Search results for: "Feeling"
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- Test Everything… So he can’t simply tell us what to do and have us feel obligated to do it because he created us. But he does present himself as an expert. He’s gone through many paths. He’s explored lots of paths. And he can remember them all. He can see which path works and which paths don’t. So he’s willing to …
- Mind Control… this awareness that suffuses the body, allows the energy in the mind to move in ways that feel right. You allow this healing awareness to have the space it needs to do the healing work it needs to do. You make this your home base. Our minds, for most part, keep traveling around in their thoughts but without any home base. Here you’ve …
- To Excel… If you feel that there’s no competition, after a while it’s easy to get lazy, and laziness, of course, is one of the defilements. You say, “I can do this at my own pace; I’ll do enough to get by.” But how much is enough to get by, and how are you defining “getting by”? If it’s enough not to …
- Patience & Hope… All too often we don’t know how to use these teachings, which is why we feel uncomfortable around them, but if you learn how to use them, you find that they’re really good tools. Just try to use them with skill.
- Two Kinds of Cross-Questioning… We focus on the breath, learn to be sensitive to when it’s long, when it’s short, and how it feels when it’s long and it’s short, to see which feels better. Then you can try working with deep and shallow, heavy or light, focusing the breath energy in different parts of the body. There’s lots to play with here …
- Worry vs. Heedfulness… Try to breathe in a way that feels good. And try to stay with the breath all the way in, all the way out, each time you breathe in, each time you breathe out. What often happens, though, is that you stay with the breath a couple of times, and then another thought comes in and it seems more interesting, more important, and you …
- Freedom Through Painful Practice… Which parts of the mind would actually be lighter? Which parts of the mind would actually feel less burdened? Even the things around which you create a very strong sense of your goodness as a person: It’s good to imagine them gone. Then, of course, there’s the body. A lot of people say they’re not attached to their body, so they …
- Heedful of Ruts in the Mind… There’s always the feeling that “Well, if we get into trouble, there will be people to help.” But there do come times in life, especially toward the end, when you get more and more cut off from what anyone can do for you. If your hearing goes, if your eyesight goes, you’re totally on your own. If your mindfulness and alertness haven …
- Desert Island Meditation… Or feelings in and of themselves, the mind in an of itself, mental qualities in and of themselves: That’s our island. And what are you going to take on that island? Hopefully, things that don’t clutter it up, things that don’t weigh your island down and make it sink. A good way to phrase the question is, “What kind of mind …
- Normalcy… When you can develop a sense of shame or a sense of compunction around that—that you’d be really embarrassed to break a precept over that kind of thing, or you just have a sense of distaste, you feel conscience-stricken at breaking a precept over that kind of thing—your discernment has helped to protect your virtue. The same when you’re …
- The Arrow in the Heart… All he could feel was samvega. Then he asked himself, “Where is the source of this problem?” It wasn’t that we should have more water. The problem came because there was an arrow in the heart, the arrow that keeps pointing forward, pointing forward, for further becoming, and stabbing us at the same time. That’s what we’ve got to pull out …
- The Desire to Do Well… Then when you do see that you made a mistake, either you don’t admit it or you feel very embarrassed, and the embarrassment gets in the way of the right attitude for learning. Now, there is such a thing as a healthy sense of shame. But if your desire is strong enough that you really do want to get the results, you really …
- Progress & Regress… You feel sorry for them. You say, If only they didn’t get nervous, they’d be a great pianist or a great sports person. Or when someone loses, say, a sports contest because they got nervous and flubbed things, the question always comes up: Who really was actually the better of the two sports people? That ignores the fact that an important part …
- Patience… When it feels really strong and really tempting, remember that it seems strong only for a little while, and all you have to do is be patient. See your patience as a power. The Buddha called it the ultimate *tapas, *the ultimate internal fire. The trick to patience is that no matter what happens, don’t think about how long you have to withstand …
- Being Somebody, Going Somewhere… You feel that it’s wrong, and you don’t want those results. And there’s atappa: ardency, when you do your best to develop what’s skillful and let go of what’s unskillful. These qualities work together. We need them in order to practice the precepts, to develop the mind in concentration, to develop our discernment, because we have to be conscious …
- Training Your Minds… Whereas when you’re working with the breath, even if concentration isn’t really great, at least you can say, “I’m at least working with getting acquainted with the body, how the body feels from within. Getting the breath energy to flow a little bit better should at least be good for my health.” In other words, at first you’re not here …
- A Unified Committee… It’s registering your body, how things feel in the different parts of the body, the signals that are being sent from lots of nerve endings. On top of that, there are other parts of the brain. One part is devoted to the breath right now, other parts have nothing to do, so they start wandering off to the past, wandering off to the …
- What Should I Do?… As the Buddha would say, “Exert a fabrication.” Change the way you breathe, change the way you talk to yourself, change the perceptions you’re holding in mind, and the feelings you’re focused on—to get rid of unskillful qualities and bring skillful qualities more to the fore. Equanimity is when you look at it to see how things are going. Notice that …
- Alone & with Others… That way, you create some order in your life that’s beyond just what you feel like doing. Which is important, because often when you’re off alone, your moods take over and you can get into some pretty strange feedback loops. So a clear schedule can help get you out. When you’re living with other people, he said to try to make …
- Neither Here nor There… It could be the tip of the nose—any place in the body that you feel comfortable staying centered. And even though we try to develop a full-body awareness as we get deeper into concentration, we need an anchoring point, both to maintain the concentration—to keep it strong—and to give us something to study—what it means to be gathered around …
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