Search results for: "The Breath"

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  2. Skillful in Everything
     … You run into a problem with the breath, well, one, you can recognize it as a problem. And two, you can start thinking about different ways of solving the problem. It develops your ingenuity. If you’re the sort of person who’s willing to put effort into mastering a skill outside, it’s going to translate into the effort you put into your … 
  3. Stick to Your Duties
     … Make up your mind you’re going to stay with the breath and put aside any other thoughts that have to do with the world. Whatever the world is doing out there right now, that’s not your business. Your business is the fact that you’re suffering and you need to attack the suffering at the cause, and not just try to let … 
  4. Look at Yourself
     … We’re good at thinking in abstractions, but we’re very poor at looking at the details of what we’re doing, the results of what we’re doing, what’s going on right under our nose, right in our nose with the breath. So as you come to the meditation, as you come to the practice as a whole, you have to learn … 
  5. Don’t Worry, Be Focused
     … While you have a breath to focus on, you focus on the breath as a place to gather the mind, and then you try to make sure that it doesn’t go sticking its arms or head out like a turtle. A turtle is in its shell, there’s a fox outside, and the turtle knows that if it sticks its head out, or … 
  6. Respect for Emptiness
     … You’re going to stay right here with the breath. The breath is not that colorful an object — at least on the surface. You find, though, as you get to know it, that the more you spend time with it, the more it has to offer, the more absorbing it gets. But to reach that state of absorption, you have to start out with … 
  7. The Dhamma Points Inside
     … You focus on the breath: You don’t have to push anyone out of the way who’s already trying to look at your breath. It’s totally yours to look at. Your sense of the body that you feel from within: No one else can feel that. If you can find some well-being here, then you don’t feel the need to … 
  8. Strength of Discernment
     … And you can use the breath to undercut unskillful states. You can ask yourself, “If something’s coming through the mind and I’m focusing on something that’s not really worthy of attention, how can I give a karate chop to the mind?”—in other words, the part of the mind that finds this appealing or useful, or simply says, “This is my … 
  9. A Healthy Ego
     … The breath is the standard one, because the breath is the function in the body that you can work with most directly to create a sense of ease and well-being through the way you breathe, through the way you think of the breath. That way, you can have a sense of well-being that goes down through the legs, goes down through the … 
  10. The World Does Not Endure
     … When you think in these terms, it gives you a reason to want to stay with the breath. Then we have those other reflections to remind yourself of why you don’t want to go out in the world. That chant we had just now came from a dialogue between a young monk and a king. The king was curious: This young monk had … 
  11. The Rewards of Stream Entry
     … Stay with the sensation of the breathing coming in and going out. Allow it to be comfortable. When you focus on the breath, try not to tense up around the breath. Think of the spot where you’re focused as spreading out, spreading out. Whatever energy is there gets spread out, so that you can suffuse the body with a sense of well-being … 
  12. Scribe Knowledge, Warrior Knowledge
     … To what extent can you really control the breath? Push it and see how far you can go. And you’ll find you can go fairly far. You can create a sense of ease; a sense of well-being. And that becomes your nourishment on the path. But after a while, even with whatever mastery you’ve had of the breath, you find you … 
  13. Dangers Outside & In
     … Ajaan Lee will talk about perceiving the breath energies in the body flowing through the pain. Ajaan Maha Bua will talk about how you relate to the pain, how you visualize it to yourself. Do you visualize it as a solid block or as discrete moments? And those discrete moments: Are they coming at you or are they going away from you? These are … 
  14. Nuclear Thinking
     … Once the breath gets comfortable, immediately expand it and let that comfortable sensation spread to other parts of the body. Get used to having this enlarged frame, for otherwise, if your mind is totally one-pointed, focused on being aware of only one little point of the body, it gets easily knocked over. One thought can come in and totally overwhelm that one little … 
  15. All Three Functions of Mindfulness
     … We’re keeping the breath in mind. But why are we keeping the breath in mind? There are basically three functions for mindfulness on the path. One is to remember to stay alert to what you’re doing in the present moment and not let your attention shift off to the past or the future. The second is to remember to recognize what’s … 
  16. Understanding Through Developing
     … I’m going to find how much refreshment I can get out of the breath, how much ease I can get out of the breath.” That strengthens the original intention. You’ll be more likely to stay and to enjoy staying. The more you enjoy it, the better it goes. As Ajaan Fuang said, meditation needs a sense of rapture and refreshment as a … 
  17. Staying Power
     … Then do your best as you go through the day to maintain that sense of being with the energy of the breath as your grounding. If you’re going off on retreat and you’re going to be alone, again, there’s the problem of staying power. There’s the initial enthusiasm of having all that time to yourself. Then, when the initial enthusiasm … 
  18. Your Inner Mob
     … All you can do is make up your mind that you’re not going to fall in line with them, you’re not going to act under their power, and you just hunker down with the breath. Don’t get involved in the conversations. Don’t get pulled into a shouting match. It’s like that storm we had several years back, with hundred … 
  19. As They’ve Come to Be
     … We use different perceptions to get the mind with the breath; that’s also mental fabrication. And here again, you get sensitive to that and then you try to calm it down. So, you’re combining tranquility and insight in that way, seeing things as fabrications—they’re put together. The nature of fabrications is that they’re going to be inconstant, but here … 
  20. Producing Experience
     … You can develop skill in the way you focus on the breath, the way you adjust the breath, the way you develop sensitivity to what’s going on in the body. These are all things you do as a producer of experiences, and you can learn to do them more and more skillfully to create a sense of wellbeing in the present moment. Even … 
  21. To Discern Suffering
     … So we start with looking at the breath in and of itself. And you’d be amazed how many stories you can build up even around that. If you have trouble sitting down with the breath, one of the immediate stories is, “I’m no good at this. I can’t do this. Something’s wrong with me.” Or: “The meditation doesn’t work … 
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