Search results for: "Thought"
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- The Gift of the Practice… But in his having gained the results of the practice, it did open my mind to the possibility that there’s a lot more happiness available in this world than I thought before. It wasn’t something that he was born with. He was very clear on the fact that everything he had in terms of true happiness and all the good qualities he …
- Suffering Comes from Those You Love… She needed some medicine, that’s what she thought. So people directed her to the Buddha, and the Buddha said that the medicine would be something very simple, mustard seeds, but it would have to come from a household where no one had ever died, a family where no one had ever died. So the woman goes around and asks for mustard seed, and …
- Focus on Your Skill… So in that sutta, he’s basically giving a picture of how he thought on the night of his awakening and addressed the options that were available to him. He could have thought about questions of, “Who am I? Where am I going? What will I be in the future?” But that would have not led to release. Release comes from looking at your …
- Maintained by Fabrication… That’s a bit scary, because the unfabricated is going to require that we abandon a lot of things that we’ve been fabricating for in the past—things we thought were good, things we thought were worthwhile—which is why we have to keep reminding ourselves of what right view says: that our intentions really do matter, and that intentions can be developed …
- True, Beneficial, Timely… First, is it true? Two, is it beneficial? And three, is this the right time and place for that? If you can hold all your thoughts to these tests, it helps get rid of a lot of unnecessary chatter inside and focuses you on the things that are really useful to say. What you say to yourself, the Buddha classifies as directed thought and …
- Question Your Defilements… So gradually he was able to hone his doubts down to questions that were really helpful, i.e., “What’s skillful? What’s not skillful? How do I look at my thinking, not in terms of what I believe or don’t believe, but in terms of what actually happens as a result of following a particular thought, following a particular idea?” That question …
- How to Read Yourself… If the mind goes to the body, thinking thoughts of lust, thinking thoughts of pride around the body, you can do the contemplation of the 32 body parts to the point where all of the possible roads out of the present moment have been blocked. Then the mind will be willing to settle down. Ajaan Lee talks about using your discernment to develop a …
- Creating Your Environment… So try to get the mind to a place where it can just drop all thoughts about past, all thoughts about future, and be right here, right here, right here. It’s not talking to itself about the past, it’s not talking to itself about the future. That’s a kind of seclusion. It’s the beginning of the seclusion they talk about …
- Seeing Danger in Birth… Try to use these thoughts, not to get you discouraged, but to encourage you to practice. That’s the use of heedfulness. That’s the use of recollection of death: This can happen to us all. If we can recollect death in a way that makes us heedful, that’s an auspicious thing. In Thailand, there’s a textbook they use for the Dhamma …
- Truth… Ajaan Lee would say that as we develop directed thought and evaluation in the practice, it’s basically learning how to observe our actions and their results, and to figure out what’s going wrong. He would compare it to learning how to weave a basket, sew a shirt, or make clay tiles. Remember this as you’re reading and listening to the Dhamma …
- Assumptions… Because what they usually do is tp tell you, “You’ve got to do something about this thought.” Something comes up in the thought, something makes you angry, “You’ve got to do something about it!” Or if you start desiring something, something in the mind will say, “Yeah, that’s something really worth desiring.” Those are the assumptions you’ve got to look …
- The Buddha’s Questions… Whenever his thoughts were not imbued with those qualities, he would allow them to range freely, until he saw that all of his thoughts were skillful. But then the mind grew tired of all that thinking. So he brought it to stillness and into the jhanas. Even here, he was motivated by that original desire, that original question: “What is skillful?” When he attained …
- Meditate Because You Have To… Verbal fabrication, directed thoughts and evaluation: That’s right here as well. You’re directing your thoughts to the breath and you’re evaluating the breath. Each breath. If you have a breath that doesn’t feel all that satisfactory, ask yourself, “What kind of breath would feel more satisfactory?” and see how the body responds. One at a time, one at a time …
- Mindful of Death… For most of us, death is a scary thought. We like to push it away, but that of course doesn’t push death itself away. It just makes us stupid. You remember the philosopher—I’ve forgotten which one it was—who said that the beginning of wisdom comes from your realization of death. It forces you to ask some questions about your life …
- Feeding on the Breath… But how many times have we ever thought that way? Usually, we’re out there feeding on it already, taking it into the mind and chewing on it, and then we’re upset that this is miserable food. As Ajaan Lee says, it’s like something somebody spit out, and you pick it up and you chew on it. The fact that it tastes …
- How to Leave Concentration… Spread thoughts of goodwill: “May other beings find the same peace in their minds, in their hearts.” Let that be the attitude you bring out of the concentration into the world, an attitude of goodwill. You can also dedicate the merit of your meditation to someone who’s passed away, someone for whom you feel gratitude. If they have any way of knowing of …
- A Simple Path Through a Complex Map… You run it past directed thought and evaluation. In other words, you can reconsider it. You run it through name and form. You learn how to pay attention to it: “What questions are you asking about it?” That’s a useful way to understand this, because now you can ask new questions. If the original questions were going to lead you to suffering, you …
- Enjoying the Path… how the way the mind deliberately closes things off may not be that much thought out, but that’s part of its way of moving around. It’s focusing its interest here, focusing its interest there, and it blocks out other things in doing so. You begin to see that there are certain ways of breathing that are associated with skillful states of mind …
- Shoulds & Desires… As soon as they hit the word should, a hand went up: “I thought Buddhism didn’t have any shoulds.” The teacher had to spend the whole morning explaining how there could be a should in the Buddha’s teachings. But it’s not that difficult to explain. If you really appreciate the idea of peace as being the ultimate happiness, then this is …
- Don’t Be Afraid of Jhana… You’re getting hands-on practice with how you can use the rhythm and texture of breathing to have an influence on how you sense the body; how to use the power of verbal fabrication—in other words, directing your thoughts to the breath and evaluating the breath—to give rise to feelings of pleasure; and how to use perceptions of the breath to …
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