Search results for: "Thought"

  1. Page 86
  2. A Good Foundation
     … So I learned to change the spot where I thought the breath was coming in, so as to share the load. The muscles I had been working got to rest, and other muscles pitched in. Then, as they got tired, I’d move my picture of the spot again. So how you picture the breath to yourself is an important part of the meditation … 
  3. Discernment Through Ardency & Evaluation
     … There’s directed thought, evaluation, singleness of preoccupation, pleasure, and rapture. He divides those factors into two: causes and effects. The directed thought, evaluation, and singleness of preoccupation are the causal factors. Those are the things you do. The pleasure and rapture are things that come about as a result. And of all those factors, the wisdom or discernment factor is the evaluation. In … 
  4. Tuning Your Lute
     … You can imagine how Soṇa feels—an unskillful thought has gone through his mind, and the Buddha shows up. He was lucky that he had the Buddha doing that. A lot of us sit here with unskillful thoughts going through our minds, and yet nobody shows up to warn us. The Buddha asks Soṇa about when he was a layman: “When you played the … 
  5. What You Bring to the Moment
     … Verbal fabrication is directed thought and evaluation, which is what you’re supposed to bring to the breath as you meditate. You direct your thoughts to the breath and then you evaluate how it’s going. Is it comfortable? Is it not? What can you do to make it comfortable? That’s looking at it in terms of the feelings, which are the mental … 
  6. Negotiating with Death
     … If a series of thoughts comes up in the mind that are really compelling, try to take them apart, say, “Okay what in here is an attachment to a sight, and what in here is attachment to a sound, and what is an attachment to a taste, or a smell, or feeling in the body or to a thought you’ve had?” Take it … 
  7. Tenacity
     … You have to make yourself very, very quiet, so that the sound of your body doesn’t get in the way of the sound of the music; the sound of your thoughts doesn’t get in the way of the sound of the music. You want everything to be as quiet as possible so that you can hear the subtleties, because there will be … 
  8. The Mind Set Tall
     … You’re going to need to be able to tap into that sense of well-being, you’re going to need to be able to pull the mind out of any train of thought that’s beginning to get too threatening. It’s not the case that you’re going to work, work, work on nothing but concentration and then, when you’re already … 
  9. Finding Balance
     … Right there you’ve got some directed thought and evaluation. You direct thoughts to the breath and then evaluate what you’ve done: Is the breath appropriate right now? And how about the way you’re relating to the breath: Is that appropriate? If you have trouble staying with the body in the present moment—in other words, the more you’re focused on … 
  10. Daily-Life Dhamma
     … You make up your mind you’re going to stay with the breath and abandon all other thoughts: Well, stick with that. Be true to that. And it’s easier to be true in your meditation when you’ve learned to be true in your daily life. Self-control: Whatever irritations there may be in the surroundings around you, okay, you don’t react … 
  11. Mindfulness Immersed in the Body
     … It keeps gnawing, gnawing, gnawing on sensual thoughts but doesn’t get any substance out of it, any real nourishment. As Ajaan Lee says, all of the flavor is in the dog’s own saliva. In other words, the flavor lies in what you put into it. And is it worth putting anything into it? The purpose of all these contemplations is to think … 
  12. Calm & Insight into Pain
     … That’s verbal fabrication—in technical terms, directed thought and evaluation. You direct your thoughts to the breath and your perceptions, and you evaluate how well they’re calming things down. So you’ve got three kinds of fabrication—bodily, verbal, and mental—and in each case you’re trying to calm them down. To see things in terms of fabrication, that’s insight … 
  13. Stupid about Pleasure
     … And a sense of security can develop around that thought. Because of that sense of security, it’s possible for a stream-enterer to become complacent — to say nothing of people who’ve simply experienced jhana, or right concentration. Just the fact that you’ve encountered the really refined pleasures of right concentration doesn’t mean that you automatically let go of your attachments … 
  14. Pay Attention to Some Things
     … You feel feelings, you perceive perceptions, you put thoughts together, you’re conscious of things, and all this is based on your sense of the body. We hold on to these activities. And out of these activities, we create the things we consciously cling to: We cling to sensuality, our fascination with sensual fantasies. We cling to our views about the world, who’s … 
  15. The Fortress
     … In the first level of concentration, the first jhana, there’s directed thought and evaluation. You direct your thoughts to the breath, and then you evaluate how the breath goes, as I explained just now. You evaluate it not just to decide whether it’s already good or bad. You evaluate it to make it good. That way, it gives rise to a sense … 
  16. Ven. Ananda’s Awakening
     … In one case he’s talking to a nun, telling her that the end of conceit is one of the goals of the practice, but the conceit that goes with the thought, “There are others who have gained awakening—they’re human beings, I’m a human being. If they can gain awakening, why can’t I?"—that’s to be encouraged. It’s … 
  17. The Form of the Body
     … just that thought, that realization, that the little worries and concerns of the day, or even some of the big worries and concerns of the day, really don’t have to be taken all that seriously. There are other issues that are more serious. The ability to free the mind from suffering: That’s important. You want the issues in the mind to take … 
  18. Your Duty Lies Right Here
    We spread thoughts of goodwill, wishing for all beings to be happy, to have good fortune. Then we look at beings who have good fortune, and in many cases, it’s very dismaying. They gain wealth and then they do everything they can to hang on to their wealth with no thought of morality at all. They gain beauty, they gain power, and do … 
  19. The Web of Pain
     … But here you’re sitting with nothing to distract you, except for your own thoughts. It’s just you and the body sitting here breathing, and you’re going to start noticing that there’s a pain here, there’s a pain there, or there’s a little pain in your leg. Part of those pains is based on actual physical conditions, but the … 
  20. Training for Dispassion
     … There will be thoughts that come up that wander away from the breath. For the time being, nothing but thoughts about the breath are relevant, so with any desires that would pull you away from the breath, you’ve got to say No. It’s in saying No that you learn about them. The Buddha gives the example of using mindfulness to cut off … 
  21. Meaning & Happiness
     … They can live deliberate lives—lives where they’ve thought through all the implications of what they’re doing, what they really want, and trim things down, pare things down, that get in the way of that object, get in the way of that purpose, that meaning. The Pali word, attha, means many things: meaning, purpose, and benefit. So what is your attha, what … 
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