Search results for: "Feelings"
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- Success on the Path… He says that when you’re focusing on one of the frames of reference, or establishing mindfulness based on the body, feelings, mind, mental qualities, there may come times when the practice starts getting difficult. As he says, there may be a fever in the body, or a fever in the mind. That, he says, is when it’s good to put that topic …
- Mindfulness Aims at Concentration… You can also do the same with feelings in and of themselves, mind states in and of themselves, and mental qualities in and of themselves. To take them “in and of themselves” means you’re looking at them directly, not in the context of the world, because that’s the second activity—“putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world.” Any thoughts …
- Loss… The King broke down and cried, so the Buddha said to him, “Did you ever think that she would live forever? How can we have it in this world, that the things and people we love don’t pass away?” But then he goes on to say to the king, “As long as you feel that there’s a value in giving expression to …
- Thinking Your Way to Stillness… If you’re feeling discouraged in your practice, you can think about all the members of the Noble Sangha who went through really miserable times in their practice for one reason or another—either outside hardships, or just their own inability to get the mind concentrated. There’s the story of one monk who decided to commit suicide. He had been practicing for more …
- Endurance Made Easier… I’m feeling hungry. I’m feeling tired and weak.” That’s a condition for laziness. The condition for aroused effort, if you haven’t eaten enough, is to say, “Ah, the body is light. I don’t have to worry about digesting my food today. I’m not sleepy or drowsy or weighed down by the food.” And in the way the Buddha …
- Selfing & Not-selfing… And what have you got? You’ve got these five aggregates—form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, consciousness. The Buddha calls them twigs and branches. You bind them together as a raft. And one of the ways of binding them together, of course, is to get the mind into concentration. You’ve got the form of the body. You’ve got the feeling of pleasure that …
- In Earnest… You keep feeding and feeding, and for some reason you feel more and more hungry the more you feed. If the food itself doesn’t make you hungrier, they wrap it up in all kinds of advertising to make you want to eat more. Like those little chocolates that come in wrappers that tell you to indulge yourself, to take a moment for yourself …
- Playing by the Buddha’s Rules… What’s new is that they feel they have the right not to die. But they’re going to die anyway, and they’re not going to be prepared. Here we’re preparing ourselves. There will be death, there will be aging and illness. The way to solve those problems is not to not get ill or not die. You solve them by looking …
- The Wisdom of Ardency… Also remind yourself that often you’re not really sure where you’re going, but you’re feeling your way, feeling your way, and all of a sudden, things open up. That can happen, too. Think of the image of the continental shelf off of India. There’s a gradual slope and then a sudden drop off. So, it’s possible that one little …
- A Good-natured Attitude… This is all a factor of discernment, keeping the path on a “just right” mode, so that your concentration is just right, your mindfulness is just right, feels good, feels okay. And of course it’s going to slip off to the left and slip off to the right. But if you maintain your good humor, you can catch it—because you’re willing …
- The Graduated Discourse… We know that it feels good, deep down inside, to do these things. So the Buddha’s affirming that fact. In that way, he’s helping to give rise to a sense of self-respect within you. And you respect him for pointing out the goodness of these things. Even more so when he talks about the rewards of these things in heaven: It …
- Imagining Freedom… This is why we work with the breath to give us a sense of ease and comfort, a feeling that we belong in our own skin, we belong in our bodies. We know that we have a safe place to go. Then you can turn around and look at the pain and not be afraid of it. You don’t have to run away …
- A Sense of Duty… You feel more and more confined by them. You want to get out, you want to destroy them. You’d prefer oblivion. But that desire, too, causes suffering. That’s a craving that, ironically, leads to more becoming. You take on an identity as a person who wants non-becoming. That becomes your new becoming. So when you see these things happening in the …
- A Post by the Ocean… How do the different parts of the body feel during the in-breath? Do you tend to tense up around your neck, or in your shoulders? Can you breathe-in in a way that you don’t tense up? It’s all connected — your posture, the way you breathe, the way the blood flows through the body. You can explore these issues as a …
- Return of Wisdom for Dummies… But if you take that cake and give it to somebody else, you can think about how good it feels to have been generous. You see that the second form of happiness is more lasting. The fact of having a choice means that you’re not necessarily compelled by past actions or by anybody else. These two reflections contain an awful lot of the …
- Possessiveness… bodily fabrication, the way you breathe; verbal fabrication, the way you talk to yourself; and mental fabrication, perceptions and feelings. Now, the wise response to that analysis is not just to hold to the view that that’s how the mind works. You also have to develop right resolve to train the mind so that it can make use of that knowledge: resolve on …
- Nothing Wrong with Right & Wrong… So in some cases he’s saying, “Okay, this is right; this is wrong.” In other cases he’s saying, “Make your choice among these alternatives.” He’s treating you like an adult—someone who doesn’t feel wounded by other people’s judgments, doesn’t feel wounded about having your actions judged as to being right or wrong. Someone who’s wise enough …
- Dealing with Limitations… As the Buddha said, when you become a being, you identify with form, feeling, perception, fabrications, or consciousness of particular kinds. And whatever way you identify yourself, that’s how you limit yourself. You gain certain powers by bringing those things under your control, but you also take on certain limitations. Those limitations may not be getting in the way of the particular task …
- Stay… If you see something that needs to be maintained, you maintain it so that you can shepherd the mind in to a state where it feels perfectly balanced. And then, then when it’s balanced, you try to maintain that. Think of a person walking on a tightrope. It’s not that the person is rigid all across the rope. As soon as the …
- Anger… That makes the anger a lot easier to deal with, because you feel less burdened, less irritated, less constricted physically. Then you can look at the mind in and of itself. What is this state of anger in and of itself? As I said, it’s often a blinding of the mind, putting blinders on the sides of your mental eyes, so you can …
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