Search results for: "Thought"

  1. Dissolving Your Thoughts
     … And so they’d get very embarrassed if they found themselves thinking critical thoughts about him, because they thought he would know what they were thinking. So they’d come to confess and to apologize. And he’d tell them, “The mind can think all kinds of thoughts. It can think good thoughts, so why can’t it think bad thoughts?” If he could … 
  2. A Master of Your Thoughts
     … In other words, part of maintaining your concentration means seeing thoughts simply as events in the mind without a lot of meaning. You may have a thought of your mother, a thought of your family, a thought of home. Instead of getting involved in all the meanings and narratives that go around those thoughts, you simply say, “Oh, there’s that thought.” It’s … 
  3. Breath vs. Distraction
     … That’s one of your first defenses against distracting thoughts, because you’re experimenting, finding things out, asking questions that you’ve never thought to ask before. Even if you have thought of asking them before, you can still explore. There’s a lot to explore in the relationship among the body and the mind and the breath. That way, when a distracting thought … 
  4. The Making Of
     … When you’re aware of this, you can start looking at all your thought worlds in the same terms: the making of a thought about yesterday, the making of a thought about tomorrow, the making of the thoughts about your duties here at the monastery, the making of thoughts of things you’re going to do when you leave the monastery. The mind is … 
  5. The Spider on the Web
     … Those issues can be thought about some other time. You don’t want to be caught by the hooks when you’re dealing with these random little thoughts, because the hooks of the more Velcro-covered thoughts can really get you. If you don’t watch out, if you can’t refrain yourself from entertaining the entertaining thoughts, it’s going to be harder … 
  6. Tranquility & Insight
     … We have wise thoughts and unwise thoughts; perceptive, unperceptive; and we have to learn how to make a distinction between those. As the Buddha himself said, he got on the path when he could divide his thoughts into two types: On the one hand, there were thoughts imbued with sensuality, ill will, and harmfulness. On the other, there were thoughts imbued with renunciation, non … 
  7. Standing Outside Your Thoughts
    If we were to measure our thoughts in terms of their quantity, we’d have to say that we’re really good at thinking. In terms of their quality, it’s another matter. Very rarely do we pay much attention to quality, it’s more a matter of being interested in whatever the mind churns up. Some people are better at directing their thoughts … 
  8. “My Way”
     … thoughts of sensuality, of ill will, and cruelty on the one side, and then thoughts of renunciation, lack of ill will, and lack of cruelty on the other. In other words, he looked at his thoughts not in terms of, “Well, these are my thoughts; I’ve just got to stick with them,” or getting tied up in the content of the thoughts. He … 
  9. Right Resolve, Right Concentration
     … The other way is to look at your thoughts and see anywhere where you’re engaging in thoughts of sensuality, thoughts of ill will, thoughts of harmfulness. Try to counteract them directly. Thoughts of sensuality: Think of all the harm that’s done by getting fired up with sensual desire, all the stupid and thoughtless things you do. If you don’t want to … 
  10. Stillness & Clear Seeing
     … But then there are other thoughts that have nothing to do with sensuality—there are thoughts that come from an attitude of renunciation, trying to look for happiness in something besides sensuality—thoughts of good will, thoughts of compassion. Those thoughts, the Buddha said, you can encourage. Let them wander as they like. Like a cow herd during the hot season when the rice … 
  11. Mental Stirrings
     … Watch what the thought is doing right now. And if you watch carefully enough, all the layers that get involved in creating a thought, maintaining the thought, will become clear. You start out in that process by actually not paying attention to the thought and by paying attention instead to the breath, focusing on the breath as your object of concentration. The thoughts that … 
  12. Blowing Bubbles
     … In the same way, there are little strands in your thoughts that will try to hold you there. As you try to cut them, they complain. That’s when you begin to understand, “This is what made that thought so interesting or attractive.” You don’t have to stay with the thought to understand the process of why the mind is getting involved with … 
  13. Against the Stream
     … And karma starts with the thoughts. So even though a thought comes up in the mind, you’re not committed to identify with it, to take it on as yours. You can step back, identify with different thoughts. Even though that first thought may not want to stop—it may have a momentum of its own—you identify with the thoughts that say, “I … 
  14. Judging Your Thoughts by What They Do
     … He further commented that the kinds of thoughts you think become tendencies in the mind. They bend the mind in their direction. It becomes easier and easier to think those thoughts. And those thoughts will lead to actions. So what kind of actions do you want to head toward? Apply the principle of skillfulness expressed in his teachings to Rahula. You look at the … 
  15. The Reality of Your Thoughts
     … Then you begin to realize your mind is a random thought-generator: All these neurons firing and little thoughts appearing here and appear there, and there’s part of the mind that’s always trying to make sense out of these things. We’ve gotten pretty good at creating little thought-worlds—so good at it that we tend to forget that we’re … 
  16. Directed Thoughts, Random Thoughts
     … You begin to see steps in how the mind goes out and creates a whole new thought world, and then you go into the thought world. From that little stirring there’s a perception that tells you, “This is a potential for a thought about x, do you want to go?” In the past, you’d just jump right in. But now you’re … 
  17. Saying No to Distraction
     … The first skill you want to develop is how to say No quickly to a thought. Recognize that a thought is beginning to enter in, and think of shredding it. Sometimes the thought seems to present itself as a little present. You look into the box, and then you fall into the box. In other words, the thought envelops you, and you’re in … 
  18. The Airplane Mechanic
     … In denial, you pretend that it’s not happening, that you don’t have those feelings; that you don’t have those thoughts. But here we’re not denying it. We’re simply asking ourselves to develop a new skill, so that when the thought arises, we can say, “I’m simply going to stay here with the breath. The thought can be in … 
  19. The Wisdom of Restraint
    The Buddha said that he got on the right path when he began to exert some control over his thoughts. He divided his thoughts into two sorts, not based on whether he liked them or not, or really believed them or not, but based on where they came from and where they were going to lead. If they came from sensuality, ill will, or … 
  20. Don’t Believe Everything You Think
     … Many of your thoughts are like this. The mind will stir up these things, and if you latch on to them, then they’ll stir up some more. Or you can think of these thoughts as the mind offering wares for sale. If you buy the thought, okay, then it’ll keep on producing more of the thoughts of the same kind, and you … 
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