Search results for: "The Breath"

  1. Page 105
  2. A Greater Happiness
     … You focus on the breath in such a way that you relate easily to the breath. It feels comfortable being with the breath coming in, with the breath going out. Allow yourself to stay there. After all, stillness is the essence of happiness. There’s another passage where the Buddha says, “There is no happiness other than peace.” What he means is that the … 
  3. The Energy You Broadcast
     … You set up the intention that you’re going to stay with the breath. Other thoughts will come in, the result of past kamma, but if you spend all your time getting engaged with those, you’ve thrown away your original intention. So you’ve got to hold to your original intention regardless, and use the energy of that intention to repel any thoughts … 
  4. Protection from Fools
     … As the Buddha pointed out, what better angle, what better perspective to have than the one that’s gained from standing right here in the present moment, right where the mind and the body meet at the breath? When you’re here, you can see what’s going on in the mind; you can see what’s going on in the body. You’re … 
  5. The Wheel of Dhamma
     … When you’re focusing on the breath, the very first question is: Is the breath comfortable or not? That’s asking you to see: When does the comfort come, and when does it go? In what ways, what kind of desire to make it comfortable actually is going to make it less comfortable? In what way do you focus the desire to make it … 
  6. Trustworthy Intentions
     … Just come back to the breath, back to the breath. Once you get better at this, then you can start looking at those questions, looking at the stories, to see what they show you about underlying impulses, desires, intentions, ways you understand things, because sometimes you have to argue with them in order to pull the mind back. They may tell you that you … 
  7. Straightening Out the World
     … You’re here focusing on the breath and something else comes up in the mind. You’ve got that moment where you can choose: Are you going to go with it or are you going to stay with the breath? In the beginning stages, it’s as if you don’t know what’s happening. You’re with the breath and suddenly you’re … 
  8. Outside the Box
     … What’s the breath going to be like tonight? What’s the shape of my mind going to be like tonight? What’s it like right now? Take stock of it. If you get a sense of where it’s out of balance, remember that you have a whole range of tools to use to bring it into balance. You could stay with the … 
  9. Part I : Basic Instructions
     … Keep the breath in mind and be alert to it as it comes in, as it goes out. Be alert to how well your mind relates to it, how you can change the way you breathe. How can you change the way you think about your breathing, so that it’s easier to stay with? If you run into pains in the body, how … 
  10. Why We Practice the Way We Do
     … When you get a sense of ease with the breath, think of the whole body breathing—all the nerves, all the blood vessels—this energy of the breath running through the whole body in this way. This allows the mind to settle down with an expansive sense of ease. Now you’ve done that by analyzing what’s going on and what can be … 
  11. One Thing Clear Through
     … You focus on the breath. You become aware of the breath energy throughout the body as you breathe in, as you breathe out. As you develop a sense of ease in the breathing, you allow that to spread so that it fills the body as well. That becomes your food on the path. But as you do this, you’re also radiating good energy … 
  12. Moods Are Not-Self
     … They sit down and focus on the breath, and they get frustrated and impatient with the breath. So the first order of business is get the mind in the right mood to be with the breath on good terms. To begin with, the Buddha recommended that you try to make your mind like earth. Think of the part of the mind that can just … 
  13. The Skills of a Hunter
     … When you’re focused on the breath, you’re bathed in the breath. Or it might be better to think about wearing your breath in the same way that you wear your skin. There was another writer who stayed with some Inuit up in Alaska one time. As he went out with them when they went hunting, he said he had the sense that … 
  14. Four Noble Truths to One
     … You have the sense of the form of the body as you’re sitting here breathing; the feelings of pleasure you’re able to give rise to; the perceptions of the breath, or whatever your object is, that hold the mind in place; the thought fabrications—the directed thought and evaluation as you try to get everything together, to get the breath snug with … 
  15. Truth Is Where You’re True
     … It’s bored with the breath or it’s got something else it really wants to think about, so it pretends to stay with the breath for a while. In the meantime, it’s planning its escape. Like a prisoner who stays in his room when the wardens come by and who has been tunneling under the wall when the wardens aren’t looking … 
  16. Tools of Perception
     … Your perception of the breath needs of the body begins to change as well. As you stay with the stillness of the breath, after a while the idea of holding in mind the perception of having a body sitting here: You begin to see that it places a certain amount of weight on the mind as well. So you drop it. It gets replaced … 
  17. Train Hopping
     … This is why we focus on the breath, to give you some place to stay inside this combination of body and mind that’s a little bit outside of the mind. That allows you to you to get some perspective on your thinking. Even though you may still be thinking about something—you are thinking about the breath—at least the thinking stays in … 
  18. Skillful Thinking
     … So you find other topics aside from the breath in the present moment to focus on. If you’re really having trouble focusing on the present, think of the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. Those topics help foster conviction in the path and in your own ability to practice the path. After all, the members of the noble Sangha are human beings just … 
  19. Noble Ardency
     … Just stay still with the breath until you really settle in and have a sense of being nourished by the breath, nourished by the concentration. Then you can ask yourself, “Is this really good? Could this be better?” You’re learning to be a real connoisseur of your pleasure, a real connoisseur of the breath. And as for what level of right concentration you … 
  20. Start with Yourself
     … When an emotion takes over in the mind, it’s going to have an effect on the breath, the breath will have an effect on the body, and the emotion will hijack everything. So if you see there’s an unskillful emotion arising, if there’s greed or anger or delusion, the first thing you do is stop and take stock of your breath … 
  21. Virtues & Values
     … So we focus on the breath as an anchor here in the present moment because, of all the things in the world, it’s the closest to the mind. When you’re with the breath, there’s no past breath you can watch. There’s no future breath you can watch. You’ve got to be in the present moment to be with the … 
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