Search results for: "Feelings"

  1. Page 11
  2. Body, Feelings, Mind, Dhammas
  3. Fabricating Around Pain
    Take a couple of long, good deep in and out breaths, and notice where you feel the breathing process in the body. When we talk about “breath,” it’s not just the air coming in and out of the lungs. It’s the movement of energy that goes along with that, that actually brings the air in and allows it out. That can be … 
  4. Afraid of Pleasure
     … How does evaluation lead to pleasure? How does it lead to a sense of refreshment? You evaluate different ways of breathing until you come across one that begins to feel pleasant, begins to feel refreshing. This is why thinking plays an important role in the practice. Think about the breath and then look at it, asking yourself, “Is this really as good as it … 
  5. Breath Meditation – The Four Tetrads
     … But eventually as he says you want to calm those feelings and perceptions down. What kind of perceptions, what kind of feelings are most calming for the mind? Try to take your practice in that direction. Now, it’s not the case that you have feelings floating off in some realm of reality separate from the breath. They’re very closely connected to how … 
  6. All Four Tetrads at Once
     … It says that when you pay attention to the breath, the act of paying attention generates a feeling—or is a feeling, the text says—but basically the act of attention helps to fabricate a feeling, what’s called a feeling not-of-the-flesh. As for the mind, it says that there’s no mindfulness of breathing without mindfulness and alertness. And as … 
  7. Body, Feelings, Mind, Dhamma (outdoors)
  8. Skillfully Shaping Your Life
     … your perceptions and your feelings. As the Buddha points out, simply focusing on the breath changes the types of feelings you have in the body. Feelings, here, are not so much emotions as they’re feelings of pleasure, pain, or neither-pleasure-nor-pain. Sometimes when you focus on the breath you put too much pressure on it, which creates a feeling of dis … 
  9. A Gift of Well-Being
     … If you have a sense of well-being right here, the part of the mind that feels dissatisfied and is down on you then wants to spread a little of that dissatisfaction around to other people, too. “As long as we’re feeling miserable, let’s let other people feel miserable, too”: That kind of mind state gets undercut when you’re feeling refreshed … 
  10. Even Shame Can Be Skillful
     … Stay with it all the way in, all the way out, and notice what feels comfortable. As the Buddha says, you try to make yourself sensitive to the whole body and then try to breathe in a way that gives rise to feelings of ease. So that’s what you experiment with as you meditate—sometimes feelings of ease, sometimes feelings of more energy … 
  11. To Certify Yourself
     … Instead, he would ask them, “How does the breath feel? Is the mind consistently with the breath? If it’s not, what’s getting in the way?” If the breath doesn’t feel comfortable, how can you change it so that it feels more soothing when it feels frazzled, energizing when it needs to be energized, relaxing when it’s been too energized. In … 
  12. A Frame of Reference
     … If a thought comes in, what does the thought do to the breathing? What does the breathing do to the thought? A feeling comes in, maybe a feeling of pain: Well, how does that feeling of pain relate to the breath? Can you breathe through it? Or do you have to stay with the breath and just let the pain go? In other words … 
  13. The Safety of Jhana
     … Keep doing this as long as it feels good. Then, when long, deep breathing starts feeling laborious, you can let the breath quiet down. Let it find a rhythm that feels good, feels gratifying, feels satisfying. Keep monitoring your progress, because the needs of the body will change. All you have to do is keep tabs on what feels good. This is a blameless … 
  14. Together but Separate
     … Or, if you notice that there are already feelings of pleasure in different parts of the body, think of them all connecting up. We’re really good at connecting up the pains. We can create patterns of tension like bands around our head or bands running up and down inside the torso. But try instead to connect the feelings of pleasure, feelings of ease … 
  15. To See What You’re Doing
     … Here your play is adjusting the breath, seeing what long breathing feels like, short breathing feels like, fast, slow, heavy, light. What feels good right now? And when it feels good, can you stay there? Here again, the ardency comes in. You want to do this well. The ardency is what makes the difference. Mindfulness could keep anything in mind. Alertness could watch anything … 
  16. Boxed Stories
     … body, feelings, mind, mental qualities. They’re all connected to the breath because after all, they’re all right here. When you’re with the breath, the fact that you’re attentive to the breath and alert to the breath creates a feeling of pleasure. When you’re with the breath, you’re mindful. The mind is getting a little bit more steady. That … 
  17. Grounded in the Elements
     … When you take a good, long breath in, where do you feel the movement? And how does the long breathing feel? Try to sensitize yourself to how you feel the body from within—because a lot of our Western background desensitizes us to just that. We have to pay more attention to concepts, things that are far away, which means we tend to blot … 
  18. Judging Just Right
     … Does it feel good? Does it feel right? Does your body feel depleted of energy? Does it feel wired? If so, make adjustments. In this way, you begin to develop your own discernment as to what’s actually working for you, what needs to be changed, what doesn’t need to be changed, and how to fine-tune the changes. A sense of just … 
  19. Full, Focused Attention
     … The Buddha talks about four ways of establishing mindfulness—on the body in and of itself, feelings in and of themselves, mind in and of itself, or mental qualities in and of themselves—and they’re all right here. With the breath, you’ve got the body. Paying attention to how the breath feels, you’ve got feelings of either pleasure or stress or … 
  20. Analysis of Qualities
     … directing your thoughts to an object and evaluating it—asking questions or commenting on it. “Mental” covers perceptions and feelings. Perceptions are the labels you apply to things. Feelings are feelings of pleasure, pain, or neither pleasure nor pain. If you want to gladden the mind or steady the mind, to get rid of unskillful qualities and develop skillful ones, you have to work … 
  21. A Game of Chess
     … There are feelings of pleasure. That’s feeling. There’s the perception of whatever object you’re focused on. As the Buddha said, all concentration states, up through the dimension of nothingness, are all perception-attainments. They’re based on a perception that you keep in mind—as when you focus on just “breath, breath, breath.” Then there’s the form of the body … 
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