Search results for: "Feelings"
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- Wisdom Requires Integrity… What feels good for the body right now? Nobody else can tell you. You have to notice for yourself. And you have lots of choices. You can try long breathing, short breathing; fast, slow; heavy, light; deep, shallow; and all sorts of combinations of those factors. Play around with the breath. Get on familiar terms with it. You want to be able to stay …
- Relating to Kamma… well-being, a sense of solidity inside, which is a kind of pleasure or happiness that’s very different from the happiness that comes simply from consuming things, consuming experiences, consuming feelings. So learn to use the teaching on kamma, develop a good relationship to it so that you can use it wisely, thinking about the long term, not just what immediate emotion is …
- In Gratitude- Ajaan Suwat… The only way I feel close to them is by following what they taught me. If you had me change from that, then I’d be far away, both in body and mind**. L**ike an uprooted plant, I’d die.” So I’ve held by that principle following Ajaan Suwat’s example. And that’s what’s enabled us to make a place …
- A Mind Like Earth… What in the path asks you to do something you’d be ashamed of? Or something that you wouldn’t feel quite right about? It’s all good stuff, nothing but honorable things that the Buddha is asking us to do. So keep your desire to do the path, to follow the path, strong. Patience is the attitude you have to take toward the …
- No Who or Where… You’ve got the breath coming in, going out—bodily fabrication; the way you talk to yourself—verbal fabrication; perceptions and feelings—mental fabrications. And just leave them there. The question of who’s doing them and where they’re being done—that’s the irrelevant part. The who and the where: Put that aside and just look at the events. Try to put …
- Above the World… Some people feel concerned about this. Is this cutting yourself off from your interconnections? In one way, yes. In one way, no. It’s not that you aren’t aware of things outside you. It’s not that you behave in an irresponsible way. It’s just that you maintain a part of your mind separate: safe and secure. If you let your mind …
- Two Kinds of Defilements… When lust comes, when fear comes, try to keep the breath normal—so that you have a place where you can step back and look at the anger or the fear or the lust or whatever from the outside, without feeling that you have to get pulled in—or that you have to give in to these defilements before you can be rid of …
- Meditating When You’re Sick… But it’s still possible to meditate and to get benefits from the meditation even when you’re not feeling well physically. There’s a story in the Canon about the Buddha suffering from an injury to his foot. Mara came up and taunted him as he was lying there and said, “Are you moping? Are you sad?” And the Buddha said, “No. I …
- The Skills of a Hunter… Without it, we feel starved. So you have to learn how to feed off of the activity of staying centered but with an all-around awareness. And stick with it, because it’s the only way you’re going to get to know your mind. Don’t think that when the hunters are sitting there they’re not thinking about anything at all, or …
- Maintained by Fabrication… They settle in, and then they digest their brain because they feel there’s nothing else they have to think about. They just feed from that point on. The fabrication in that case gets pretty minimal—just feeding without anything else in mind. We can see that that’s a very limited idea of happiness, a limited idea of well-being. Well, the Buddha …
- The Language of the Breath… Which way of breathing feels best for the body right now? As you work with that question, you find yourself getting more and more sensitive to the breath energy in the body. Exactly what does it mean, this “breath energy” in the body? What are the different ways it has of working? You can look at Ajaan Lee’s instructions on breath meditation. He …
- Looking Off to the Side… That’s what makes this an exercise in making you more sensitive, because you see not only what kind of breathing feels better for the body but also exactly how much you can direct the breath and have positive results. Sometimes you find yourself playing with the breath too much and you end up with a headache. You take that as a lesson: The …
- A Matter of Life & Death… When you feel that things are too difficult, you have to stop and consider: Are they really too difficult? Sometimes they are. Or is it simply a matter that you haven’t learned how to depend on your own meditation enough? What can you do to be more dependable? What insights you gain into the way you’re making yourself suffer? After all, this …
- Balancing Effort & Patience… There’s a sutta where the Buddha says even in just your basic experience of form, feeling, perception, and the rest of the aggregates, there’s an intentional element in all of them. So you’ve got to learn how to make those intentions skillful. You can do that only by watching what’s going on, and experimenting with the way your mind is …
- Noble Ardency… He’d simply ask them, “What does it feel like?” and get them to describe it in their own terms. Then he’d give some suggestions, and the suggestions would basically come down to this: “Look for any unnecessary stress there.” So the question when you gain concentration isn’t what level it is. The question is, what are you going to do with …
- The Brightness of Life… And when you think of the whole body breathing, it’s a lot easier for those feelings and sensations to flow. This is where you bring the luminosity of the mind to bear: You watch what you’re doing and you figure out what’s skillful and what’s not, what’s getting good results and what’s not. You want to bring that …
- Circumspection… May all beings be free from oppression.” And we work on our attitude to make sure that we really do sincerely feel that—not that you have to love all beings, but you wish them well. There are a lot of people out there who are hard to love for one reason or another, but you want to make sure you don’t wish …
- Virtues & Values… At the very least, when you’re sitting here in a group like this, it’s hard to get up and give up on the meditation, saying, “I don’t feel like it tonight. I’m tired. It doesn’t matter if I stop early.” It’s hard to do that when other people are sitting around you. But at the same time, you …
- Encouragement… Now, the displeasing things were not just to put people down or to make them feel bad. They were meant to alert them that something they were doing was very wrong. If they themselves didn’t heed the warning, maybe the people who were listening in would. So, when thoughts come up in the mind as you’re sitting here meditating, for the time …
- Four Virtues… Some of the people got upset, feeling that he didn’t respect them as lay meditators, that he was giving them a lowly practice, insinuating that they weren’t prepared for any higher practice. That wasn’t the case at all. The practice of virtue, observing the precepts, is an important part of developing the mind. If you have a narrow idea that meditation …
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