Search results for: "Thought"

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  2. Deconstructing Anger
     … breath, directed thought and evaluation, feelings, and perceptions. When you begin to recognize these things as you’re dealing with them to get the mind in concentration, you begin to realize that your other mental states, outside of concentration practice, are made up of the same sort of things. This gives you a handle, especially on recognizing how to deal with unskillful mental states … 
  3. Knowing & Acting
     … Then it gets the body to act in line with its thoughts. But it’s also aware of what’s going on. It’s because of the combination of these two things that we know anything at all, that we can understand anything at all. If we were just aware and sensitive but weren’t able to act, the world would wash over us … 
  4. Who’s in Charge Here?
     … They don’t require much effort or thought. Things you like to do that give good results, you do them. Things you don’t like to do that give bad results, you don’t do them. It’s the things that you like to do but give bad results and the things you don’t like to do, but give good results: That’s … 
  5. Right Resolve & Right Concentration
     … So you’re basically reclaiming the breath, taking it back, so that at the very least, the unskillful thoughts don’t have that avenue open to them. For this reason, you want to learn how to breathe in a way that’s skillful, comfortable, that feels good inside, feels nourishing inside. Get so that you can tune into that, tap into that, access that … 
  6. Shoulds & Wants
    When you sit down and meditate and tell yourself you’re going to be thinking only about one thing — the breath — you find that lots of other thoughts come crowding in, lots of other voices in the mind. Some of them are helpful; a lot of them are not, because a lot of them come from a time when the mind was not trained … 
  7. Contentment
     … He added that just that thought should be enough to make you want to go for release instead. Ajaan Fuang made a similar comment: If there’s a pleasure you really hanker after, it’s a sign that you had it in a previous lifetime. And you miss it. That too, he said, should make you want to go for release, because you realize … 
  8. Feelings of Pain
     … Or you could think, “Buddho, Buddho.” Or you could think thoughts of goodwill for all beings. See what works in getting the mind to settle down. If you’re working with the breath, find what kind of breath the body likes right now; what kind of breath the mind likes right now. Yesterday, it may have liked long breathing, but does it like long … 
  9. Renunciation
     … secluding yourself from all your sensual thoughts. You find that there are certain parts of the mind that really thrive when they can put those kinds of thoughts away and just be with the sense of the form of the body in the present moment. The Buddha talks about three different levels of becoming. There’s sensual becoming, form becoming, and formless becoming, “becoming … 
  10. Ingenuity
     … So, having friendly thoughts for everybody is very different from actually having somebody as your friend. And at the same time, the Buddha says you don’t want to become too entangled with people. So you’ve got to learn how to balance those principles out. Sort them out. Tease them out to see the best way to apply them. The same principle applies … 
  11. The Desire for Freedom
     … It should be part of an ongoing training, a training in which we look after our thoughts and our words and our deeds in all circumstances. You read of the various students of the Buddha who gained awakening. Some of them were doing it while they were meditating. Others were doing it at random times. The sensitivity and inner reflection they had developed as … 
  12. Renunciate Grief
     … They thought, “Wouldn’t it be good to have a life where you’re right there all the time?” Well, they came back and they’re right there, but the situation is different now. Hardly any Buddhists live in those areas. The people who hang around tend to be poor. It seemed so good in the memory, but it was a world that doesn … 
  13. Visakha Puja – Shaking the Earth
     … That’s called directed thought. And then you see if you can stay with the breath for long periods of time, because you’re trying to develop concentration. As the Buddha once said, that’s the heart of the path. All the other elements he awakened to in the path serve as its requisites, serve as its supports. The concentration itself is getting the … 
  14. Your Goodness is Your Protection
     … They’re all pretty basic—he’s someone who never thought about the Dhamma before—and one of his discoveries one day is that people who behave unskillfully are leaving themselves unprotected. Even if they have a huge army, they’re still unprotected. Whereas people who behave skillfully, even if they have no army at all, are very well-protected. It’s good to … 
  15. Mindfulness & Perception
     … You’d lose your train of thought. You’d lose the thread. So these two things go together: mindfulness and perception. Perception is like a little arrow. It points you in a particular direction, whereas mindfulness is what keeps the arrow there, present in your awareness, so that it doesn’t suddenly disappear. In the beginning of the meditation, you may not have to … 
  16. Meaning & Becoming
     … There’s bodily fabrication, the way you breathe; verbal fabrication, the way you talk to yourself with directed thought and evaluation; mental fabrication, perceptions and feelings. We turn these into states of becoming all the time. We do that very easily. The process is very quick, as you’ve noticed when you fall asleep and enter a dream world. It’s almost effortless. But … 
  17. What Makes Concentration Right
     … And the breath is the element in the body that responds most immediately to your thoughts. You can think “long breathing,” “short breathing,” “fast,” “slow,” “deep,” “shallow,” “heavy,” “light,” and the breath will respond. When you find something that feels good, watch it for a while, because there are some kinds of breathing that will feel good for quite a long while, and others … 
  18. A Home for the Mind
     … You want to give the mind a good place to settle down so that it can get out of the worlds of its thoughts and take stock about what’s really important in life. But to gain a sense of what’s really important, you need a place to stand where you can gain some perspective so you’re not caught up in the … 
  19. Right Resolve & Right Speech
     … Inside, it’s called directed thought and evaluation. Then, as the Buddha said, once you’ve directed your thoughts to something and evaluated it, you break into speech. So you want to be very careful about what you talk about to others and how you talk about it. If you’re used to speaking in a divisive way or a harsh way, it’s … 
  20. Discernment Is in the Doing
     … something I should try to understand first and then get rid of it? Have I ever had dealings with this particular problem before? Have I been able to overcome thoughts of lust before or thoughts of anger before?” You bring in your memory. If you can’t remember having dealt with this particular problem before, you try to use your ingenuity to figure out … 
  21. Doing Aggregates
     … You can see that when the mind slips off, it’s engaging in perceptions and thought fabrication. There’s usually a feeling. When you’re here with the concentration, you’re adding the form of the body as an anchor. But still, there’s also feeling and perception, fabrication, and consciousness. So everything you need to understand is right here. You’re getting practice … 
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