Search results for: "The Breath"

  1. Page 104
  2. Pay Careful Attention
     … When I was first reading Ajaan Lee’s instructions on breath meditation, I came across a passage where he says to take the breath syllable, buddho, and make the syllable equal to the length of the breath: “thao kan” in Thai. But I misread it. I read thao nan, and thought it meant that you use the breath syllable only with a long breath … 
  3. The Second Frame of Reference
     … Which ways of thinking about the breath and evaluating the breath give more pleasure? Which perceptions of the breath give more pleasure, give you more strength? These are all things you can manipulate, things you can play with. And just knowing that you’re not simply a hapless victim of your pains helps get you on the right side. Sometimes a useful perception is … 
  4. The End of Karma
     … Focus on the breath. Think of the breath not so much as the air coming in and out through the nose, but the flow of energy in the body. Some people say, “What flow?” The fact that you have a sense of the body as you feel it from within: That’s the breath. Thinking of it as breath allows you to ask yourself … 
  5. Taking Risks
     … So he started using the breath to heal himself. He didn’t give up. He tried different methods, tried different ways of working with the breath energy, and he found what worked. At the end of the three months, he was able to walk back out. He came back, wrote down the method. And as you read his Dhamma talks for the remainder of … 
  6. Respect Your Center
     … the place in the body where the breath feels good, and the mind feels at home when it’s focused there. You want to know that spot and learn how to work with it, learn how to come back to it as quickly as you can if you’ve lost it. This will take some exploration, experimenting with different spots and noticing where your … 
  7. Pain
     … Resist any tendency to view the pain as a wall or to think of the pain as being there before you can get the breath there. Actually, the breath has to be there first. There’s some breath energy going through there already. It’s just that you want to open up the channels even further. So think of the breath as prior, the … 
  8. A Refuge in Mindfulness
     … The best way to do that is to get the mind as still as you can with the breath, because, if you’ve been working with the breath, you tend to have certain associations with it. Breathing in a certain way will remind you, “I used to breathe in this way when I was meditating, and my mind was centered here. This sort of … 
  9. Truthfulness
     … Ajaan Fuang once made the comment in one of his Dhamma talks that you look at the breath. Is it true? Yes, it’s truly there. Then the next question is, are you true? Are you going to stick with the breath to really see what it can do? In the beginning you say, “Well, I think so.” But it’s only after practice … 
  10. Return of Wisdom for Dummies
     … Use the breath as a way of maintaining that intention so that you can associate a sense of comfort and ease and well-being inside as you stick with what you know is skillful. As you’re meditating, you reflect in the same way: You make up your mind to stick with the breath, and as you’re staying with the breath, you watch … 
  11. Disenchantment
    Try to find a sense of nourishment in the breath, because the mind needs nourishment. If it doesn’t find its food here, it’s going to go looking someplace else. As long as we’re beings, we need to feed. The Buddha pointed out that that’s the thing we all have in common: All beings depend on nutriment. As long as we … 
  12. The Buddha’s Tools
     … When you’re getting the mind into concentration, you find that you’re dealing with form, the form of the body, of the breath; feelings of pleasure and pain, neither pleasure nor pain; your perceptions: the images you hold in mind as you try to get the mind to settle down. What way of perceiving the breath, or imaging the breath to yourself, is … 
  13. Three Weapons
     … You can study the breath and the mind’s relationship to the breath, and fortunately you can come to an end of your problems this way. But still, there’s a lot to see here in terms of all the fabrication that goes on in the present moment. And learning how to get fascinated here is your protection. It’s your weapon against the … 
  14. Squeezing Goodness Out of the Aggregates
     … We try to get the breath so that it’s easeful. We try to get the mind so that it can stay constantly with the breath. And that requires a certain amount of control. Then Ajaan Lee goes on to say then the Buddha let go of both sides: both what was constant and inconstant; easeful and stressful; self and not-self. What you … 
  15. A Practice, Personal & Social
    When you focus the mind on the breath, you’re focusing on an area that nobody else can know: how you experience the breath from within, how you experience the movements of your own mind from within. People could look at you from the outside and see the rhythm of your breathing and they might notice expressions flitting across your face, but how you … 
  16. Cheerfully Ardent
     … Like with the breath: You work with long breathing for a while, then you work with short breathing. Can you make them both comfortable? How about heavy breathing, light breathing, fast, slow? Don’t just stick with one kind of breathing all the time, because you’re never going to learn anything about what your mind can do with the breath, and what you … 
  17. The Burning House
     … In the beginning, a lot of the concentration is a matter of learning how to stay with the breath, to get to the point where the mind and the breath—your awareness and the breath—seem to be one. Wherever there’s awareness, there’s breath; wherever there’s breath, there’s awareness. But you don’t want to stay at that stage. You … 
  18. Go in Brightness
     … Notice how the breath feels as it comes in and goes out. Notice what kind of breathing feels good. This is called using directed thought and evaluation. You direct your thoughts to the breath, then you evaluate the breath. Is it a good breath to settle down with? Experiment for a bit to see what varieties of breathing there are, and how the different … 
  19. Just Rightness
     … First, be really focused on the breath and then learn to step back a bit and watch not only the breath, but also the mind as it relates to the breath. That’s when you’re in the right position to observe both body and mind, to see the connections between them, and particularly to see where you’re causing unnecessary suffering. The path … 
  20. Admitting Mistakes
     … For example, while we’re sitting here looking at the breath: How’s it going? Is the breath comfortable? Is it as comfortable as it could be? Exactly what stage are you in the practice? Often we don’t even have our bearings as we’re trying to settle down. Or if things have begun to settle down, we have to look after other … 
  21. Pro-self, Pro-help
     … Is there a lack in your conviction? A lack in your persistence? In your mindfulness? How about your sense of heedfulness—the sense that this really does make a difference, the fact that you’re training your mind? It does make a difference whether you’re going to stay with the breath or not stay with the breath. Now, you have to learn how … 
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