Search results for: "The Breath"

  1. Page 103
  2. When You Practice on Your Own
     … You start out focusing on the breath, and as you’re focusing on the breath, you can’t help but notice how the breath has an impact on feelings, and how the fact that you’re alert to the breath will influence what feelings you have in the body, and how you can develop them. That gives you some insight into the process of … 
  3. Imperturbable
     … Let the breath come and go freely. If it wants to settle down and stop, let it stop, but don’t force it to. You apply force to the mind, not to the breath. Learn how to make that distinction. It’s an important one. You want the body to be light, open, but you want your mind to be solidly centered right here … 
  4. See Your Thoughts as Strange
     … Explore the breath to see how it feels, and adjust it so that it feels just right: not too long, not too short, too deep, too shallow, too heavy, too light. When the breath feels good, try to notice where there’s a sense of ease and think of it spreading around the body—like a liquid that can seep through all the little … 
  5. Our Sense of Self
     … Work on making the breath comfortable. Once the breath is comfortable, start spreading it down, especially into the areas that tend to be painful, and out through them. If the pains are in your back and your hips, think of the sense of comfortable relaxed breath going down the neck, down the back, out through your hips, out through the legs, out through your … 
  6. Strategies for Happiness
     … As we’re meditating here, what are we focusing on? We’re focusing on the body, focusing on the breath. We’re learning to maximize the feelings of pleasure that come from the breath. We’re learning ways of perceiving the breath energy in the body that create stronger and stronger states of concentration. We’re learning to direct our thoughts and evaluate the … 
  7. An End to the Stories
     … So you’re right here with the breath in the present moment. This is a good place to be. This is the place where things can come to an end if you choose to have them come to an end. It’s up to you—and you’re making that choice every time there’s a temptation to go wandering off away from the … 
  8. Achieving Balance
     … If your mind won’t settle down with the bones, survey the breath energy in the different parts of your body. Start, say, at your navel, go up the front of the body, down the back, out the legs. Start again at the back of the neck, go down the shoulders and out the arms. Section by section. How does the body feel as … 
  9. How to Use the Three Perceptions
     … The form of the body in concentration is the breath; there’s also the feeling of pleasure; the perception that holds you with the breath; the thought fabrications, the verbal fabrications—evaluating the breath and the mind; and even the consciousness of the concentration. You start seeing that these things, too, are inconstant. There’s some subtle inconstancy here. And you incline the mind … 
  10. The Karma of Perception
     … The first thing you want to learn how to perceive is the sensation of the breath, learning how to recognize which of the sensations of the body correspond to the breath. For people who have grown up in a culture where they’re taught about breath energy throughout their body, it’s a lot easier because they’ve learned how to recognize different sensations … 
  11. A Post-goodness World?
     … those distracting thoughts, or the state of concentration you can develop if you really stuck with the breath? This is one of the reasons why the Buddha recommends you develop the perception of inconstancy before focusing on the breath. Anything that’s going to be less than a reliable happiness: It’s good to see it as inconstant so that you can side with … 
  12. The Buddha’s Safe Space
     … You stay with the breath, remembering to keep the breath in mind: That’s mindfulness. You see clearly what the breath is doing and what the mind is doing: That’s alertness. And then there’s ardency, where you try to do this well, try to give yourself a really good place to stay here, as continuously as possible. That’s what gets the … 
  13. Choices in the Present
     … We sit here with the breath. The breath feels good coming in, feels good going out. You can make it feel better and better and better coming in, better going out, and you take that sense of well-being and allow it to suffuse the body. The Buddha talks of kneading it through the body the same way that you would knead moisture through … 
  14. Success on the Path
    To stay with the breath, you first have to want to stay with the breath. It’s the first basis of success in the practice. Some people object to the idea that there’s success and failure in the practice. But this is a path that leads to a goal. That’s something we always should keep in mind: that we’re going someplace … 
  15. Be Observant
     … You want to learn how to stay with the breath coming in; stay with the breath going out. Work with the breath so that it’s a good place to stay. Otherwise, if it’s not a good place to stay, the concentration is not going to be steady. It’ll be wobbly. You’ll keep wanting to wander off. What else does the … 
  16. Compassionate Duties
     … You take one aspect of it that you experience, like the breath, and you stay alert to what the breath is doing, and how well you’re staying with the breath. Then you’re ardent in trying to do this well. You put your whole heart in to it because this is the path to the end of suffering, and the Buddha recommends that … 
  17. Values
    There are lots of different ways of getting the mind to settle down, and the breath is the object the Buddha discussed most frequently and in most detail for settling down with. But there are other ways of getting the mind to settle down as well. You can focus on the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha either by simply repeating one of those words … 
  18. Lighter & Stronger
     … To counteract the fact that the mind wants to think about other things, you think about the breath. You evaluate the breath. But there comes a point where you don’t need to do that anymore. A lot of people feel a little bit disoriented when they stop that internal commentary. Some people think that it’s a great insight into the fact that … 
  19. Giving Weight
     … Stay with the breath coming in and going out. See how still you can make the mind. Then be conscious of anything that might come in to make your awareness waiver. Resist the temptation to go running after it. Try to give the mind some weight. That chant we had just now on respect: The word for respect in Pali also means weight. You … 
  20. Use Your Defilements
     … You direct your thoughts and you evaluate the breath. You take those potentials that are here in the in-breath, in the out-breath, and in the breath energy throughout the body, and you learn how to maximize the good things, minimize the bad ones. Once you’ve got something good, then you maintain it. Remember that the duty of mindfulness as a governing … 
  21. Fear & Insecurity
     … You’re focused on the breath, that’s form. You’re creating a feeling of well-being. You use perceptions to stay with the breath, and directed thought and evaluation, which are fabrications, to adjust the breath and the mind so that they fit together. And then your consciousness is aware of all these things. So you’re looking at these aggregates not so … 
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