Search results for: "The Breath"

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  2. Skills for Living & Dying
     … One is the breath and the other is the mind. Is the mind staying with the breath? How is the breath going? Is it tense? Is it tight? Does it feel constricted? If it does, think of it opening up. Experiment for a while to see what kind of breathing feels good. If there’s any tension or tightness in any part of the … 
  3. Solidly Here
     … And it’s through the breath energy that we sense the body. So the breath is like a checkpoint. Everybody has to go through right here. Your intentions go out through the breath, and the way you feel your body from the inside comes in through the breath. Think of the breath as a whole-body process. It’s the sense of energy flowing … 
  4. Introduction to the Breath
     … You’re here to develop these good qualities, and the breath gives you a good place to practice, because the breath is always with you. Then the alertness is what actually watches what the breath is doing, and also watches what the mind is doing. Then, if you notice it slipping off the breath, bring the mind right back. That’s the third quality … 
  5. Perceptions for Training the Mind
     … You can think of different ways that the breath goes through different channels through the body. The one caveat here is that you’ll begin to notice, or some people will begin to notice as they’re focusing on the breath in the body, that it doesn’t seem like the breath energy ends at the skin. There seems to be an energy cocoon … 
  6. An Exercise in Freedom
     … And they all hover around the breath. In fact, the breath itself is the bodily fabrication, it’s what creates our sense of the body. If the breath weren’t coming in, going out—if the breath energy weren’t flowing through the nerves—we wouldn’t even know we had a body. So the breath is our first experience of the body and … 
  7. The Wisdom of Wising Up
     … focusing on the breath. If you find the mind wandering off, bring it back. The talk helps you realize when you’ve wandered off. It acts like a fence. If you run up against the fence, you come back to the breath. It also helps point out things you might notice in the breath, ways you can deal with the breath to help the … 
  8. Dissolving Your Thoughts
     … I was talking to someone today who finds that he gets to the point where the breath almost seems to stop and he thinks “Ah, almost there, fourth jhāna,” but then the mind pulls back. You don’t have to think about the breath stopping, you don’t want to make the breath stop, because then you end up suppressing the breath, and the … 
  9. Strategic Friends
    Gather your attention right here at the breath. Take a couple of good long, deep breaths and see where you notice the sensation of breathing most strongly. It could at the nose, could be at the chest, the abdomen, shoulders, wherever the sensation tells you very clearly that now the breath is coming in, now the breath is going out. Then allow the breath … 
  10. The Karma of Pain
     … Don’t let the in-and-out of the breath disturb the ease and spaciousness and pleasure that come with that feeling. As you do this, you begin to see that you have some images in your mind about what the breath is doing, how the breath is coming in, how the breath is going out, what you’re doing to the breath. The … 
  11. Well-being Despite It All
     … We’re focusing, to begin with, on the breath. The breath itself may be subject to change but it gives you something to hold on to. It’s difficult right in the beginning to focus directly on the mind, so you focus on the breath instead, because the breath is near the mind, it’s near your awareness. Anywhere that you’re aware in … 
  12. Mindfulness Immersed in the Breath
     … Where could the breath be more comfortable? You might think of allowing the breath to be shorter, longer, deeper, more shallow, heavier or lighter, with the emphasis on the word allowing. You don’t put pressure on the breath, you simply think, “The breath can be shorter,” or, It can be longer,” and you’ll find the body responding. Stay with it for a … 
  13. Healing Awareness
     … Now, the rapture and pleasure are not going to come unless the breath is comfortable. Getting the breath to be comfortable is often difficult for a lot of us, because as soon as we focus on something, as when we focus on the breath, we tend to tense up around it as a way of reminding ourselves to stay there. We put pressure on … 
  14. Talking to Yourself
     … So you remind yourself that if you want to gain a sense of yourself, you have to get the mind to become still—and the breath is a good place to do it because the breath is one of the processes in the body that you can actually exert some control over. You can vary the breath and, through the breath, create a sense … 
  15. Against the Stream
     … The question is, what are you going to do with them? Right now you’re trying to encourage thoughts of the breath. You want to be with the breath, be sensitive to the breath in the body, and if you’re going to think about anything, think about the breath—how’s it going? You watch it, you ask questions about it as you … 
  16. Wide-open Awareness
     … You stay with the breath. If you’re going to meddle with anything, meddle with the breath. Change the rhythm of breathing to see what feels good. Change the depth of the breath, the pace, the rhythm of the breath. You can change the point that you’re focusing on in the body. But as long as you stay on this level—the level … 
  17. Commit Yourself
    The easy part of meditation is focusing on the breath, because it’s right here. You don’t have to go looking anywhere else, you don’t have buy it from anybody. It’s not one of those things you have to go order from a meditation supply catalog. It comes in and goes out right here all the time. All you have to … 
  18. One Foot in the Present
    When you focus on the breath in the present moment, you want to take that as your anchor. As long as you’re with the sensation of the breath coming in, going out, at least you’ve got one foot in the present moment. You want to stay in the present moment not because it’s a wonderful moment, but because it’s an … 
  19. When You’ve Played Enough With the Breath
     … It can be with the breath energies, to bring balance to the body. If things are out of order in the body, if there’s a particular illness in the body, this is the time to use your directed thought and evaluation. Work with the breath energies. Think of the breath coming in and out in ways that you hadn’t thought of before … 
  20. Balancing Tranquility & Insight
     … Your perception that you’re not separate from the breath, that you’re not in one part of the body or inhabiting one part of the body and watching the breath in some other part of the body, but you’re actually one with the breath, immersed in the breath, bathed in the breath, surrounded by breath: That perception helps steady the mind even … 
  21. A Total Training
     … When it is with the breath, you try to be as sensitive to the breath as possible. As I said, if the breath feels comfortable, it’s easier to stay. The more sensitive you are, the greater the pleasure you can derive from the breath. The more finesse you can use in adjusting the breath so that it really is just right, the more … 
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