Search results for: "Feelings"
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- 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 …
- Images for Right Effort… the way you breathe, the way you talk to yourself, and the images and feelings you hold in mind. If you just hold an image of the lute in mind, sometimes your defilements can laugh at you as you say, “I’ll put in a middling amount of effort—not too much, not too little.” But some of the defilements you need to counteract …
- Look after Your Baby… Talk yourself into feeling that you are competent to do this. To bolster your concentration, think of those four other strengths: conviction, persistence, mindfulness, and discernment. If the concentration is weak, you have to strengthen those as well, and the concentration will become stronger along with them. Then the little bits and pieces of concentration begin to connect. Not that they flow on their …
- Goodwill Is Respect… So we’re converting it to our purposes, and sometimes we end up feeling really tired. You may not have done much physically in the course of the day, but your mental activity has been wearing out the breath energy because you’re not giving it full room in your body. So give it the whole body. The whole body can breathe in, the …
- Enthusiasm… Often this will happen when your energy level is down, and you least feel like working with the problem, but that’s when you’ve got to give yourself encouragement to get your energy back up. We’re all adults by now. We should have some experience in knowing how to motivate ourselves and keep the motivation going. Wherever you’ve learned that particular …
- Unlearning Unskillful Behavior… If you can’t get certain parts of the body to feel comfortable, then you can’t really spread your awareness. There are bound to be times when sections of the body just don’t respond. Allowing your awareness to spread, being conscious of the awareness that’s already there, can actually help you overcome the problem. But if you tie your hands and …
- Expert’s Mind… The reference points could be the body, feelings, mind states themselves, or individual mental qualities. But we start with the body. This is why we focus on the breath. Of the different aspects of the body, the breath is closest to the mind. It’s most sensitive to the movements of the mind and it in turn exerts a positive or a negative influence …
- Count Yourself Lucky… All too often we tend to identify with them, “This is the real me, this is how I really think about things.” Well, again, if everything is fabricated, the question is, what is the real you in there? It’s one of the feelings coming up in the present moment that you’ve happened to focus on. We’re not asking you to deny …
- Commit & Reflect… Look at the way you breathe, look at the way you talk to yourself, look at the images you hold in mind, the feelings you focus on. How can you work with these things to undercut the mind’s desire to go with those unskillful habits? In other words, you really do have to put forth an effort. There are very few images in …
- Using Right Resolve Rightly… In other words, you use your directed thought and evaluation to get the mind snugly with the object—like one of those wooden Chinese puzzles where the pieces of wood are fit together very nicely, very precisely—so that it feels just right to be here. Then you drop all that other thinking and maintain that sense of just-rightness. There will be a …
- Sober Up… You have to look at the way you’re breathing, you have to look at the way you’re talking to yourself, you have to look at the perceptions you hold in mind and the feelings you focus on. You have to see where they’ve been kidnapped by your defilements, and where you’ve got to exert yourself to get them back. The …
- Balanced Concentration… So bringing the mind into the present moment and getting it to stay here is not just a matter of feeling comfortable and at ease with the object. That is one essential elements, but also it requires understanding what the mind does, how the mind moves out, how the mind moves back in, why it moves. So regardless of whatever issues you have in …
- Open Door Meditation… All too often we feel that because it’s not really meditation time, it’s kind of quasi meditation time, we don’t have to be as strict with ourselves. But again think about the refrigerator. If you’re going to keep things cold in the refrigerator when the door is open you’ve got to generate a lot of cold. Which means that …
- This Fathom-Long Body… So if you want to understand the movements of the mind, if you want to understand how the mind creates a sense of self, how it can begin to let go of that sense of self, or to stop creating it, first by creating more skillful feelings of self until you can get them more and more refined, until finally you can let it …
- Learn from Your Mistakes… The mistake itself is something that’s worthy of saying, “Yes, I should be ashamed of that.” But the shame you feel should be a healthy shame. It’s the opposite of shamelessness, not the opposite of pride. Finding the right balance there is a skill. Say you’ve made a mistake: You told a lie, you killed an animal, you broke the precepts …
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