Search results for: "Feelings"

  1. Page 103
  2. Enlightenment is Not a Hot Dog
     … So it’s not just a question of whether the technique is right for you, it’s what are you giving to the technique? Here, we’re focusing on the breath, being with the breath as it comes in, as it goes out, noticing where you feel the breathing in the body, not just at the nose, but anyplace in the body where the … 
  3. A Committed Relationship
     … Because sometimes a certain type of breathing may feel good for the body but the mind has trouble staying with it, in which case you’ve got to change. Other times a kind of breathing may feel good—especially the very gentle subtle breathing may feel good—but the body’s getting starved of oxygen. I found years ago when I was suffering from … 
  4. Four Noble Truths to One
     … the five clinging-aggregates of form, feeling, perceptions, thought fabrications, and consciousness. The aggregates don’t cling. We cling to them, and the clinging is the actual suffering. Once we learn how to be with these things, to engage in these things without clinging, then there’s no suffering around them. So you have to comprehend: How is that clinging suffering? We have to … 
  5. Dispassion Is Freedom
     … The mind feels a lot more expansive: That’s dispassion. The mind really feels expansive because it’s not concerning itself with little tiny things. The Buddha tried to induce in his listeners a taste of dispassion when he gave the graduated discourse. You think of all the good things in generosity, the good things in virtue; the rewards of those things, but then … 
  6. Skillful Thinking
     … Think in those ways for a while until you feel more confident in yourself and in the path, and then you can get back to your practice. Or, if you find yourself getting complacent and lazy, you can think about death for a while, because death can come at any time. It’s right here in your breath. If you breathe in and can … 
  7. How to Read Yourself
     … In this case, the Buddha says, there are times when you to get the mind to stay with the breath but you run into a fever in the breath or a fever in your feelings, or a fever in the mind. In other words, the mind’s not willing to stay. It feels antsy, irritable. That’s when you have to stop and think … 
  8. In the Land of Wrong View
     … Notice, when you breathe in, where do you feel it? You may not be feeling it primarily in the areas where you think you should. But that doesn’t matter. In fact, when you notice that the breath is doing things you don’t expect, that’s when you know that you’re really watching it. Because the way we breathe will vary from … 
  9. Fear of Death
     … If you really feel goodwill for all, there’s no way you can intentionally harm them. You don’t have to like all beings; you simply decide that you don’t want to cause them suffering. You don’t want to take pleasure in their suffering. As you think about it, what good do you get out of other people’s suffering? You don … 
  10. A Full Heart
     … That in and of itself simply feels good. It’s also very useful. If you look carefully, you begin to notice that when a distracting thought comes up, the simple fact of keeping that thought in your range of awareness requires that you create a little marker to remind yourself of the thought from moment to moment. That marker is usually a little bit … 
  11. Assumptions
     … So you don’t feel so compelled to keep on suffering. You start noticing what you’re doing that’s causing the suffering and you realize it’s unnecessary, so you drop it. That’s what it comes down to. But you can’t do this just in the abstract. You have to watch what’s actually going on. And you have to apply … 
  12. Faith in the Practice
     … It’s not a middle way between pain and pleasure—in other words a neutral feeling tone. It’s the realization that you can use pain and pleasure as means rather than as ends. For example, there’s the pain of knowing that “There’s work to be done.” But then there’s the confidence that comes: “Well, I can do it.” The pain … 
  13. Not-self in Context
     … When you feel tempted to stop, ask yourself, “Okay, you came here for this purpose, which is to put an end to suffering. Do you not want to do that? Don’t you really care for your genuine happiness?" It’s in cases like that where the activity of identifying yourself is actually useful. So, taking action as the context, you begin to see … 
  14. Unskillful Habits
     … It helps you to breathe through a lot of the tension in the body that would make you want to get the anger out of your system, or get that feeling of confinement, that feeling of discomfort out of your system. You’re now in a position where you can watch: What is this anger? Does it give you a realistic picture of what … 
  15. Death World
     … We feel that our reaction is a natural response, built into the way things are: When people do outrageous things, we feel we’re bound to get angry. But as the Buddha said, whether they’re outrageous or not, your reaction is still your kamma. You have to look at it that way. So you have to ask yourself, “What kind of action would … 
  16. Useful Vocabulary
     … How is a perception, say, distinct from a fabrication? How are they related to feelings? You can’t see relationships until you actually see that there are two things to be related. Otherwise, it’s just a blob. Making these distinctions is useful because you want to know precisely where your cravings are. That’s what all these words are for, so that you … 
  17. Dealing with the Hindrances
     … figuring out what kind of breathing feels best for you right now, where you can create a sense of well-being in the body, and then how you can make the best use of that sense of well-being, letting it spread down the nerves, down the blood vessels, bathing the whole body, maintaining your focus with the breath so the mind is willing … 
  18. Where Your Mind Gravitates
     … In other words, go back and look in more detail at your lust, at your anger, at your delusion, but come from a position where the mind is feeling relatively well fed, relatively secure, more soundly based, more soundly grounded, so that you can see things a lot more clearly. It’ll be less and less inclined to want to fall in with your … 
  19. Correcting, Fostering, Cutting Away
     … How’s the breath? Too long? Too short? Too heavy? Too light? What kind of breathing would feel really good right now? Think about this for a while. This is what directed thought and evaluation are for: to do whatever correcting needs to be done. When you’ve finally got something going well, you foster it. You don’t have to do so much … 
  20. Get Out of Yourself
     … This is why, in the description of right mindfulness, the Buddha talks about being aware of body in and of itself, feelings, mind states, mental qualities, both inside and out. Now, if you think of mindfulness as meaning awareness, you wonder how you’re going to be aware outside of somebody else’s breath or aware of their greed, aversion, or delusion, or their … 
  21. Present Kamma
     … When you breathe in and out, when you think about it, what’s the picture you hold in mind about the breathing? Where does that breath come in? Where does it go out? You might want to survey your body to see where the feeling of energy flow is, because that’s what you want to focus on. Now, the breath might not be … 
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