Search results for: "Feeling"

  1. Page 103
  2. At Normalcy
     … The reason we keep doing this is because we feel that moods at least create the spice of life. If the mind didn’t have moods, we’d feel like we were robots. The idea of a mind without moods sounds like oatmeal nothing added to it, i.e. pretty miserable, pretty dull. But stop and think about the dangers of our moods. They … 
  3. Cutting the Fetters
     … You’ve got the feeling of pleasure that goes with the breath: That’s feeling. You’ve got the perception that holds you with the breath — how you visualize the breath coming in and going out, where it goes in the body, how it goes in the body, which sensations in the body can be labeled as breath sensations: All that is perception. Then … 
  4. Gradually Sudden
     … You do the work, the gradual work, feeling your way. We’d like to see that it’s orderly, with nice steps going nowhere but up, and there actually are suttas in the Canon that talk about how orderly the path is. Well, in retrospect it’s orderly, but as you’re feeling your way, you don’t see the order yet. But you … 
  5. The Size of Your Eyes
     … It helps you get past any feelings of lust for other people’s bodies, or any feelings of pride that your body somehow makes you better than other people. It’s the same with listening. Sometimes you listen to aggravate your anger; sometimes you listen to aggravate your desire. You’ve got to retune your ears. If something sounds nice, well look for its … 
  6. Mange in the Mind
     … The body is getting ready to die, you feel abandoned, you feel betrayed. It’s not as if the body made a pact with you. It didn’t sign an agreement that it was going to look after you and respond to all the good things you do for it. It just does its own body thing. It develops for a while and then … 
  7. In Restraint Is Strength
     … We feel suffocated. But remember the Buddha’s image: Household life is confining. The life gone forth, the life where you can dedicate your life to the practice, is the open air, in which the restraint is to free you from all the unskillful things that drag you down. So it’s good to see restraint as freedom—and also as a strength. You … 
  8. For Your Benefit Here & Now
     … Notice how you feel the breath in the chest, how you feel the breath in the abdomen, how you feel it in your shoulders, your arms, your legs—“breath,” here, being the energy that allows the air to come in and out of the lungs, more than the air itself. This energy flow can be anywhere. As you get more acquainted with this breath … 
  9. Generating Desire
     … But now I sit under a tree with my wants satisfied, my mind like a wild deer, feeling no fear from any direction: That’s the bliss I’m thinking about.” That’s the bliss of renunciation, a possibility that doesn’t even occur to most people. We see this so many times: People who’ve amassed wealth, amassed power, realize that they’re … 
  10. The Need for Stillness
     … seeing whatever movements of thought, or feeling, or perception are going on, and also the part of the mind that seems to be humming along with them, or following along with them, commenting on them. You can see the first kind of thing arising and passing away, and that is an important element of insight, but the other element lies in seeing the part … 
  11. Focus on What’s Important
     … As he said, when he would rub his stomach, he could feel his spine. He would fall over in a faint every now and then if he tried to urinate or defecate. He realized that this couldn’t be the way. If he continued with those austerities, he would die without having found anything. So he reflected, “Could there be another way?” He thought … 
  12. Mindful to Be Skillful
     … When the Buddha talks about right mindfulness, he talks about being mindful of the body, feelings, mind states, and mental qualities in and of themselves. But there’s more to it than just that. You’re mindful, which means that you keep these things in mind. You’re alert, which means that you watch their behavior. And then you’re ardent. “Ardent” here means … 
  13. The Dualistic Path
     … As he said, even in feelings of pleasure, there is stress. We want to sensitize ourselves both to the distinction of the presence and absence of stress, and to the issue of cause and effect. To this end, the Buddha teaches you to meditate, to develop the sense of pleasure, ease, refreshment that can come with concentration. It’s part of the path. So … 
  14. The Kamma of Concentration
     … And you’re not going to be able to feel immersed in the water of pleasure unless you’ve worked it through the body. This is why Ajaan Lee talks about the various breath energies and breath channels in the body. His instructions give you some ideas about how you might direct that sense of ease through the body or think of it spreading … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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