Search results for: "Feelings"

  1. Page 112
  2. For the Survival of True Happiness
     … There are people who sacrifice their lives for the sake of something that feels noble, and it makes them happy that they’ve made that sacrifice. There’re also people who don’t want to live. They look at life and they see no opportunities for happiness at all. They don’t care about the body at that point. So the mind’s greatest … 
  3. Two Types of Dukkha
     … how it feels and where it’s prominent. It’s also needed because as you continue with the meditation, the breath gets more and more gentle, more and more refined, to the point where the breath energy seems to get still. It’s going to be a full stillness. You want to oxygenate your blood first. You can think of all the pores of … 
  4. Treasures from the East
     … Be very conscious of how your perceptions and feelings shape your mind. And try to use your knowledge of how the body is affected by the breath to calm the body down. Use your knowledge about how the mind is affected by perceptions and feelings to calm the mind down. What kind of perception of the breath makes it comfortable right now? What kind … 
  5. Dependent Co-arising in Fifteen Minutes
     … And thirdly, there are perceptions and feelings: the feeling of ease or dis-ease you have around the breath. Then there are the perceptions, the mental images you have about what’s happening as the breath comes in and goes out: What are you focusing on? Are you focusing on the air? Are you focusing on the contact at the nose? Are you focusing … 
  6. Guardian Meditations
     … What can I buy? What can I purchase that’ll make feel good right now?” They teach you to be skeptical about the idea that there is something that lies beyond space and time that you can touch, you can taste for yourself through your own efforts. So to get yourself out of that mindset, it’s good to reflect on what the Buddha … 
  7. Detail Work
     … Where are they right now? Pay attention to how they feel in that part of the body. Is there any tension or tightness around those bones? Relax it. Then move up to the next joints—relax any tension around them—and then the third joints, the bones of the palms of the hands, the wrists, the forearms, the elbows, the upper arms, the shoulders … 
  8. Not Swept Away
     … At the very least, with some concentration you can have a sense of the observer that just watches events of the world and doesn’t feel obliged to get involved. We develop that observer by being mindful. You focus on the breath as the breath comes in, the breath goes out. Whatever the breath is going to do, you be aware of it. Keep … 
  9. Resisting the Germs of Defilement
     … This is one of the reasons why we work with the breath, why we try to find ways of breathing that feel good so that the mind is soothed when it needs to be soothed, energized when it needs to be energized, calmed down when it needs to be calmed. That way, it feels basically healthy. Other things come in from outside and you … 
  10. The Path Converges Right Here
     … You want to just be right here with the sense of the body as you feel it inside. That’s called rupa, or form. Thoughts of sensuality just drop away. Or you let them drop away. Any unskillful states of mind, you let them drop away. The fact that you’re secluded from those things: That in and of itself gives a nice sense … 
  11. Ripples Go Far
     … He went on to say, if there’s any sense that you feel that something is accomplished by expressing your grief through eulogies, through honoring the dead, honoring those who you’ve been separated from, go ahead and do it. But when it starts getting self-indulgent, that’s when you have to stop. Grief is something that comes mainly from your sense of … 
  12. The Duties of Compassion
     … If you’re simply nice to people, they’ll feel your niceness for a little while, but if you actually teach them how to be skillful—how to understand suffering, how to work with suffering in such a way that they can get beyond the suffering—you can get them released for life. That’s why, when the Buddha taught the four noble truths … 
  13. Escape Routes in the Present
     … And so to endure these things, the trick is not simply sitting there and enduring but learning how to find another spot where you can place your mind so it doesn’t feel oppressed by these things. This is why we practice meditation: to give the mind some alternatives. Because as the Buddha said, if your only alternative to pain is sensual pleasure, you … 
  14. Gratification
     … It’s a more passive kind of thing, just trying to consume whatever nice feelings come by. That’s basically taking pleasure in things. Whereas gratification requires a more active role. It comes from developing a skill, developing your strengths, to the point where you get so involved in an activity that you become completely absorbed, completely immersed. That, they say, is a higher … 
  15. Doing the Practice
     … If you begin to notice that this doesn’t feel very comfortable, okay, you can change it. Think of the breath coming in and out through the whole body. When we actually look at the experience of breathing, it’s hard to draw a line between the sensation of breathing and the rest of the energy flow in the body. And it’s best … 
  16. Believe in Your Actions
     … This type of motivation is made easier when you’ve learned how to breathe in a way that really does feel refreshing, so that the meditation is not just something that you’re fighting with all the time, because you learn how to create a sense of well-being right here, right now. You can remind yourself that when you’re meditating, you feel … 
  17. Home Schooling Your Inner Children
     … They want to do something else—and they’ll come up with some nice thing for you to do so that you don’t feel bad about quitting the meditation. But an important part of the meditation is learning how to sit with the mind regardless of what shape it’s in, so that you can understand it—so that when there’s greed … 
  18. Pleasure & Pain
     … The reason they’re so important in the practice is that they put you in a place where you can actually look at pain without feeling threatened by it. The Buddha also observed that we tend to be attached to sensual pleasure because we can’t think of any other escape from pain. Well, this is what right concentration does: It gives us another … 
  19. Appreciating Your Practice
     … If you’ve got something of solid worth inside and you know for yourself that it’s of solid worth, then you feel less threatened by other people, less exasperated by their behavior. So, the search for a solid happiness inside is not a selfish thing. Think of the Buddha’s instructions to Rahula. If you see that you’ve made a mistake, be … 
  20. Hold a Mirror to Your Mind
     … When that foundation is strong, then you can start asking the other questions, which are, “How are my feelings and perceptions shaping my mind?” In other words, “How does that feeling of pain make inroads into the mind, and what role does perception play in that?” Ajaan MahaBoowa gives a lot of interesting reflections on this: How do you perceive your pain? Is it … 
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