Search results for: "Feelings"

  1. Page 102
  2. To Suffer Is an Active Verb
     … We’ve got potentials coming in from the past for form, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness. And then, for the sake of having aggregates to use, we fashion them—we put them together—into actual aggregates. The Pali in this particular sutta is rather strange: It says that we do this for the sake of feelingness, for the sake of formness, for the sake … 
  3. Heightening the Mind
     … Even when great feelings of oneness or unity or unlimitedness come into the mind, you find on a very subtle level that the mind can become enslaved to them as well. And the question is how, instead of becoming enslaved or enthralled, you can learn even from that kind of experience. Ultimately the mind has to become totally free, even from the state of … 
  4. The Third Noble Truth
     … Then we feel betrayed. And, yes, we have been betrayed, but not by our bodies. We’ve been betrayed by our own craving. So when you let that go, when you stop producing it, both sides get free. And finally, analayo, which in the Thai sense of the term means that you don’t have nostalgia. You’ve let your craving go and you … 
  5. Think Like a Thief
     … If you feel desire or passion for form, feeling, perception, thought formations, consciousness, all of which are activities, you feed off of these things the way the fire feeds off fuel. And you get stuck on these things the way fire stuck in its fuel. The basic image the Buddha uses here, as you know, is in the word nibbāna. It refers to a … 
  6. Facing Pain
     … You can focus on the areas of the body where the breath does feel good. If the pain is more general around the body, you can focus on the space between the atoms or on the breath energy flowing around the body. No matter how much the mind keeps screaming at you that you’ve got to focus on the pain, you say, “No … 
  7. Mindfulness Like a Dam
     … You keep in mind the fact that you want to stay with a particular topic—like the body, or feelings, or the mind, in and of themselves—and within that framework, you remember what to do with whatever comes up. If something unskillful comes up, you try to get rid of it, or at least turn it into something skillful. If there’s something … 
  8. Respect for the Precepts
     … Look at your precepts to ask yourself, “Are there times when I want to break them and I feel that it’s okay to break them?” If you don’t hold thoroughly to the precepts, you get sloppy about avoiding unskillful qualities in daily life, and as a result, your meditation breaks down. So what is this feeling that says it’s okay to … 
  9. Harmlessness
     … Compassion is what you feel when you have goodwill for someone else but you see that they’re suffering or they’re acting on the causes that would lead to suffering. This can apply to yourself as well as to other people. So it follows that ill will is a general desire to see someone suffer or to do things that will cause suffering … 
  10. Space for Sustained Contemplation
     … And as you’re dealing with the types of fabrication around the breath—the directed thought and the evaluation, perceptions and feelings around the breath—that sensitizes you to the fabrications that are always going on in the mind. Whatever the attachment is, whatever the craving is, you realize it has to be made out of these things. That’s what you want to … 
  11. A Sense of Yourself
     … How hard do you find it to part with your things? How hard do you find it to give of your time or your energy to other people when they ask for it, or even when they don’t ask for it, but you see that they could use it? What gets in the way of your generosity? When you feel that you’re … 
  12. Feeding While You Work
     … You have no responsibilities and you feel fine for the time being. But then you come back, and things are sometimes worse than they were before, because you neglected the opportunity to learn the lessons that needed to be learned by being skillful, seeing cause and effect as they’re happening. This is what the four noble truths are all about, this is what … 
  13. A Flammable Mind
     … If there’s nothing good at all, you have to feel compassion for them because they’re just really making life worse and worse and worse for themselves. So there’s no need to focus on the details that would give rise to anger. Those little details: Those are the sparks that set your desiccated mind on fire, your flammable mind on fire. The … 
  14. Awaken to Your Potentials
     … Right now, you’re mainly concerned with the potential for the path—how to develop it, how to take this breath you’ve got right here, right now, how to take this sense of the body as you feel it from within, and make something special out of it—something that’s refreshing, something that’s energizing. If you’ve been tired from the … 
  15. For the Sake of the Deathless
     … So we’re feeling our way. We do have a map, and it’s a map that’s just right. It doesn’t have too much information. If the Buddha had tried to give all the information he gained in his awakening, the map would become unreadable. He gave us just enough to get us on the right course. But the path also requires … 
  16. Evaluation
     … Is this a good comfortable breath to stay with? Does it feel good being with the breath? If it doesn’t, you can change. No one is standing over you with a whip, telling you not to change, not to do anything, or to just accept whatever’s there. After all, you’ve had a hand in creating whatever’s there. If you want … 
  17. Good & Bad Meditation
     … How do you breathe so as to minimize the pain, or to at least put you in a position where you’re not feeling threatened by the pain? I’ve often found in my own practice that a particular blockage in the body suddenly makes the meditation really interesting. Once, in my first year, I had a problem with my foot. I spent hours … 
  18. Fear & Anger
     … So while we’re meditating here, it’s good to gain practice in being sensitive to what kind of breathing feels good, and where the different parts of the body are getting caught in unskillful energy patterns. It’s one of the reasons why Ajaan Lee has you focus on the centers of the breath—the middle of the head, the palate, the base … 
  19. Pride in Your Craft
     … But if you pay attention, you can start seeing what kind of breathing genuinely does feel good now. It’s going to take a while to get really skilled at this, because sometimes a certainly way of breathing that feels cool right now is actually not all that good for you. You learn that over time. As you keep watching, keep observing, and develop … 
  20. Sanity for the Holidays
     … If it’s just that person’s feelings spouting off, you learn how to let it go. If you can’t let it go, there’s a lot of trouble. I was talking to someone the other day who was saying, “If someone says something wrong, how can you not correct it? How can you just let it go?” If you go around straightening … 
  21. Delusion Concentration
     … Keep your main attention with the comfortable parts of the breath, the areas where the breath feels good. This, of course, leads to the problem on the other side. When you’re with the comfortable parts, you have to be very careful not to just wallow around in the pleasure. This is especially tempting after a tiring day. It’s like coming home to … 
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