that you try to forbid the mind from thinking. You have to think about the object. You have to evaluate the object, evaluate how the object and the mind are getting along together. If they’re not getting along, what can you do to change? For the breath, not only is there the question of how … 
  21. The Wall of Discernment
     … When the Buddha was teaching his son Rahula, before he taught him breath meditation he taught him some discernment exercises—seeing things in terms of inconstancy, seeing things in terms of not self; developing thoughts of goodwill for all beings—as a way of inclining the mind to want to be quiet, to want to be still. For instance, when you think of the … 
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