Search results for: "The Breath"

  1. Page 135
  2. Pull Yourself Up by Your Fetters
     … While you’re sitting here, hold on to the breath. The image that they give in the Forest tradition is of a red ant. They have these big red ants in Thailand that live up in mango trees. If people climb up in a mango tree to get mangoes, the red ants bite them. And they bite hard—so hard that if you try … 
  3. Harmony, Right & Wrong
     … evaluating the breath, evaluating the mind, to see how the body and mind can fit together nicely. What kind of breathing would feel comfortable right now? And the word *comfortable: *What does that mean right now? Sometimes comfortable will mean energizing, sometimes it’ll mean soothing. sometimes it’ll mean relaxing, all depending on the state of the mind, the state of the body … 
  4. Glad to Be Here
     … How you feel the breath from within is something no one else can know. How you’re suffering from within is something no one else can know. The problem is right here, but the solution is right here as well. And this is your territory. Ajaan Suwat would often note the paradox here. We’re told so often about the inconstant, stressful, not-self … 
  5. Look at Yourself
     … And it’s also based on insight—beginning with the insight that if you’re going to solve the problems of suffering and stress, you’ve got to look inside, get the mind to come to concentration, get the mind to the breath, and then get the mind to settle down. There are people who find this easy. All they have to do is … 
  6. A Load of Straw
     … One thing you can do that’s skillful right now is to allow the mind to settle down with the breath. There’s no unfinished business with other people that you’ve got to take care of right now. Your unfinished business is to see how skillful you can be in the way you direct your mind, for if you want true happiness this … 
  7. Disenchantment
     … In other words, bring the directed thought and evaluation to the breath, to create feelings of comfort. You use your perceptions to maintain that sense of comfort. So these elements—the fabrication and intention that we normally bring out of ignorance: We’re now shaping them with knowledge, with awareness, so at the very least we can be clear about what we’re doing … 
  8. The Energy to Be Generous
     … working with the breath so that it feels comfortable and nourishing, energizing. Verbal fabrication: how to think about things in a way that’s more energizing. In other words, when things are difficult, think of it as an opportunity. Here’s your opportunity to show your stuff, that you can be skillful in spite of the fact that there are unskillful people around you … 
  9. Determination
     … to stay with the breath, to stay with the body, or to work on a particular problem that you know you have in the meditation. It’s always good to have a clear idea of what you want to accomplish, because that makes it easier to notice when you’re wandering off and easier to get back on course. You remind yourself that this … 
  10. Equanimity After Victory
     … In the same way, when there’s the sense of ease, well-being, and rapture you feel with the breath, you let it spread throughout the whole body, so that no part of the body isn’t saturated with that sense of ease and well-being. This doesn’t happen on its own. You have to work on it. You have to do battle … 
  11. Karma as an Island
     … This is one of the reasons why we sometimes use a meditation word with the breath: bud—in, dho—out. Buddho means awake. It’s the quality we’re trying to develop here. But the word itself isn’t as important as the quality of mindfulness—that ability to remember, to keep things in mind. This is where your refuge is. The Buddha talks … 
  12. Delight in the Dhamma
     … Get some pleasure out of the breath. Get some pleasure out of concentration. That way, you allay your itch and find a well-being that comes from inside. So learn to delight in that. And finally, the Buddha says to delight in two things that are actually epithets for nibbana. One is “the unafflicted,” the other is “non-objectification”—“unafflicted” in the sense that … 
  13. Memory & Motivation
    When you focus on the breath, you’re trying to stay in the present moment. But the present moment is not an isolated thing. It’s connected with the past, connected with the future. So even though your primary interest is right here, still there are times when it’s useful to think about the past, think about the future. This is to make … 
  14. Don’t Get Discouraged
     … So if you find the mind wandering off from the breath, just keep bringing it back. It wanders off again, bring it back again. Do your best not to get discouraged. Remember, you’ve been training the mind to wander for who-knows-how-many lifetimes. That’s what the word samsara means: It’s the wandering-on. We tend to think of samsara … 
  15. Write It Down in Your Heart
     … the ajaans saying that when you’re meditating while listening to a talk, let the talk have five percent of your attention, but give ninety-five percent of your attention to the breath or whatever your meditation topic is. Their idea is that if something the teacher is saying is actually applicable to what you’re doing right now, it’ll come right into … 
  16. Obsessive Thinking
     … Then there’s the directed approach, in which you actually are thinking specifically about the breath, thinking specifically about whatever your meditation topic is. But that undirected approach: That’s where you use your discernment to peel away your attachments. You may not be able to uproot them entirely, but as long as you can step back from them and stop feeding them—because … 
  17. A Graduated Discourse
     … We do that by training the mind, developing mindfulness, alertness, ardency as we try to stay with the breath, stay with the events in the mind in the present moment. Mindfulness is not just watching things coming and going. It’s remembering what’s skillful and what’s not skillful, so that when you recognize what’s coming up through your alertness, you’ve … 
  18. Straightening the Arrow
     … The perception is the marker that keeps you here with the breath and allows you to remember, that allows mindfulness to remember that this is where you want to stay. Then there are the perceptions of the three characteristics: looking for the inconstancy in things, looking for the stress, seeing them as not-self. When you’re developing concentration, you don’t apply these … 
  19. Seclusion
     … First, though, you’ve to establish a good solid center in here, firmly based in the breath, firmly based in the present moment here in the body. Then you’ve got to learn how to maintain that center in different situations, so that the pull of the world doesn’t pull you away. Actually, it’s not so much the pull of the world … 
  20. Taking Responsibility
     … As you’re working with the breath right now, certain things in the body won’t respond to comfortable breathing. But you’re not going to know where they are until you try to allow the comfortable breath to go throughout the body. First figure out what kind of breathing does feel good right now, and then how you let it spread. You learn … 
  21. Truths of the Will
     … You can watch the breath. It’s got all that physical parts of the body that you can use to meditate on. Nothing is lacking. As for the mental requisites, you’ve got them as well. It’s simply that they haven’t been developed properly. Intention lies at the basis of everything. As the Buddha once said, everything is rooted in desire. Based … 
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