Search results for: "The Breath"

  1. Page 112
  2. Helping Others Is a Battle
     … Use the breath as medicine. Realize that you do have good potentials inside. This will be an important lesson for dealing with the unskillful things that come up. When something unskillful blatantly comes into the mind, it’s so easy to say, “My intentions are all corrupt. I’m a bad person.” But if you know you have some good potentials that you can … 
  3. Study to Practice
     … For instance, when you’re keeping the breath in mind, that’s body in and of itself. You’re ardent, you’re alert, you’re mindful, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. There’s a lot to discuss there. How do you stay with the body in and of itself? How do you stay with the breath in and of … 
  4. Feeding Off of Others
     … Can anybody else feel the breath the way you feel it? The person sitting next to you may hear you breathing, but that’s about it. Of course, if it’s really loud, you should tone it down. But your sense of the breath is yours. Your sense of the body as you feel it from within is yours. Your sense of how you … 
  5. Feeding on Open Wounds
     … Think of the breath in ways that minimize any tension that would develop when you breathe in, breathe out. If you find yourself tense in the shoulders, it usually comes from the fact that you feel you have to breathe in through a nose where there’s an obstacle, that doesn’t want the breath to come in. So change your perception. You can … 
  6. Genuine Satisfaction
     … You have to stay with the breath. You can’t go anywhere else. The Buddha compares this to being a wild elephant brought into the city to be tamed. The elephant gets chained to a post and all it can do is try to get away from that post. In the meantime, though, they bring it good food and speak nicely to it. Back … 
  7. The Choice Not to Suffer
     … You can focus on the breath. Think of the sound as just going right through you. You’re not putting up any resistance, and the sound isn’t penetrating anything of you that’s really essential to you. So let it go. And you want to be able to develop the same skill with things like pain—physical pain, emotional pain. Don’t put … 
  8. Faith in Present Intentions
     … And if the mind can stay still with the breath and feel at home with the breath, that gives it strength. There’s a sense of well-being, but the well-being is not an end in and of itself. As the Buddha said, one of the results of concentration is “a pleasant abiding in the here and now.”* *You can breathe in ways … 
  9. Trust Your Desire for Happiness
    There are many reasons why we focus on the breath, but one of them is that when you’re with the breath, you know you’re in the present moment. You can’t watch your future breath. You can’t watch your past breath. That sensation in the present moment is what keeps you anchored, keeps you confident that you’re here in the … 
  10. Metta Through Samvega
     … You can settle down and show some goodwill for yourself now by working with the breath, finding a way of breathing that feels good for the body right now. That’s goodwill for yourself. And if you can find this sense of well-being inside, you’re going to be less hungry for things outside. So you’re increasing your ability to find happiness … 
  11. Little Decisions
     … Is the breath good enough? Is your concentration good enough? You want to look around in the mind to see if there’s anything at all that needs improvement. If you find something, you work on that. As the Buddha said, your attitude for the little things in the mind like this should be like that of a person whose head is on fire … 
  12. The Value of Concentration
    It’s not all that hard to focus on the breath. As soon as the thought comes into the mind, you’re right there. The hard part is in staying there, and for that you need to have a strong sense of how valuable it is to have a peace of mind, to have the mind centered in one place. You need to be … 
  13. Borrowed Wealth
     … These are some things to keep in mind as you’re struggling with staying with the breath. It may seem like an awful lot of effort, but it’s effort that’s well spent. Because there is a dividend, there is a reward that comes from it. At the very least, you’re developing qualities of endurance, persistence, stick-to-it-tividness. And it … 
  14. A Wilderness Mind at Home
     … That’s why we focus on the breath. When you’re with the breath, you know you’re in the present moment. You can’t watch any future breaths; you can’t watch any past breaths. They’re not here. So as long as you’re with the sensation of breathing, you know you’re in the present moment. Any thoughts that pull you … 
  15. Simplify
     … So even though it may seem simple-minded, we’re sitting here focusing on what? The breath coming in and out. It may not seem all that profound or intellectually stimulating, but it’s one of the essentials. Not only the breath in and of itself, but the habits we develop as we keep the mind focused on the breath: mindfulness, alertness, persistence, clarity … 
  16. Respect Opens Possibilities
     … There’s a bliss that comes when you can settle down and just be with the breath—to breathe in, breathe out, and feel really good about breathing in, breathing out, and having a way of relating to your body so that the breath can nourish all the little nerves, all the little blood vessels, all the cells. Think of every cell in your … 
  17. Mindfulness + Discernment = Intelligence
     … You start out, say, with the body, staying focused on the breath in and of itself, ardent, alert, mindful, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. “Mindful,” of course, means keeping things in mind. “Alert” means noticing what you’re doing while you’re doing it, and “ardent” means trying to do it well. It’s in the ardency that mindfulness … 
  18. Borrowing the Buddha’s Wisdom
     … You discern when the breath is long. You discern when the breath is short. You train yourself to breathe in and out sensitive to the whole body. And then you learn how to breathe in a way that allows the breath to calm down. You breathe in a way that allows you to sense refreshment. You breathe in a way that allows you to … 
  19. The Karma Snake
     … Each time you choose to stay with the breath, that’s an action. It’s an intention. Each time you say, “It doesn’t matter, I’m going to go someplace else”: That would be another intention. So you’re trying to ride herd on your intentions here. And remember what you experience right now is a combination of several factors, including past and … 
  20. Deep Understanding
     … This is why we work with the breath, get things grounded in the body. Don’t think of the body as an inconvenient thing that’s getting in the way of your focusing on the mind. If you really want to understand what’s going on in the mind, you have to deal with your awareness of the body. It’s a huge area … 
  21. A Genius about Your own Mind
     … Because the mind finds it so easy to slip off to the past and the future, it’s quite an accomplishment to stay right here continually with the breath coming in and going out. So whatever skills can get you here, either by taking an interest in the mind in the present or by taking an interest in the breath in the present, you … 
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