Search results for: "Feelings"
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- The Karma that Ends Karma… Even when you drop directed thought and evaluation to go from the first jhana to the second, there’s still feeling and perception. In fact the perception — the perception of breath — is what keeps you there all the way up through the fourth jhana. Try to hold onto that perception until the breath energy in the body grows still. Then you stay with still …
- Dignity in the Face of Hardship… How are we breathing? How are we talking to ourselves about this? What perceptions, what feelings are we focusing on? It’s through those fabrications that we maintain ourselves both in dignity now and in well-being on into the future. So focus your energy, focus your attention on the areas where you do have power, where you do have control both in your …
- Emulating the Truth… If you tell a deliberate lie and feel no sense of shame, then you’re overturned and hollow and empty in just the same way. So in establishing the principle of truthfulness, and the Buddha says this is the basic principle in looking at yourself: that you really be true. This means that you want to look for people who are true: people to …
- Always in Training… When unpleasant feelings arise in the body, or strange energies arise in the body based on greed, aversion, or delusion, you can breathe through them, just as you breathe through a painful or blocked sensation in the body as you’re here meditating. It may be too much to be aware of the whole body as you’re going through the day, but it …
- Criticism… And you should treasure their criticisms, without feeling like you’ve been unfairly singled out. As the Buddha said, Regard someone who points out your faults as someone who’s pointing out treasure, because it provides you with the opportunity to see something in your own behavior that you may have missed. Only when it’s pointed out to you can you then do …
- Outside of the Box… The question was this: “Suppose that you’re dreaming, and in this dream you’re in a boat with your mother and your child, and a lot of other people you really feel you love a lot. A pirate comes along and demands one person’s life. What do you do?” He said as he tells this problem to adults, they think about their …
- Acceptance… We practice when we feel like practicing, and we also practice when we don’t. We can’t let our moods be in charge. If we don’t follow the path now, who knows when we’re going to be able to follow it? It doesn’t get easier with age, you know. And nobody else can do it for us. Other people can …
- Kindness in the Light of Karma… We feel we’re coming down hard on ourselves if we look at our shortcomings. But this is why the Buddha prefaced his instructions to Rahula on how to meditate with the teaching on making your mind like earth. People spit on earth, but earth doesn’t react. Make your mind like water. Water is used to wash away dirty things, but the water …
- The World Is Swept Away… Even your body, your feelings, your perceptions, your thought constructs, your consciousness: You can’t take those with you, either. These first three Dhamma summaries provide an interesting point to reflect on — that the Buddha’s teaching on the three characteristics may have come from the simple facts of aging, illness, and death. Aging — inconstancy; illness — stress and suffering; and death — not-self. The …
- Moral Intelligence… Often we in the West don’t like to hear about morality, because we associate it with arbitrary rules—or, at least, rules that seem arbitrary—and we feel like we’re confined. But if you think of morality more as an issue of harmlessness—that you’re trying to find a happiness that’s harmless, that’s not going to harm yourself, not …
- The Guarantee of Concentration… And then, because your identity is built up around that idea, it feels very threatened when the idea’s called into question. But if your stance is, “Wait and see,” then you’re safe. So the concentration not only enables you to see things but also enables you to see them long-term, to see the connection between cause and effect in the mind …
- Two Eyes, Not Just One… You look at your feelings and perceptions as mental fabrications to see what influence they’re having on the mind. And then in both cases, you try to calm the effect. Try to fabricate more tranquil states in the body; try to fabricate more tranquil states in the mind. That’s tranquility. So you’re developing insight and tranquility at the same time. This …
- The Kathina… You learn that it feels good to do something that’s really good, even though it can be physically tiring, demanding in one way or another. After all, the path is going to be tiring all the way through, it’s going to be demanding. But if you’re up for the challenge, it makes all the difference in the world. So this is …
- Karma & Not-self… You identify certain things as yourself in terms of the doer, and certain things as yourself in terms of the experiencer of feelings of pleasure and pain. Acting as a doer, you try to create more pleasure and get rid of pain. Acting as experiencer, you try to enjoy the pleasure, escape the pain. So your sense of who you are is a strategy …
- The Power of Choice… You choose where you feel comfortable settling down. The breath is the topic he taught most often because the breath offers lots of different ways you can settle down, lots of different ways of gaining a sense of well-being and ease, but the Buddha leaves it open as to how many ways you might want to breathe. So wherever you’re focused right …
- Fear & Conviction… The feeling that washed over her was pretty powerful. It was fear. But she responded wisely to the fear. She realized, okay, she had to be careful. She was extra careful where she stepped, extra careful how she did things, so that she didn’t suddenly fall and break something—a bone here or a bone there. She spent the entire month being very …
- Building Concentration… When you find a rhythm and texture of breathing that feels good, what do you do with it then? Try to maintain it. But what happens if the body changes? Well, you change the breathing. Then the Buddha says to let that sense of ease and refreshment spread throughout the body. How do you do that? Again, Ajaan Lee gives some advice based on …
- Clinging & the End of Clinging… There is suffering.” He said something more specific, useful, and insightful: “Suffering is the five clinging-aggregates.” As he pointed out elsewhere, the problem isn’t with the aggregates of form, feeling, perceptions, fabrication, or consciousness. The problem is with the clinging. So, suffering is clinging. When he said that all he taught was suffering and the end of suffering, he was basically saying …
- Unparadoxical Happiness… It’s a happiness that’s not a feeling. It’s simply the happiness there in the unconditioned. That’s what we’re practicing for. Part of our path includes a type of happiness that is conditioned, but it’s a lot less stressful than sensual passion. It’s the happiness, the pleasure and ease, that comes when the mind is concentrated, when it …
- Advice for a New Monk… Notice where you feel the breath. Whichever part of the body that’s easiest to stay focused on and to know, now the breath is coming in; now the breath is going out: Try to stay focused right there. If thoughts come into your head, remind yourself that they’re not destroying your breath. The sensations of breathing are still there. Try to maintain …
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