Search results for: "Feeling"
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- 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 …
- Seriously Happy… He says that the aggregates of form, feeling, perception, fabrication, consciousness—the things out of which we create our sense of self—have their pleasures and their pains. He says that it’s because of their pleasures that we get stuck on them. It’s because of their pains that we look for a way out. So when you find yourself missing a particular …
- Food for the Mind… If the mind feels well-fed, well-rested, it’ll be in the right mood for dealing with these things, for admitting its own foolishness, its own stupidity, its own dishonesty in the past. That’s another reason why it’s so important that the mind gets nourished from the practice of concentration. The Buddha actually talks about five qualities of mind that nourish …
- Make a Difference… This is the state in which the Buddha said you’re focused on the body in and of itself, or feelings, or whatever your concentration object may be, but you’re not thinking thoughts about the object, and you’re certainly not thinking thoughts about anything else. You’re getting the mind still. It’s only when the mind is still that you can …
- The End of Uncertainty… When there are feelings, be alert to what you’re doing in the feeling, in the perception, in the thought fabrication, in the consciousness. Each of these things contains an element of fabrication, an element of present intention. Do you ever notice that? Do you see it happening? If you can’t yet see it happening, look at what you can see that you …
- A Heart Bigger Than the World… In other words, compassion is what goodwill feels when it sees that people are suffering or creating the causes for suffering. Empathetic joy is what goodwill feels when it sees people happy already or acting on the causes of happiness. But these attitudes have to be backed up by equanimity, remembering that there’s a lot in people’s actions that you cannot change …
- Being Responsible… This tendency we have to say, “Well, this is the sort of person I am,” or, “This is what I feel like doing,” or, “This is what I feel like saying”: This is what stands in the way of purity. It’s as if you basically don’t care. You hold to the rightness of your ideas. And you can talk yourself into believing …
- The Taste Is Release… So you learn how to breathe in ways that feel really good. When your mind doesn’t have walls inside, it’s able to be aware of itself all around the whole body, just sitting here breathing. Think of the breath as surrounding you. We talk about watching the breath, which sometimes is unfortunate. It can give the impression that you’re in one …
- Perception… The way you perceive the breath has a huge impact on what it feels like to breathe and on your ability to settle down with the breath. If you feel that you have to fight for your breath, and that there’s only a little channel by which the breath can come in and out of the body, it’s going to be hard …
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