Search results for: "The Breath"

  1. Page 114
  2. People of Integrity
     … We can talk about staying with the breath: What happens when the mind wanders off from the breath? You bring it right back. The “how to” part is a necessary part of the meditation. But there’s also the “why”: What are your values? And how honest are you in maintaining those values? I’ve known a lot of cases where people meditate and … 
  3. A Wealthy Memory
     … Knowing how to focus on the breath, keeping the breath comfortable in the midst of different circumstances, and reminding yourself that it’s important to do that: These are all forms of wealth. So is the realization that your mind is a lot more likely to think of the right thing to do or say when it’s inhabiting a comfortable body. When your … 
  4. Being Somebody, Going Somewhere
     … What is the best use of the present right now? You’ve got the breath, so you can use it to develop a sense of well-being. What’s the purpose of the well-being? It allows the mind to settle down so that it can see itself. What’s the purpose of seeing itself? You can detect any unskillful movements of the mind … 
  5. Trust in the Power of the Mind
     … You think about that one thing, i.e., the breath. You work with it so that it gives rise to a sense of ease, a sense of well-being, a sense of refreshment. You energize the body. You energize the mind. Then you allow body and mind to grow calm. As you work with calming the mind, calming the breath, things begin to peel … 
  6. Honest & Observant
     … breathing in and out aware of the whole body, breathing in and out calming the effect of the breath on the body, breathing in and out in a way that gives rise to rapture, that gives rise to pleasure. There’s a lot of proactive decision-making and choices and learning from what you’re doing. And how do you breathe in a way … 
  7. Training Your Inner Critic
     … In this case, bodily fabrication is the breath. Verbal is directed thought and evaluation—as you pick up a topic and make comments on it, ask questions about it, evaluate it. Mental is perceptions and feelings. Perceptions are the mental labels you apply to things. Feelings are feeling-tones: pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain. It’s important to see the connection between these … 
  8. The Brahmaviharas on the Path
     … Just keep asking yourself, “What’s the skillful thing to do now?” Try to bring some sense of ease with the breath into all your other activities. It’ll make it easier to do the skillful thing and step back from unskillful mind states that pop up, where you get upset, where you get flustered, angry, whatever. You’ll develop more resistance to those … 
  9. Now & at Death
     … Come back to the breath. You’ve got to ask yourself, “Was the breath as comfortable as it could have been? Was it too weak?” Sometimes, when it’s very weak, you lose track of it. Other times, it’s just simply not comfortable. Ask yourself, “What would be a more comfortable way of breathing?” Allow your mind to use its imagination to think … 
  10. Teachings to Rahula
     … Does the mind fit with the breath? Do they feel good together? Does the breath feel good with the body? How do you know? Well, stick with one kind of breathing for a while and see what impact it has on your sense of the body—by working on things as you feel them from within. This is an area of our awareness that … 
  11. Where You Set Your Heart
     … Like the breath right now—you’re with the breath on its own terms. Then two, you put aside greed and distress with reference to the world. **In other words, any thoughts that come up with regard to the world, about what you want about the world, about how you’re upset about what’s going on in the world—you have to put … 
  12. Centered in the Body
     … Whatever the situation, keep yourself in the body, be in touch with the energy in the body, how the breath is feeling. You may not be able to follow all the details of the in-and-out breath, but you can have a general sense of how the body feels. Or you can choose one spot in the body as your spot and stay … 
  13. Little Things
     … For example, focusing on the breath: Be really precise about any tiny little bit of tension or discomfort or dis-ease in the breath. Don’t slough over it, because paying attention to the little details is what brings you more and more into the present moment. If you’re sloughing over the details, you’re sloughing from the past into the future and … 
  14. Layers of Selves
     … Think of the breath energy spreading through the pain. You stay in your home base that’s not the pain itself. But think of the comfort coming from your home base radiating out through the pain. If it feels like the pain is a wall, change that perception. Remind yourself that the atoms of the body are mainly made out of space, so the … 
  15. Suffering is an Addiction
     … We’re going to run it in different ways.” This can be related to the breath, related to thoughts of goodwill, contemplation of the body, contemplation of death: thinking about things we ordinarily don’t think about and with a consistency we don’t usually apply to these topics. Ordinarily, we think about death sometimes. We think about the body sometimes. The breath sometimes … 
  16. Helping Others
     … There’s a story Ajaan Lee tells of the old monk who’d practiced “Buddho, Buddho, Buddho,” nothing but *Buddho *and the breath—hadn’t done any adjustment of the breath, hadn’t engaged in any directed thought and evaluation—and it didn’t go anywhere. It takes some discernment to see, when you’re sitting down to meditate, what’s in the way … 
  17. The Uses of Equanimity
     … He went on to teach breath meditation, and breath meditation isn’t simply accepting the breath whatever way it is. It’s very proactive. “Learn to breathe,” he said, “sensitive to the whole body. Calming the way you breathe. Train yourself to become sensitive to where there’s pleasure, to where there’s a sense of refreshment or rapture in the breathing. Notice how … 
  18. Free to Do the Right Thing
     … Those are the thoughts to keep you focused on the breath, keep you focused on the present moment. As for other thoughts, no matter how true they may be, no matter how beneficial they maybe in other times, you’ve got to learn to put them aside. Thoughts about what you did today, thoughts about what you’re going to do later today, what … 
  19. Poison Your Fantasies
     … Find someplace, such as the breath, where you can stay with a sense of well-being. And when the question is: “What to do next? What to do next?” the answer is always, at least for the time being: “Just stay right here. Stay right here. Stay right here.” In the beginning, this requires some adjustment. That’s why in the first jhana, there … 
  20. More than a Sliver of Mindfulness
     … One of the first things I say is that I learned how to focus on the breath, not just being aware of the breath willy-nilly, but working with the breath to make it comfortable and developing a sense of well-being inside. Once you have that, then the mind is in much better shape for actually wanting to deal with unskillful emotions and … 
  21. For Goodness’ Sake
     … You direct your thoughts to the breath and then you evaluate it. How does it feel? Does it feel good enough to stay with for a while? If it doesn’t, how could it be made to feel that good? You experiment. You try things out. You ask questions. You look for answers. These are all things you do. Then, when you find something … 
  22. Load next page...