Search results for: "Feelings"

  1. Page 105
  2. A Taste of Freedom
     … Some people, when they come to meditate and they find out they have to stick with one object, feel like they’re being confined. They can’t think about this; they can’t think about that. Usually, when they’ve got a free hour like this, they can think about all kinds of things. And for most people, that’s their idea of freedom … 
  3. The Core of Experience
     … And the things you’ve got—form, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness, what the Buddha calls the five aggregates—are things that if you simply cling to them, are going to cause problems, going to cause suffering. In fact, the clinging will be suffering. But you can turn them into a path, which switches their role as part of the first noble truth, about … 
  4. Caring Enough to Doubt
     … Can you use that energy to create a sense of pleasure right now? What would feel really good right now? Now, this may take work, and it may require energy as well. But you begin to realize that the pleasure that comes from focusing well on the breath is totally without drawbacks. It’s a hit that you can take again and again and … 
  5. Breath Meditation When It’s Hard to Breathe
     … Or you can have a perception of a knife that cuts through any point where you feel there’s a line connecting one pain to another. Use whatever works. If you have trouble focusing on any of these techniques, at the very least think thoughts of goodwill for all beings. Because one of the worst parts of feeling ill is that you start indulging … 
  6. Pulling Out of the Narratives
     … You may feel sweaty, you may feel the heat, but you don’t have to focus on those things. Get really focused on the breath. It’s like that music school I visited one time in Seoul, Korea, where all the musicians were sitting in one big room, everybody playing really loud, yet each person really focused on what he or she was doing … 
  7. Before Your Face Was Born
     … Then when you find yourself doing things that are not up to that high standard, you feel like a failure. It’s good to remind yourself that all those issues are useless. They don’t accomplish anything at all. They are what Ajaan Maha Boowa calls the fangs of unawareness, the fangs of ignorance: this whole issue of conceit. So remember: We’re here … 
  8. Exercising the Mind
     … But sometimes you can remember the lesson, but you just don’t feel like doing it. You don’t feel up to doing it. That’s because you lack strength. This is how the meditation really helps you in daily life. It gives you both the mindfulness and the strength, exercises both the mindfulness and increases your strength, so that when you learn a … 
  9. The Perception of Inconstancy
     … Every time there’s a feeling, there’s always going to be a perception. There’s a passage in the Canon where Ven. Sariputta says, “Feeling, perception, fabrication—these things are hard to tease out. They come together.” The way to tease them out is to figure out, “How can I be, say, with a pain but not suffer from it? How can I … 
  10. Ven. Ananda’s Awakening
     … That way, you can create a sense of ease, asking yourself what kind of breathing would feel good right now and where can you think of the breath energy coming into the body. Or you can think of it originating in the body itself—one spot, two spots, many spots. Simply by holding an image in mind, you’ll see that the breath responds … 
  11. Forging a Path
     … Just try to be consistently aware of how the breath feels, and that there’s always breath here in the body. There’s the in-and-out breath, but there’s also the breath energy that runs through the nerves, runs through the blood vessels. You can just be with that: without break, without pause. This gives the mind a much needed place to … 
  12. Sit with It
     … There are some pains in the body, some feelings of discomfort that have nothing to do with the breath at all. And if you think a boring meditation or a meditation that doesn’t go the way you want it to is difficult, think about what it’s going to be like when you’re about to die. The body at that point won … 
  13. People Suffer from Their Thinking
     … Then you have to think about letting the breath be comfortable, trying not to force the breath too much, just noticing what kind of rhythm of breathing feels good right now. This requires some thought, but it’s constructive thought. It’s okay to think and pose questions around this issue, because that kind of thinking and questioning gets you more absorbed in the … 
  14. Concentration as a Skill
     … When you breathe in, does it feel like the energy is going up or down? If it goes up, it is comfortable? Or is it getting stuck in the head? If it’s getting stuck in the head, think of it going down through the throat down into the chest. But don’t push it. Don’t exert any pressure on it. Just think … 
  15. Three Stages in the Practice
     … Where do you feel it? Where does the sensation of an in-breath start for you? It may start in a place that it doesn’t start for somebody else. How do you know that your body needs an in-breath right now? How can you tell when you’ve been breathing out too long? As people get older they have a tendency—Ajaan … 
  16. Firm in Your Intent
     … We feel a hunger; we feel a lack. One of the purposes of the meditation is to develop strength inside, so that we have a sense of enough. The lack comes from a desire for happiness, but still, the Buddha says that that desire is something to be honored. We really want to be happy, and there is a way to find true happiness … 
  17. Hope
     … You read the news nowadays, and it all seems to be intended to make you feel hopeless and helpless. Things going on in the world that you can’t control: That seems to be the emphasis of the message. We have to realize it’s driving home a point that the Buddha made a long time ago: Genuine hope lies in here, in the … 
  18. Memory & Motivation
     … What shape do you want to put it in? What shape is going to be good for your life and the life of the people around you down the line? So if you’re feeling lazy right now, how do you motivate yourself to really do the practice? Or if you know that something is skillful but you don’t feel like doing it … 
  19. The Steadiness of Your Gaze
     … Sometimes you feel a stirring in your awareness. Something wants to move. Things aren’t as interesting as they were, or for some reason or another the mind begins to let up a little bit before it actually moves on to something else. Learn how to detect that. Then work with the breath, work with your focus in a way that can get around … 
  20. A Goal Without Limits
     … The pleasure of the goal, even though it’s not a feeling, is a pleasure. It is a happiness. It is a bliss. And it’s that fulfilling. So what are some of the ways the Buddha talks about the goal? One of the epithets he gives for it is: anidassana. It’s a word that doesn’t appear often in the Canon. It … 
  21. Beyond Inter-eating
     … What kind of breathing would feel really good this time as you come back to the breath? And then with the second breath, what breath would feel better? Or is there some part of the body that’s not being nourished by the breath? Could you breathe in that part of the body? Keep moving around, noticing the parts of the body that seem … 
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