Search results for: "Feelings"
- Page 100
- Endurance Training… Then bring that goodwill inside and try to breathe in a way that feels good. Breathe in a way that gives the mind strength. Develop good qualities in the mind. When we meditate, we’re feeding the mind, but at the same time, we’re exercising it. Now, if the mind just feeds, feeds, feeds, that’s the image for clinging. You feed off …
- What’s Real… We take these things that we normally do—bodily fabrication, or the breath; verbal fabrication—directed thought and evaluation, i.e., the way you talk to yourself; and then mental fabrication, your feelings and perceptions: We take these things and turn them into our path. When we engage in these fabrications out of ignorance, they’re going to cause suffering. But when we fabricate …
- Equanimity & More… That thought should give rise to a feeling of samvega. Where are you going go to find a true, unadulterated happiness? There’s only one place, and that’s nibbāna—and it’s not even a place. It’s another dimension entirely outside of space and time. You think about that and you realize that that would be the only way to find true …
- No Arrows, Nothing… Just when you feel that you can depend on it, it starts to betray you. Of course, it’s not really betrayal. It didn’t enter into any agreement. The mind comes into the body, grabs hold of it, animates it, and tries to get what it wants, using the body. The body will work for a while. But then this part doesn’t …
- To Disturb Your Complacency… What’s this? What’s happening here in your mind right now? What’s your experience of form right now? What kind of feelings do you have right now? What are your perceptions right now? What are your thought constructs, your intentions? How about your consciousness right now? How do you experience these things? Are you suffering from them? If you are, what are …
- Pain… Otherwise, it’s going to feel threatened by the pain. So find a part of the body that’s comfortable. As Ajaan Lee said, if everything in the body were in pain, we’d die. So there’s got to be some part that’s comfortable right now. Focus there and resist every temptation to go into the pain. It may be seeming to …
- Desires Have Their Reasons… You feel this little funny feeling in your hand, this little funny feeling in the heart area or the stomach area, and you go for something right away: a particular line of thought, a particular type of action. And it’s totally random that you’ve made that connection. So you want to see the randomness and the arbitrariness of that, because that weakens …
- After the Fire… This is why, as things begin to settle down in the mind, you can’t just allow the mind to drift off anyway it wants, or to latch on to a feeling of pleasure and just take the pleasure as your object, because it begins to get fuzzy after a while, and the mind begins to get dull. So once the mind is still …
- Disenchantment… You look for the origination of whatever desire you have—for forms, feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, and consciousness—and you see that it originates in the mind. What is it in the mind that wants these things? What wants to take the raw materials, the potentials in the present moment for these things, and turn them into actual aggregates? And then from the aggregates …
- Protection… energizing if you’re tired, relaxing if you’re tense, soothing if you’ve been feeling frazzled. That’s the good thing about the breath. You can play with it. You can use it to create a sense of well-being and comfort here inside. Now, at the same time that you focus on the breath, you’re also putting aside any thoughts that …
- The Search for Happiness… If we feel that happiness is playing games with us, we might as well play games with it. But suppose there were a path that really led to an unending happiness. Wouldn’t that change things? That’s precisely what the Buddha offers. He was the sort of person who did take happiness seriously. After all, it’s what we all want most in …
- Undividing the Mind… If your enthusiasm flags, well, think about the dangers of not finding this kind of happiness and the regret you’d feel that it’s there, it’s a possibility, but you didn’t take it. There’s a story in the Canon of a man who had many opportunities to practice. But he kept turning them down, turning them down—finding other things …
- Reflect on What You’re Doing… Feelings would be a feeling of ease, well-being, or equanimity. The perception would be the mental image you have of how the breath comes in and out of the body. Fabrication would be your intention to stay here. It starts out with directed thought and evaluation as you talk to yourself to get the mind to settle down, but even as you drop …
- Quick on the Draw… whatever you need that gives you some encouragement so you don’t feel like a total loser, you don’t feel like a total washout. Remind yourself that you do have some good to you, and then work up from there as you begin to get more and more skillful on the path. Take pride in your skill. The pride of a craftsman is …
- Specifics… Or if it feels like the breath is something you have to pull into the body or push out of the body, what happens to the meditation, what happens to your state of concentration, when you allow yourself to think that the breath is already there no matter what you do? It’s simply a matter of rearranging the furniture, playing with different aspects …
- Potentials… You probably know the passage where the Buddha says that you look at form, feeling, perception, fabrication and consciousness, and you ask yourself: “Are they under your control? Can you have them be the way you want them to be?” The answer is “partially.” Most people tend to think that there’s nothing you can do about them at all. You’ve just got …
- Finding Your Own Balance… And how do you know when you find a balance? It feels good. And how you know if it really feels good, if it’s good enough? That you have to observe. You have to learn how to trust your powers of observation, and the only way you can trust them is to keep exercising them. This is why we call this practice: You …
- Breath Meditation: The First Tetrad… You may feel that you’re all head. Or that your body fills the room, or that it’s very, very small. Just sit through those distortions. Don’t get involved with them. They’re signs that your awareness is trying to settle into an area that it’s not all that familiar with. Then, after the rapture gives you energy and has done …
- As They’ve Come to Be… As for mental fabrication, we’re trying to give rise to a feeling of well-being, and then we notice how that has an impact on the mind. We use different perceptions to get the mind with the breath; that’s also mental fabrication. And here again, you get sensitive to that and then you try to calm it down. So, you’re combining …
- You Can’t Relax Your Way to Awakening… And when you finally gained awakening, you wouldn’t feel that it was attained with pain. The pleasure—and this is not a pleasant feeling, but the pleasure of freedom that comes with awakening—is so overwhelming that it would blot out all of the difficulties. So, if you’re sitting here looking for the path of relaxation, you’re in the wrong place …
- Load next page...
