Search results for: "Feelings"
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- In the Elephant’s Footprint… The proof of it, of course, was the pain they were feeling. So he went to argue with them, too. He said, “How do you know this is past karma that’s causing the pain? Have you ever noticed that when you don’t do your austerities, there is no pain?” He’s pointing to the fact that we make choices in the present …
- Cheerfully Ardent… But you’re feeling your way. Whatever amount of time you can devote to doing that is time well spent. Have the right attitude. Learn how to keep yourself cheerful. The Buddha said that one of the first things you do with the mind, once you find what state it’s in, is to try and gladden it. You can be glad that you …
- Wisdom, Compassion, Purity… Well, what do we survive for, if not for happiness? People who feel that they can find no happiness at all in life have no desire to keep on living. Happiness is what we live for. So it’s simply a matter of learning to take this drive for happiness and learning how to follow it wisely. The Buddha didn’t say to be …
- Wealth Worth Holding Onto… Venerable Ananda comes to see the Buddha and tells him how much he misses Sariputta, how it feels like he’s lost his bearings. And the Buddha says, “Why? Did he take virtue with him? Did he take concentration? Discernment? Release? Knowledge and vision of release?”—in other words, all the good things of the practice. “No, they’re still there.” Which is why …
- Turning Points… So the Buddha discovered that our search for happiness is not something we should be scolded for or should feel ashamed of. But we should learn to do it in clear-sighted way, because for most of us, our pleasures do blind us, they do get us intoxicated, and they often do cause suffering for us or for other people. But there is a …
- Discernment on the Path… body, feelings, mind states, and mental qualities. They all gather around the breath. So whichever frame of reference you want to use, it’s right here. That reminds you to look at this state of mind from all directions. When the time comes to develop discernment, you’re watching right here because discernment is basically guidance in what to do right here. The four …
- Reliable Action… As you explore and experiment with this energy flow in the body, think of it coming in at the neck and going down the spine, or coming up from the soles of your feet up the spine, whichever feels better; coming in and out from the front, coming in and out from the back, through every pore of the skin. That makes the present …
- Head, Heart, & Gut… When you feel like giving up, the Buddha says to remind yourself that you got on to this path because you wanted to put an end to suffering. If you feel like giving up, have you decided you want to suffer a lot more? Do you not love yourself? In other words, you find ways of calming the mind so that it can put …
- Choose Your Cravings Wisely… If you’re feeling cold, what do you do to warm yourself up with the breath? That requires a memory of what you’ve heard in the past, or learned in the past from your own experimentation. Then you’re alert to what you’re doing right now to see if you’re actually doing it right. And then you work at it. You …
- Hedgehog Knowledge… When you feel too cold or too hot, when you feel feverish, sluggish, when there are aches and pains in different parts of the body, you can attack them from the side of the breath and get an entirely new perspective on what’s going on in this body-mind complex you have here. Ultimately, you begin to see that the breath permeates just …
- Seeds of Becoming… There’s the breath, which is the physical fabrication; then there’s directed thought and evaluation, which are verbal fabrications; and then there are feelings and perceptions, which are mental fabrications. These are the basic building blocks from which you create this world, the world of a concentrated mind. You use your powers of directed thought and evaluation to work out the disturbances, to …
- Understanding Happiness… And if the energy feels healthy and nourishing, it’s going to nourish both the body and the mind. It’s probably the most important thing in life, and yet we very rarely look at it. We’re always concerned about other things: people, places, work responsibilities. So it’s good to have some time where this is our only responsibility. And for the …
- Breath vs. Distraction… What is the breath? Viewed from the outside, people say that it’s the air coming in and out through the nose, going into the lungs, and then coming back out again, but how does it feel to you inside?—like that old Peanuts cartoon where Linus comes up to Lucy and says, “Feel my hands; they’re cold,” and she says, “Yes, they …
- A Greater Happiness… It feels comfortable being with the breath coming in, with the breath going out. Allow yourself to stay there. After all, stillness is the essence of happiness. There’s another passage where the Buddha says, “There is no happiness other than peace.” What he means is that the mind will know no happiness unless it can settle down and be still. So you give …
- Infinity… These thoughts can, one, induce a fellow feeling toward everyone you meet. You’ve probably been like that person in the past. So that’s something you have in common. You shouldn’t be jealous of those who are more powerful; you shouldn’t look down on those who are more miserable than you. Feel empathetic joy for the first, compassion for the second …
- Concentration & Insight… The carrot is a nice comfortable feeling you can develop with the breath. If you work with it, if you explore it, you find that the breath can be really, really comfortable. Sometimes it gets so good that you get absorbed in the breathing and you can’t imagine why you would need anything else to make yourself happy—it just feels so good …
- The Good Fight… If you’re very attentive to how the breathing works, you can figure out a way to breathe that feels really solid and nourishing. You’ve got a sense of well-being you can tap into at any time. A lot of the hunger to take more than you really need from the Earth, or more than you really need from the people around …
- Perplexity… It’s not a question of whether it hurts their feelings or whether they like it or not. The issue is: Do these thoughts actually lead to harm? A lot of times when, say, your sensual desires are going to get other people involved in sensual misconduct, that’s for their harm. Or when your passion or aversion are intended to give rise to …
- Honest & Observant… In other words, the more the pleasure develops, the more it can envelop the pain and dissolve it away—or at the very least, put the mind in a position where it feels comfortable where it is, fine where it is. If the pain is going to be there, it can be there. But you don’t have to feel threatened by it because …
- Patience & Tenacity… There’s no reason to feel jealous about other people’s bodies or to be worried about your appearance. This allows you to focus instead on what you can do with your body, what you can do with your mind, in the sense of creating good kamma by doing skillful things So you can think about the fact that the body is just these …
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