You want to know what you're doing when an intention comes up to do or say or think something before you act.

"When an intention comes up to do or say or think something, you want to know what that intention is. It’s a teaching that the Buddha teaches his son Rahula: to look at his his intentions before he does or says or thinks anything. I’ve heard a lot of people say, “Gee, that’s an awful lot of attention to something like that,” because they have so many other things they have to pay attention to. Well, it turns out that the other things you’re paying attention to are often the results of your own past actions. It’s much better to start at the very beginning to make sure that the new intentions coming out are well-formed.

So try to stay right here. Find ways of making the mind happy to be right here, so that it has the energy and the inclination to want to look into what’s going on in the mind and straightening that out. Once you’ve straightened out the mind, everything else gets straightened out further down the line."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Straightened Intentions"

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