Search results for: "The Breath"

  1. Page 125
  2. To Practice Dying
     … You have an intention to stay with the breath, and other thought worlds pop up. If you’re not careful, you go with them. The popping up of a thought world is like the process of what they call bhava in dependent co-arising; going into the thought world is like birth. So that’s what you’ve got to watch out for. Where … 
  3. The Creator of Worlds
     … Only the narratives dealing with the breath right now.” If the mind does get involved with narratives of the past, tweak the narratives so that they incline you to come back here. Remind yourself of how much you’ve been suffering by staying in those narratives, carrying those memories around. Remind yourself of your desire to put those burdens down. Well, this is the … 
  4. Training Your Intentions
     … Some people find the breath to be very comfortable because you can adjust it. Other people have trouble adjusting the breath in a way that feels comfortable. If that’s the case, you can choose another one of the topics that the Buddha recommends: the brahmavihāras, contemplation of the body, recollection of the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Saṅgha—anything that gives rise to a … 
  5. Delight in Concentration
     … One of the ways of taking pleasure in doing this, even before you can find a sense of well-being with the breath, is to talk to yourself about what a good thing it is that you’re on this path. The Buddha lists six different ways of taking delight that he says can lead to the end of the effluents. It’s interesting … 
  6. Views, Virtue, & Mindfulness
     … How’s the breath going? Could it be better? If you’re skilled at judging your own behavior in general, it’s a lot easier to make skillful judgments about the breath, neither hypercritical nor hypo-critical. You’re able to see precisely what’s happening and you have the confidence to try to figure out the solution—knowing that this is important, this … 
  7. Listening to the True Dhamma
     … Focus on your breath, where you feel the breath in the body. As for the affairs of the world outside, don’t focus on them at all. There’s work that has to be done, and it has to be done right here, inside. So focus your attention here. As you get focused here, you begin to see that the talk does refer to … 
  8. Mending the Social Fabric
     … You’ve got the breath. There’s a lot that can be done with the breath to soothe the body, to soothe the mind, to heal the body, heal the mind, strengthen the body, strengthen the mind. And when we all see eye-to-eye on this, then it’s a good society to live in. It makes it easier to share, because we … 
  9. Proactive with Pain
     … This is one of the reasons why we work with the breath. Try to find a way of breathing through different parts of the body. If there’s a pain in your head, try to breathe down through your hands and your feet. If there’s a pain in your legs, focus more on the chest. If you can’t find anywhere in the … 
  10. Part II : Common Problems
     … So, focus on the breath. Get it really comfortable. Give the mind the energy it needs in order to watch the pain, to understand it. Sometimes, at the beginning of the meditation, there’s already pain in your body. This means you first have to focus instead on another area of the body where there’s not so much pain and things are more … 
  11. The Story-telling Mind
     … So a good part of the meditation is often not just being with the breath but — if you find you’ve got a story that keeps obsessing the mind, stirring up greed, anger, delusion, fear, whatever — learning how to deal with that story, learning how to tell yourself new stories. Learn a corrective to the old stories. One of the basic ways of doing … 
  12. Choices Now & at Death
     … Different desires will come up, some of them wanting to stay with the breath, some of them wanting to wander off. So, hold on to the desires that want to stay, because who knows where you’ll wander off to otherwise. But if you stay with the breath, you can get the mind into a state of concentration. The concentration can give rise to … 
  13. Descartes’ Error
     … What have you got here? You’ve got the breath, you’ve got the body. Actually you’ve got a lot of things going on in the present moment. It’s simply because you haven’t looked deeply enough or carefully enough that you don’t see what’s going on. You may look at the breath and all you see is in and … 
  14. An Issue of Control
     … That’s why we focus on the breath. Find a good sense of breath energy. It doesn’t have to be especially strong or outstanding right now. But if you shelter and protect it, give it some space, don’t squeeze it out as you breathe out, don’t put too much pressure on it as you breathe in, and allow it to just … 
  15. Rooted in Desire
     … How do you focus on the breath in a way that gives rise to well-being? How do you focus on it in a way that gives rise to stress? What’s the difference? This is something we have to look at over and over and over again, because only when you’ve been over and over something many times do you see the … 
  16. Knowledge over Fear
     … As long as you stay with the breath, work with the breath energy in the way that Ajaan Lee recommended, and watch out for these two dangers, you’re safe. Here again, it’s an issue of gaining knowledge: knowing what there is that you really should be afraid of and knowing how to work around those things. So you respect the dangers but … 
  17. Fear of Death
     … Get the mind focused on the breath, and the pleasure that can come from that doesn’t count as a sensual pleasure. You can get the breath really, really comfortable, and there can be a strong sense of well-being. With that, you’re less inclined to be concerned about missing sensual pleasures in the human realm, because you’ve got something better: a … 
  18. Facing Pain Straight On
    When you give the mind an exercise to do—like focusing on the breath, contemplating the virtues of the Buddha, developing goodwill, or even some of practices that are said to be vipassana practice—they’re all actually concentration practices. You tell the mind to do something, you will the mind to do something—that’s the concentration—and then you observe it. That … 
  19. No Running Away
     … We sit with the body, sit with the breath and things get out of balance: The properties that can help bring it back into balance are right there in the body as well. If things feel too heavy, too dense, that’s the earth element. The earth element is balanced out by the wind or breath element. If things get too hot, you’ve … 
  20. Not-selfing Your Selves
     … A sense of self is there inside, focused on the breath, at ease with the breath, having a sense of belonging, a sense of solidity from which it can look at other senses of self and ask the question, “Are they really necessary? Are they really worth the effort that goes into them?” This is also helped by being around people who’ve managed … 
  21. Up for the Challenge
     … Instead of thinking about sensuality, you think about the breath. That’s directed thought. Instead of allowing yourself to get into periods of doubt, you actually experiment: How about trying it this way? How about trying it that way? See the results as they actually appear to you. That’s evaluation. Try to evaluate the breath in a way that gives rise to a … 
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