Search results for: "Thought"
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- Getting Familiar with Concentration… Then there’s verbal fabrication, the mind’s inner chatter, where it directs its thoughts to certain topics and then evaluate them. Here you’re directing your thoughts to the breath and you’re evaluating the breath. Then there’s mental fabrication: feelings and perceptions. There are feelings of ease or dis-ease, which are associated with the breath. Your perceptions: the labels you …
- Suffering Comes from What You’re Doing… Sometimes you notice that when there are thoughts of sensual desire, there’s just a slightly irritating feeling in, say, your hands or some other part of the body. And you immediately go running off with a thought as a way of getting away from that slight irritation. Sometimes it can be very slight. The point of this is to see that a lot …
- Well-armed Efforts… There’s bodily fabrication, which is the breath; verbal fabrication, which is directed thought and evaluation, in other words, the way you talk to yourself; and there’s mental fabrication, which are perceptions, the labels you have for things, and then feelings—feelings of pleasure, pain, neither-pleasure-nor-pain. Every mental state is composed of these three things. So when something unskillful comes …
- An Anthropologist from Mars… Will the person survive to retirement? That’s a scary thought. You save up and save up, but then you don’t live to enjoy what you’ve saved. In the meantime your time is wasted—maybe not totally wasted, but you don’t get as much out of it as you could have. What this means is that, as a meditator, you don …
- Three Virtues for the Mind… There’s a strong current of thought in our society—even with the recession and all the exposure of what greed has done for us over the past who knows how long—there’s still a strong current of thought that the more things you have, the better. But you have to realize that when you gain a thing, you often lose certain things …
- Truths of the Will… Some people decide they want to be a concert pianist, but then when they become a concert pianist, they find that it’s not really as fulfilling as they thought it would be. Someone wants power, gains power, and then abuses it, misuses it, creating a lot of suffering, both for himself and for a lot of other people, which is going to have …
- The Fires of Sensuality… There’s a passage where the Buddha said that even though he doesn’t praise sleeping a lot, you’d be better off sleeping than indulging in sensual thoughts. So it’s good to think about the drawbacks of these things. It helps the mind be more inclined to get into concentration, and then the concentration helps provide you with an alternative form of …
- Knowledge over Fear… Sensuality doesn’t mean pleasant sensual objects, it’s more our fascination with thinking sensual thoughts: planning for this sensual pleasure, planning for that one, saying “Boy, wouldn’t it be nice if I had this or had that or experienced this or experienced that.” The mind can eat itself up with those thoughts. And there are times when they seem really, really attractive …
- Respect for the Mind… A thought comes bubbling up in the mind, and then you place your mind on the bubble. Sometimes those bubbles turn out to be swamp gas. They’re poisonous. So you have to move the mind and put it someplace else, but again, you put it just any old place. That’s the way most people are. Whatever comes up in the mind, good …
- A Real Education… Things you did in the past will be sending influences into the present moment, the random thoughts that pop up in the mind. And, of course, as we’re meditating, we’re developing skills that we’ll need into the future. But first, you have to learn how to observe your mind right here and now, and keep it directed where you want it …
- The Wounded Warrior… the ability to look at those thoughts that were wounding and hurtful, the issues in the outside world that have you all upset, and to see them simply as thoughts arising and passing away. You have the choice: Do you want to go into that world, or not? If you feel obliged to go into that world, ask yourself why. “Am I ready for …
- Seeing the Stillness… I wonder what this is like over here.” This is not yet the time to follow those thoughts, for the sense of wellbeing can’t take care of itself. This is the time to develop your ability to stay centered in wellbeing and allow it to fill the body. It’s like having a kid. After it’s been born, you can’t say …
- On Being Non-reactive… In the beginning, Ajaan Lee recommends deep, long breathing to energize the body because if you start out with the thought, “I’m just going to calm things down,” you can put yourself to sleep. So energize yourself first. Then think of calming things down. How do you calm things down? You don’t suppress the breath. You let the mind be as quiet …
- Not-selfing Your Selves… With all the various skills we’ve learned in making use of the body—making use of our feelings, our perceptions, thought constructs, even our consciousness: The reason we hold onto these things is because we’ve found them useful for finding happiness. Now, the problem is that our notion of happiness may be limited, and we may be turning a blind eye to …
- All About Change… Some people find that thought depressing; others find it a challenge. What can we do to make sure we don’t go down again? That kind of change, the change down, is to be discouraged. The change up is to be encouraged. So as you’re focusing here, notice how the mind wanders off and try to be quick in catching it. The Buddha …
- Three More Recollections… But you thought about other people and how they would be pleased or how they would be helped by what you had. And you felt wealthy enough to share. That right there is a refreshing thought: that sense of wealth, that you have enough to share. And the fact that you did think about other people opens up the mind. As Ajaan Lee once …
- Making an Effort… It may have seemed as if you’ve thought about it many, many times, and that that should be enough. But if it hasn’t done the job yet, you’ve just got to keep at it. As Ajaan Maha Boowa often says, you can’t count the number of times you’ve contemplated that topic. You just keep doing it until it begins …
- Make the Most of What You’ve Got… There are also states of becoming in the mind—in other words, thought worlds. You can visualize San Francisco; you can visualize New York; you can visualize the middle of Canada. Then you can put yourself in that visualization. That’s taking birth in a state of becoming. You can think about having some ice cream, and then you take on the identity of …
- A Timeless Foundation… As you start exploring in the present moment, there won’t be much room in your mind for distracting thoughts. They may come in, but if you’re really interested in the breath, they have no place to stand. You’re not feeding them, because you’re feeding your interest in the breath. Then you can think of the different tetrads that the Buddha …
- Generating Energy… Is that healthy breath energy or not? If it were healthy, what would it feel like? Because sometimes you hold in mind the perception that a sensation is solid, and you put up with all kinds of stuff from solidity that you wouldn’t put up with if you thought this was breath. Then conversely, there are times when you feel a need for …
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