Search results for: "The Breath"

  1. Page 134
  2. An Auspicious Birth
     … So you focus on just holding on to the breath, holding on to your object of concentration, learning how to relate to it in a way that makes it easier to hold on. This kind of attachment is a good attachment. It’s like being thrown overboard in a stormy sea, and you’ve got a plank of wood to hold on to. You … 
  3. A Sense of Yourself
     … As you’re sitting here focusing on the breath, you have to have the confidence that, yes, you can do this and that you really want to do this because you’re concerned about your future. That’s another aspect of conceit. You’re going to be receiving the results of your actions so you want to do them well. But this sense of … 
  4. No One in Charge
     … So learn how to find a spot inside where you’re at ease with the breath and learn how to protect it. Learn how to catch your thoughts as they go running out, or at the very least catch your tendency to follow them. They can go, but you don’t have to go with them. You want a spot where you can see … 
  5. A Mind Like Earth
     … You want to be willing to stay with the breath not only while you’re here, sitting with your eyes closed, but also in all of your activities as continuously as possible. After all, this is a big job we are taking on here, rooting out the mind’s habits of causing suffering for itself and for the people around you. There’s another … 
  6. Good & Bad Meditation
     … How do you breathe in a way that calms the effect of the breath on the body? Are you aware of the whole body when you breathe in and breathe out? After you’ve answered the Buddha’s questions, you can start asking questions of your own. There’s a pain in your legs: How do you breathe so as to minimize the pain … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. Your Actions Are Yours
     … Are you able to maintain a good emotional balance as you work with the meditation and put up with times when the breath is not going well? Do you have the stamina to stick with it until you can try to figure things out? That’s a good sign. If you don’t have that kind of stamina and you just give up and … 
  9. Ready for Death
     … Just sitting here meditating as you want to stay with the breath, other thoughts come up that can wander away and lure you to wander away. You have to say, “No.” You have to learn how to say, “No,” effectively. This is for the sake of your concentration right now, and you’re going to need concentration at that moment, too. As the Buddha … 
  10. Friends with the Dhamma Wheel
     … You can look at all the other things you have to be dispassionate for and deal with them from a solid foundation—the sense of well-being that comes when the mind can settle down and really be absorbed in the breath. It’s only when you’re really solidly here, and those other things begin to fade into the background—all the things … 
  11. Rottweilers in the House
     … sitting right in the way, between you and the breath. That’s how you deal with dangers coming from outside. As for dangers inside, you’ve got to keep careful rein on the Rottweilers in your house, things that would cause trouble for other people. This refers not just to the things that you might say that are nasty and harsh, but also to … 
  12. Lift Up Your Mind
     … You have to hold on to the breath as your main object, but the absorption comes with the sense of rapture and well-being that comes from being with a satisfying way of breathing: That’s integral to the concentration. And it’s in getting the mind concentrated that way that you can see things a lot more clearly. You can’t get the … 
  13. Get Out of Yourself
     … So as you’re sitting here with the meditation, focusing on the breath, if these narratives do come up about how you’re not making progress as fast as you’d like, about how the goal seems far away: Get out of yourself. Think of all the beings in the world and where they’re heading. You, at least, are heading in the right … 
  14. The Mind Isn’t Hot
     … may be sensations of heat in the body, but you don’t have to latch on to them. Other parts of your experience, all these things, seem to infiltrate one another. The breath is in the same place as the heat, it seems. But actually, if you look very carefully, you see that breath sensations are one thing, sensations of heat are something else … 
  15. Commit & Reflect
     … You have one frame of reference, as when you work on the breath right here. You really try to stick with it because when the mind can stay with one object, it’s going to see things a lot more clearly. And it gets nourished at the same time. That helps to keep up the practice. The mind needs its nourishment, so we look … 
  16. Using Right Resolve Rightly
     … Right resolve points in here, right here at the breath and right here at the mind, figuring out how to bring them together: That should be *the *primary principle you use as you go through the day. Of course, there are other issues you have to think about in terms of your chores and your responsibilities, but so much of the mental chatter that … 
  17. Shoulds & Desires
     … Focusing on the breath may seem as if it’s just between you and your breath, and nobody else is involved. But when the mind settles down, it does have an energy. That energy radiates out. And when the mind settles down, it’s a lot less likely to be hungry to act on greed, aversion, and delusion. So again, you’re giving safety … 
  18. Single-minded Determination
     … In the beginning, the intention to stay with the breath, to stay with the meditation, is bound to be weak, and it’s easy to get knocked off course. But as you begin to feel at home here, at ease here, you grow more resistant to getting knocked off because you don’t want to leave what you’ve got. This feels like the … 
  19. Four Determinations in One
     … Then there’s wind, which includes the breath. Same contemplation: There’s no difference between wind in your body and wind outside. So you let that fade from your mind. Then you focus on space: space inside the body, space outside the body—no difference. You let that go; you let it fade from your mind. That leaves pure consciousness. And here the analysis … 
  20. All of a Piece
     … Keep focusing the mind on the breath whether you feel like it or not. At the same time, stay away from distractions whether you want to follow them or not. You have to develop the attitude that your wants and your likes are not reliable, especially when you see that they lead in the wrong direction. You’ve got to learn strategies for saying … 
  21. A Fool for Sensuality
     … Which is why the Buddha said that when unskillful mind states arise in the course of this analysis, go back to the breath. Breathe in a way that’s refreshing. Breathe in a way that gives pleasure. Breathe in a way that gladdens the mind. What you want is to be able to take an objective view of your fantasies, an objective view of … 
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