Search results for: "The Breath"
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- You’ve Got Friends… With right concentration, you take the breath as your ally. You try to step out of purely mental concerns and focus on the physical sensation of breathing. Then see what you can do to make that comfortable. When I talk about the breath, it’s not just the in-and-out movement of the air, it’s the whole energy flow through the body …
- Bewildered… Remind yourself that the breath is there first, the pain came later. So the breath can have priority. See if that switches things around. After all, the pain is what? It’s not any of the elements. It’s not fire, it’s not water, it’s not earth, and it’s not breath—although we do tend to glom it on to the …
- Mastering Pleasure & Pain… So appreciate the breath. Savor the breath. As the Buddha says, when the mind settles down, indulge in it, but make it an indulgence where there’s also a part of the mind separate from the pleasure. It stays with the breath, stays with the cause separate from the pleasure. The mind stays with the breath despite the pleasure, and lets the pleasure do …
- Training Your Commentator… What are the causes? You watch the breath and you learn how to be in not too great a hurry to get the results. Patience is required. Another ground rule is that you have to know when not to talk to yourself. One of the times is when you try different things with the breath and nothing seems to work. The mind doesn’t …
- Think Outside the Ruts… That’s what the breath provides: a place to stand outside your thoughts. You can be with the breath coming in, breath going out, bathing your body in the breath, bathing your own sense of “you” in the breath—“you” inhabiting the body. You want to fully inhabit the body so that you can get out of your mind, or at the very least …
- Magha Puja… What does the path have you do? It’s pretty simple—just stay with the breath. Try to be at ease with the breath. Find a level of breathing that feels soothing and energizing at the same time, one that goes deep down and refreshes the entire body and refreshes the mind. As Ajaan Fuang once said, if you’re going to doubt anything …
- Teaching Old Selves New Tricks… This is one of the reasons why we work on the breath. The breath is always there. It’s right next to your verbal fabrication. It’s bodily fabrication, and the fact that it’s a fabrication means that you can tell the breath to do different things: for instance, to breathe in a way that calms you down, keeps you nourished, so that …
- The Real World Isn’t for Real… When you look at the breath, you’re very close to looking at the mind. When you look at the breath you give yourself a good foundation—a place to stand so that when you look into the mind and see things you don’t like about the mind, you’re not blown away. So try to develop a sense of ease, well-being …
- Suffering Comes from What You’re Doing… Because you want to see, “What can I do to bring the mind to settle down? What can I do with the breath? How do I think about the breath?” And what’s the role of desire in all this? As the Buddha said, all dhammas are rooted in desire, which means all things good and bad that you can do. So you have …
- Inner Worlds… So look at the way you breathe, look at the way you talk to yourself about the breath, about other issues that might come in and interfere with the breath. Look at the perceptions you’re holding in mind—again, about the breath itself and also about the things that would pull your way—and learn how to sort them out. When you engage …
- Heedful of Death… Or focus on the breath. Think of the breath surrounding the body. When you get really into the breath, you start forgetting about the heat. You realize that the opportunities for practice are still here and you want to make the most of them. If you don’t make the most of them, then when your time is up, you’ll regret all the …
- A Good Buddhist Ego… The only warning there, of course, is that when you’re practicing concentration and the breath gets really comfortable, don’t drop the breath and wallow in the comfort. You stay with the breath. That’s what’s going to produce the comfort. Let the sense of comfort work on your body, work on your mind. It’ll do its work. All you have …
- A Gift of Strength… concentration—staying with one object, like the breath, or whatever object you find comfortable, effective, at any one time, staying with that object until you develop a sense of well-being around it. Remind yourself, you’re going to learn how to be friends with your breath, be friends with the way the breath energy permeates the body, so that you can be aware …
- Admirable in the Beginning, Middle, & End… You develop them by staying with the breath, keeping the breath in mind, continually watching the breath coming in and going out, and then trying to do it well. Doing it well means learning how to breathe with a sense of ease, with a sense of fullness. Learning how to breathe with a sense of being aware of the whole body. Calming the effect …
- Four Determinations… You have to think your way to get the mind to settle down with the breath: You adjust the breath to fit with the mind; you adjust the mind to fit with the breath. But there comes a point where you don’t have to adjust anymore. The fit is perfect, or at least good enough to settle down in. But often the mind …
- One Thing Only… There are ways of thinking that can get you around those problems, all with the purpose of getting you back to the breath – because it’s when you’re with the breath that you can see your subtle intentions most clearly. Those are the troublemakers. Those are the things you want to see more and more clearly so that you can figure out exactly …
- Meticulous… When the mind chooses to focus on the breath or on something else, there is a moment when you can influence that choice. All too often, when we’re aware of the fact that the choice was made, we’re already off some place else. We don’t see clearly what led up to the choice. That’s because we’ve gotten so used …
- Restlessness & Anxiety… With the breath, of course, you try to calm it down. Try to be aware of the whole body breathing in, the whole body breathing out. Think of the breath as a medicine to soothe things inside. Then you’ve got to give yourself a good talking to. If you’re worried about things happening in the future, remind yourself that a certain amount …
- Heedfulness… We have an intention to stay with the breath. We have some ideas of what the breath is, we have some ideas of how we should focus, how we should adjust the breath, how we should not adjust the breath, so we bring those ideas with us to the practice. But then it’s important that you not just stick with the ideas but …
- Food for Consciousness… If you’re feeding on the breath right now, there’s an intention to keep you here, and there’s also the contact, where you feel the breath. How does it feel right now? You can use your intentions to adjust the breath. As the Buddha said, this is probably the best food for the consciousness that needs to be fed, because it’s …
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