Search results for: "Thought"
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- How to Save the World… You can keep reminding yourself that you don’t have to pick up thoughts and worries about this and concerns about that. You can drop them for at least a while and give the mind a chance to rest and recover. It’s part of the basic care and feeding of the mind. Once the mind starts feeling stronger and has a greater sense …
- Directing the Flow… Part of this goes against the grain, because the Buddha’s asking you to step outside of your thoughts and watch them as events, patterns of cause and effect in the mind, without getting involved in the dramas and the narratives that come from being immersed in the thoughts. It’s a new habit, but once you develop it, you begin to realize that …
- The Thoroughbred Horse… I thought Buddhism didn’t have any shoulds.” The teacher spent the whole morning trying to explain how Buddhism might have a should. Actually, it’s quite simple. It doesn’t require a whole morning. The Buddha’s shoulds are conditional. In other words, if you want to put an end to suffering, this is what you have to do. Now, as to whether …
- Dreams & Voices… So you might use that thought to develop a sense of samvega. If you see yourself in a very poor position in a previous lifetime, you can tell yourself, “Yep, I’ve been there.” It teaches you not to look down on people who are poor now. If you see yourself wealthy, powerful, “Yep, you’ve been there, too.” That teaches you not to …
- Barriers in the Heart… Try to keep these thoughts as unlimited as possible. Let them stretch your mind, and then try to live within those attitudes. They’re called brahma-viharas. “Vihara” means dwelling. It’s not just something that you visit for a few minutes and then forget about. Ajaan Mun would practice these three times a day. Everyday when he’d wake up he’d spread …
- In the Mood… So when your mind is prowling around in those kinds of thoughts, you have to realize you’re in unsafe territory. That kind of thought is chastening. It gives rise to what the Buddha calls saṁvega, which literally means terror. But it also can mean a sense of dismay over how futile those kinds of pleasures are—how that kind of thinking that goes …
- What Are You Doing Right Now?… That’s important, because this is how your mind moves around from thought world to thought world. The same process happens when you die. As you leave this life and go on to the next life, it’s this seed of consciousness. That seed, as the Buddha says, gets watered by craving, by desire. Now, for many of us, our desires are unskillful, which …
- No Extra Arrows… It’s focused on form — the form of the body — feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, acts of consciousness. And it comes from craving. Craving, too, is desire and passion. The relationship between the two is like this: The word for craving in Pali is “thirst.” The word for clinging — upādāna — is “to feed.” So the desire and passion that’s looking for something: That’s …
- Heedfulness… Years back I heard someone complain that this focus on being careful in your thoughts and your words and deeds was distracting you from the wonderful deathless that was all around you, the unconditioned that was all around you. If you focus on conditioned things, you’re missing out. But that’s trying to clone awakening, to adopt the viewpoint of an awakened person …
- Guardian Meditations… Verbal fabrication consists of the way you direct your thoughts to things and then comment on them. If this is done in ignorance, it’s going to lead to suffering. Mental fabrication consists of perceptions and feelings: If you fabricate these things out of ignorance, they’re going to lead to suffering as well. This is why a large part of the practice is …
- Cooking the Present Moment… As the Buddha says, we take the potential for the aggregates—form, feeling, perception, thought constructs, and consciousness—and for the sake of those things, we fabricate them And what do we fabricate them from? From raw material from the past. This is one of the reasons why fabrication comes right after ignorance, at the beginning of dependent co-arising. If you’re ignorant …
- Always Willing to Learn… So you have to be willing to take it in stride that the lessons you thought you learned you haven’t really learned yet. Or you may have learned one side of the problem of, say, anger, but there are other sides as well. Or one side of conceit and pride: You think you’ve taken care of it? Well, there are other layers …
- Sensitive to the Mind… If distracting thoughts then came up, you’d see right through them because you’d already contemplated the issues. Then where does the body lead? It leads to death. And then where will you be? You’ll be totally dependent on the qualities you’ve developed in the mind. This thought gets the mind more and more willing to want to stay with the …
- Honesty & Integrity… See how quickly you can catch the whole process before it even becomes a thought. Then again, learn how to use the breath to deal with this. Sometimes there’s a little stirring that’s even hard to classify as to whether it’s physical or mental. When it’s in that in-between state, you can breathe right through it, and that zaps …
- Games the Mind Plays… I’ve got other goals right now.” And it’s a mistake to think that this resistance is somehow the deepest thought in your mind, or the most reliable thought in your mind, just because it’s coming up when things have cleared up a bit. Remember that image of the committee. And there’s not just the committee that’s operating on the …
- The Same for Everyone… And so as we sit here trying to practice his Dhamma, we should keep that thought in mind. We’re here because we want to be here. We’re here voluntarily. Most of us come here with a divided will. Part of us wants to be here, and part of us wants to be someplace else. Part of us says, “I’d like faster …
- Passion for Dispassion… We enjoy feeling and perception, and we enjoy fabricating our thoughts. We enjoy consciousness at the senses. The idea that we could find happiness by not being passionate for these things, not clinging to these things, goes against the grain, because we’ve been clinging for who knows how long? So there’s a lot in the message of the Buddha that goes against …
- The Power of Choice… Verbal fabrication is directed thought and evaluation, like we’re doing right now: We’re directing our thoughts to the breath and we’re evaluating the breath. Then there’s mental fabrication: feelings and perceptions. As you’re meditating, you’ve got all these forms of fabrication right here. And you’re creating this state of form-becoming, the best becoming for seeing the …
- Into Position… The mind in position starts first with thoughts of goodwill. You’re establishing your motivation—goodwill for yourself, goodwill for those around you. You’re going to look for happiness in a way that doesn’t harm you, doesn’t harm anybody else. So you want your thoughts of goodwill to spread in all directions to all beings without any hypocrisy, without any conflict …
- Loss… Especially when we suffer loss of someone or something we thought we had—something we did have for a while but wasn’t really as much ours as we thought it was: It’s not just the loss of that thing or that relationship. There’s a strong sense that we’ve lost part of ourself, one of our selves. This is very central …
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