Search results for: "The Breath"

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  2. Stern Kindness
    As we focus on the breath, two important qualities are being developed. One is mindfulness. That’s the ability to keep something in mind, like reminding yourself to stay with the breath. The other’s alertness, watching what’s going on. But mindfulness and alertness on their own are not enough. You also have to have the quality of ardency, the motivation that you … 
  3. Precept Meditation
     … Once you’ve set up an intention to stay with the breath, you have to be mindful and alert to make sure you actually do stay with the breath and don’t go wandering off. You also have to use your discernment and ingenuity to fend off any contrary intentions that would lure you away from your original intent. The precepts also teach you … 
  4. Appropriate Attention
     … We work with the breath, we work on getting the mind into concentration to make it as constant as possible. We look at the distractions that would pull us away. We want to see that they’re very inconstant and unreliable in comparison to concentration. But as you get deeper and deeper into the concentration, you see that even levels of right concentration that … 
  5. The Reflective Self
     … When you use it as you meditate, it plays the role of evaluation: “How is the breath right now? Is it good enough? Is it good enough for the mind to settle down with? How’s the mind? Is it willing to settle down or does it need some work? What kind of work?” You try different things, adjusting the breath in different ways … 
  6. The Lightened Mind
     … But with patience, it’s like the teaching he gave to Rahula before he taught him how to meditate on the breath, which is to make the mind like earth. You train your mind to be non-reactive—not as a goal in and of itself, but as a means for seeing things clearly. The question is: How do you get from that solid … 
  7. Adult Dhamma
     … Yet this doesn’t mean you become indifferent, because the next step is to work with the breath, which requires that you train the mind in a certain direction. You train yourself to breathe constantly aware of the whole body, to breathe calming the breath—which means that you are sensitive to pleasure or pain, and you’re working to ever more subtle levels … 
  8. Sophisticated Dhamma
     … Sometimes it seems that focusing the breath is like trying to balance a ball bearing on the tip of a needle. It just keeps falling off, falling off, falling off. So you have to have a lot of respect for the potential of concentration to keep at it. The other part of the problem is that we tend to overlook concentration. We all have … 
  9. Right Action & Right Livelihood
     … Are you going to continue looking for happiness in areas that cause harm to other beings, harm to yourself; or are you going to look for happiness being innocently here with the breath? The Buddha himself compares right concentration to food. Each of the levels of jhana corresponds to an increasingly refined and nourishing food until you finally get to the fourth jhana, where … 
  10. So Little Time
     … We get practice with the breath. The other day, we were talking about having an issue with being friends with your breath. If you can’t be friends with your breath, how are you going to be friends with anybody? You have to stop and ask yourself, “What’s the problem? Is the breath the problem or is it something else inside?” A lot … 
  11. Not-self Is a Value Judgment
     … You’re going to be sitting here meditating, focused on the breath, and all of a sudden the breath seems far away and you’re in some other thought world. You want to be quick to recognize that and quick to see the disadvantages of staying with that thought world. And then retreat from it. Let it go. There are other identities, of course … 
  12. Determined to be Happy
    When you sit down to meditate, you want to make a determination that you’re going to stay here with the breath—that you’re going to want to stay with the breath. Then do everything that you can do to keep that desire alive, and to act on it wisely. In other words, focus on the causes—what’s going to help you … 
  13. The Third and a Half Noble Truth
    Cultivate the desire to stay with the breath. Cultivate the desire to do it well—and don’t be afraid of that desire. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people say, “If you desire to do it well, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment, for stress, suffering. So just accept whatever comes.” But the Buddha was up-front about … 
  14. A Refuge from the Winds of the World
     … And so how do you keep the mind rightly established? Well, right now you’re focused on the breath—that’s part of right mindfulness, remembering to stay with the breath in and of itself—and you’re putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. Any thoughts of the world that come up right now, you’ve got to put them … 
  15. The Buddha Meant What He Said
     … There are different levels of subtlety in your perception of the breath. There’s the in-and-out breath; that’s one level of subtlety. Then there’s the sense of the breath as an energy suffusing your whole nervous system, flowing with the in-breath, flowing with the out-breath. Then there’s the perception of a really still and solid energy—which … 
  16. Help Others, Help Yourself
     … You train your mind to stay with one thing, like the breath in and of itself. Then you try to maintain a steady focus there, so you stay away from any thoughts about the world. You’re ardent, alert, and mindful. Ardent in trying to do this well. Alert in watching what you’re doing. And mindful in remembering what you should be doing … 
  17. Death Without Drama
     … You don’t have to remember all the breaths you’ve watched. You just have to remember to be with each one as it comes, and try to breathe in a way that’s skillful each time you breathe. Try to find whatever pleasure or potential for pleasure there can be in that breath. Give the mind something good to stay with so that … 
  18. Stay Centered
     … You’re focused on the breath, and a thought not related to the breath comes up, and before you let go of it you try to figure out what it’s about. Sometimes you feel committed to finish the sentence, to see where it’s going. But then, at the end of the hour, when the bell rings, you just drop the meditation without … 
  19. Intelligent Design
     … If I don’t know anything else for sure, what I do know for sure is that the breath is now coming in, the breath is now going out. Let’s just hang out here for the time being.” In that way you can weather whatever crisis comes up, and it gives you the strength to deal with things, to recover. I was reading … 
  20. Steering the Raft
     … You can develop a perception of the breath energy in the body where you realize the breath is not the air coming in and out through the nose. It’s the energy flow there in the body which, if it’s full, doesn’t need to depend on the in-and-out breath at all. If everything is full and connected inside, the in … 
  21. Happiness Without Conflict
     … It’s based on your inner sense of the form of the body, which can be very intense—the pleasure that comes as you focus on the breath like this—but it doesn’t conflict with anybody else. Nobody else is going to try to come in and get your sense of your breath. Other people can see you breathe. They can hear you … 
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