Search results for: "Feeling"

  1. Page 133
  2. Training the Whole Mind
     … After all, the big issue is how you relate to yourself, how you relate to the body, how you relate to feelings, perceptions, thought-fabrications, and consciousness. That’s the area where you’re causing yourself suffering, so that’s the area where you’ve got to gain sensitivity and insight. Nobody else can get into your head and straighten these things out for … 
  3. Bowing & Chanting
     … What feels good? You get to choose. What do you want to do with the breath? You get to choose. What do you do to get the best results out of it, so that there’s a sense of fullness, a sense of ease, pleasure, simply through the way you breathe. How do you do that? You get to explore. So, you’re not … 
  4. Mindfulness of Death
     … You engage in skillful mental fabrication, i.e., you choose the right feelings to focus on, to whatever extent you can create a sense of well-being. If not in the body, try to create it in the mind. Focus there. Whatever perceptions are going to be helpful, you focus there. Keep in mind the perception that you’re making some important choices, so … 
  5. Abandoning Effluents (1)
     … This is why, as we meditate, we’re focused on the process of fabrication—the breath coming in and going out, the way we talk to ourselves, the images we hold in mind, the feelings we focus on—because these fabrications are things that we’re doing. In our practice leading up to meditation, we don’t spend all that much time talking about … 
  6. What Is Skillful?
     … You dig down into the causes of dependent co-arising and you find the Buddha talks about fabrication, he talks about perceptions and feelings. He talks about the way you talk to yourself. He talks even about the way you breathe. So you dig down into your intentions and you come back to right where we are, right here, right now: the way you … 
  7. A Sense of Adventure
     … But he had reached a point in his life where he realized that if he didn’t at least try it, he would feel that his life had been wasted. And so for him it was a huge experiment. There was a lot of risk and a lot of uncertainty. And yet he was willing to take the risk and to face the uncertainty … 
  8. The Logic of Not-self
     … form, feeling, perceptions, thought constructs, and consciousness, all of which are impermanent. Then there’s the conclusion, “Therefore, you don’t have a self.” It’s worth noting that the Buddha himself never used this argument. It started later in the commentaries. After all, he noted that many different versions of self were taught in his time, and not all of them were permanent … 
  9. True Values
     … Now, when people feel alienated like that, it’s very easy to go into despair, which is why we need an alternative set of values to remind us that there are actually good things in life, worthwhile things in life. And they’re worth putting forth an effort to gain. One of the strange features of American society is what used to be called … 
  10. The Door of the Cage
     … So when the Buddha comes and analyzes why we’re suffering, saying that it’s because we want the wrong things—we cling to wrong views about the world, to a wrong sense of what we should be doing in the world, and to a wrong sense about ourselves, and that we should let go of these things we cling to—we feel that … 
  11. One Thing Clear Through
     … When you feel you have enough to share, there’s a sense of wealth—not the wealth of material things, but just the sense of more than enough: That’s wealth. There are a lot of people who have a lot of things but they don’t have a sense of enough—and they’re poor. So you try to develop this attitude of … 
  12. A Mirror for the Mind
     … The only issue in the body right now is how it feels from within. And you want to inhabit it from within. Give the mind a good place to stay right here so that it’s not wandering around outside like an orphan. It’s got a home, a comfortable home, and it’s in charge. When the Buddha says that there’s no … 
  13. The Problem Is Birth
     … Notice that when he was asked, “What happens when a being goes from one body to another?” he didn’t say, “There’s no such thing as a being.” He said that wherever there’s attachment to the aggregates—form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, consciousness—there is a being. It’s in taking on that identity as a being: That’s why we keep on … 
  14. The Energy You Broadcast
     … I want to get involved with the happiness of form, the body as I feel it from within.” Try to keep that particular current as consistent as you can, and the mind can’t help but get into concentration. So keep your determination strong. Keep the quality of your determination as consistently wise, discerning, compassionate, and benevolent as you can. That way, you protect … 
  15. The Pursuit of Happiness & Goodness
     … In other words, you’ve secluded your mind from unskillful states, and you’re just here with the body as you feel it from within. This requires mindfulness, ardency, alertness—all the qualities you need to develop a skill. That right there makes you a different person. Because when you develop a skill, you have to develop patience, you have to have a clear … 
  16. Mindful All the Way
     … If you feel any tension or tightness in those parts of the body, allow it to relax. Go up your arms to your shoulders and then start again at your toes. Work up through your feet, ankles, legs, pelvis, up the spine, one vertebra at a time. Up through the neck, up into the skull. In other words, as the mind settles down, give … 
  17. Protection Through Mindfulness
     … Or that person did something really awful, that’s worthy of my will.” Sometimes we don’t even think about our ill will as ill will—we just go for the feeling and we side with it, we take it on, we identify ourselves with it. The image of the gatekeeper is to remind you that you have to keep asking yourself: What’s … 
  18. Learn from Your Mistakes
     … Otherwise, you feel that you as a person are blotted out by the mistakes and so in order to maintain your identity you blot the mistakes out. Or you get tied up in regret about all the many years you’ve wasted over a mistake, because sometimes mistakes do take up a lot of your life. Think about the Buddha: six years of austerities … 
  19. Against the Grain
     … Whatever work they put into getting that concentration, they feel that’s plenty work enough. As for the ease they’ve found, they don’t want to be told that there’s anything better. So it’s a cautionary tale. When you gain some ease in the meditation, when you gain a sense of well-being, don’t rest satisfied. If you really want … 
  20. Noble Contentment, Noble Discontent
     … When the breath is not going well, when it feels uncomfortable, laborious, strained, you watch it for a while, but not so that you just sit with it. You watch it so that you can try to figure it out and then improve it. “What is it about the breath that’s uncomfortable? Why is it uncomfortable? Is it the way I’m holding … 
  21. Like Earth and Space
     … It’s an amazing paradox that space should feel so grounding. There’s no place to land, no place to be established, but it’s a more calming state of mind, a more calming perception. The Buddha uses it, too, as an image for goodwill. He says people can try to write things on space, but the letters don’t stick. In the same … 
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