Search results for: "The Breath"

1. Page 108
2. Play AudioHow to Think about Death
    … Just the bare thinking of breath, breath, breath, or when you’re evaluating the breath, or just staying with the perception of breath, there’s some thought going on. But at least it’s useful thinking, helpful thinking. Some traditions tell you that you’ve just got to learn how to stop thinking, period, and that’s going to be the end of the … 
3. Play AudioAccepting the Buddha’s Standards
    … You want the mind to stay with the breath. You want to evaluate and adjust the breath, keep your attention focused on the breath until it gives rise to a sense of ease and fullness. Only when the mind is settled like this is it going to see anything clearly. Yesterday I read somebody complaining that they had seen a passage where someone had … 
4. Play AudioThe Uses of Concentration
    … That line doesn’t really help the breath at all. So think of the in-breath and out-breath as blending into one another. The in-breath is the same element as the out-breath. Allow the sense of wellbeing to stay constant and continuous. Don’t drop it or step on it. Don’t squeeze it out as the breath goes out. Give … 
5. Play AudioA Friend When You’re on Your Own
    … Which means the friends you want to take into the meditation are the voices that are going to be doing the directed thought and evaluation—not only evaluating the relationship of the mind to the breath but also evaluating the value of being with the breath, the value of maintaining a center as you go through life, and the value of remembering the practices … 
6. Play AudioThe Pursuit of Pleasure
    … This is why Ajaan Lee recommends learning how to experiment with the breath, how to conceive the breath energy in the body on different levels: the in-and-out breath, the sense of energy flowing in the nerves and the blood vessels, and the still breath that underlies them all. As for the breath energy flowing through different parts of the body, there’s … 
7. Play AudioThe Precepts
    … Being in touch with your breath, being in touch with the energy of the breath in your body: That’s an important skill right there. Because as you go through the day, if you really are in touch with this kind of energy, you begin to see how you tend to waste it. Or how you open yourself up to negative energies from outside … 
8. Play AudioIn the Context of the Deathless
    … Aggregates like the form of your body as you feel it from within, as you’re sitting here right now, working with the breath. Feelings: You hope to create feelings of pleasure. There are perceptions, the labels you apply to things that identify them, give them meaning. Here you’re identifying the breath as the topic you want to stick with. There’s fabrication … 
9. Play AudioLong-Term Welfare
    … If you’re feeling stressed out, there are other ways of focusing on the breath, adjusting the breath, so that it’s more relaxing. When things feel dry and disappointing in life, there are certain ways of focusing on the breath so that it’s really fulfilling. It feels really, really good deep down inside. Learning how to adjust your concentration enables you to … 
10. Play AudioLook After Yourself with Ease
     … As you stay with the breath, you can put down a lot of narratives. It’s good to put down as much as you can. One of the common questions you hear in the forest tradition is that, when the mind gets really still, you should ask it, “Who are you?” When you look at it in those terms, what do you see? There … 
11. Play AudioStop Shooting Yourself
     … There’s the ease in the body that can come from working with the breath. Even though there are pains in different parts of the body, there are places in the body that you can make comfortable with the breathing. If the body were nothing but pain, you’d die. So as long as you’re alive, there’s someplace in the body where … 
12. Play AudioTimeless Practice
     … But you shouldn’t take those times as excuses for not sticking with the breath, for not developing the mind. Each time period has its own challenges, but you want to learn how to keep with the breath, keep grounded, keep centered, regardless of what those challenges are. Otherwise, the day gets divided up into times, chopped up into little bits, and your practice … 
13. Play AudioLimitless is the Buddha
     … In other words, if the mind slips off, just let go of whatever has pulled it away and you’re right back at the breath. Pay more attention to the breath this time and also keep an eye out for any warning signs that the mind is about to slip away again. This requires a quality called ardency: that you put effort—you put … 
14. Play AudioKarma & the Sublime Attitudes
     … You can go with the distraction or you can stay with the breath. So keep reminding yourself that staying with the breath will accomplish a lot more. The distractions may be interesting, they may be entertaining, they may insist on their importance, but you have to remind yourself that you have more important work to do. You’re trying to develop your powers of … 
15. Play AudioBecoming Consummate
     … You’re here, the breath is here, and you have the choice to breathe through any sense of tension or tightness that comes with the anger. In this way, concentration helps your virtue, and having right view also helps your virtue. All these things go together. Notice that the Buddha said you achieve this quality of being consummate in virtue or views, knowledge, and … 
16. Play AudioWhat Right Mindfulness Remembers
     … You’ve got a whole hour here to sit and focus on the breath, and you can make all kinds of different experiences out of it. A woman one time brought a friend of hers to meditate with us. It was one of those really nice days: We were sitting out in the outdoor classroom under the trees, with a gentle breeze; the temperature … 
17. Play AudioThe Reality of Emotions
     … You could focus on the breath. What way is the breath light, totally unstuck, totally unfettered? It has nothing to do with heat or coolness at all. It’s simply motion. Energy. Your mind tunes into that kind of sensation. You may find that you can start smiling, and then the smile on your face induces all the chemical reactions in the body that … 
18. Play AudioPleasure & Pain
     … How does that happen? Why are there these different layers in the mind? And who’s fooling whom here? Can you learn to detect the points where the mind is ready to go, when it hasn’t quite left the breath yet but it’s on its way? When you can do that, you’ve learned an important skill. You’ve also learned a … 
19. Play AudioThe Bureaucracy of the Defilements
     … This is what we do when we settle into the breath. You start out, of course, with the in-and-out breath. But then you begin to realize that there are other subtle movements of energy in the different parts of the body and you begin to open up areas of awareness and areas of the body that used to get closed off because … 
20. Play AudioBursting Bubbles
     … One of the potentials is that even though the thoughts may be there in the mind, you’ve still got the breath, and the breath doesn’t have to be a restless breath. You can try to calm it down. Or the thought of your death: That’s just as real as any of the things you’re worried about. Death could come at … 
21. Play AudioThe Complexity of Pain
     … The way to bring the elements back into balance is to start with the breath, because of all the elements in the body (here we’re talking about the properties of earth, water, wind and fire), breath is the most responsive to the mind. So, you change your perceptions, you change the way you’re talking to yourself about the breath—technically, that’s … 
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