Search results for: "Feelings"
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- Universal Truths… And there’s no way you can compare your suffering to anyone else’s, to see who’s suffering more, exactly what it tastes like, or what it feels like. But it is something you can know for yourself. So you should pay attention to it. What this means is that the four noble truths are not some abstract teaching whose truth is peculiar …
- Admirable Friendship… how you deal with sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations; how you deal with thoughts, feelings, and perceptions; even how you deal with the act of consciousness. All these things are a matter of skill. This is why the Buddha didn’t present himself as a savior. He was a teacher. He pointed out the way. Part of his pointing out the way …
- The Focus on Suffering… And we ignore the big thing that we do have the power to change, which is how we react to feelings of pleasure and pain, and how craving builds on top of that. From our craving, we create all kinds of thought-constructs and ideas that lead to suffering. That’s what we’ve got to look at. Just learning to focus there: That …
- Defilements Are Real… Greed comes in, we assume that it’s our greed, it’s the way we feel about that particular object we want and it’s our wanting. The same with anger: We’re angry. Delusion sneaks up on us and doesn’t even let us know it’s there, but it’s there, and we identify with whatever deluded ideas it may bring. This …
- Maintaining Stillness… When the mind goes running out after an object, you actually feel it as a current coming out of the body. Sometimes it comes right out of the heart area. It runs here, it runs there, and normally we just run along with it. But when you have this foundation and you’re learning how to maintain it in all situations, there will have …
- Right Resolve & Right Speech… As for harsh speech, its motivation is basically to hurt somebody’s feelings. And, again, the Buddha does admit that there are times when you have to speak in unpleasing ways, but you really have to be very careful about time and place: when it will be effective, when it will not be effective—“effective” here meaning that you want your listeners to become …
- The Buddha’s Map… a lump. Bubbles come through it, turning the lump into foam, and the lump of foam can travel down the river quite a ways. But there’s nothing there, no substance. Feelings are like the little circles that appear on the surface of water when rain drops hit the water. They appear and they’re gone. Perceptions are like mirages. Fabrications are like a …
- Goal Orientation… He would feel satisfaction but not be overwhelmed with satisfaction. He was able to stay untroubled, mindful, alert. But there would be times when he would teach and people would not listen, or they would listen but disagree and not benefit from the teaching. But that didn’t stop him from teaching. He said he was sensitive to dissatisfaction but didn’t let it …
- Representing the World to Itself… But there are others who feel the suffering that they’re causing themselves. And they’re more willing to change. The problem is that these worlds are pretty hermetically sealed. You can’t look into someone else’s world to see how it differs from yours. If we’re satisfied with how we manage the world, then it’s going to be very hard …
- The Carrot & the Stick… It’s possible.” Now, what would that be like? What would it feel like if you were actually breathing in and out through every pore? You notice that just the thought changes the way you breathe. That means you’ve uncovered a perception or a particular mental picture that you didn’t realize was there, by challenging it. There are lots of ways to …
- Saying No to Distraction… So you work with the breath; you work with your perceptions of the breath, keeping track of body—in other words, the breath itself and its relationship to the body—the feelings that arise, and the mental state that’s watching over this. You want to bring those three things together. And get interested in this. This is a big problem that a lot …
- How the Dhamma Protects… The reason the mind is attached is because it feels that its happiness has to depend on these things, and that if it were forced to leave them, it would be miserable. Well, as long as you think that, you’re going to force yourself to be miserable, because you have to leave these things. Sometimes gradually, sometimes suddenly. But if you can begin …
- In Search of What is Skillful… This is in line with the passage in the Canon where you’re spreading feelings of rapture and pleasure throughout the body. And of course you’re directing your thoughts to the breath, to the state of the mind, as you evaluate them. So this engages ardency, alertness, mindfulness, all together. And as long as you have to think about the breath so that …
- Random Word Generators… And, of course, in treating this problem, you begin to realize, as the Buddha said, how qualities like feelings and perceptions and fabrications really do depend both on contact and on attention. If you give attention to these things, they’re going to grow. If you don’t give attention, they don’t grow. But they may have some momentum from all the past …
- Acceptance… If the mind won’t stay with the breath, is there something wrong with the breath? How about the mind? Is it carrying around some moods from the day? What can you do to put those moods aside? You can change the way you think, you can change the way you breathe, you can change the feelings and perceptions you focus on and hold …
- Bringing Right resolve… There’s a large part of society that gets into our own psychological makeup, saying, “You’ve got deny yourself happiness for the sake of other people.” It gets so ingrained that we feel embarrassed about wishing ourselves well. Other people, of course, totally resist that message from society. All they can think about is gratifying any little desire that comes up. Both attitudes …
- Bad Stuff Happens… That’s when it’s very easy to say, “Well, this is getting boring,” or “Nothing’s happening,” or “I need some entertainment.” But when you can drench the body in a sense of well-being and the mind feels refreshed, you’re a lot less likely to go with whatever the excuse is, a lot less likely to believe it. So we work …
- For When the World Can’t Help You… Breathe in, breathe out in a way that feels good all the way through the body, because there will be those tendencies that will run out after the world again, and you need something to counterbalance the forces that point outside, outside, outside all the time. You want something that points inside instead, because if you want to get some control over the mind …
- Bare Attention… So you can’t just go on good intentions alone, or on a nice fuzzy warm feeling about people. You have to be responsible to see what works and what doesn’t work in putting an end to the causes of suffering: When is it better to be quiet; when is it better to be more proactive? The four noble truths provide the framework …
- Investigative Work… Who’s making this suffering? Feelings, perceptions, thought-constructs—they’re not making the suffering. It’s the clinging. When you can separate that out, then the aggregates are freed, and you’re freed from them. Ajaan Lee makes this point: He talks about the different consciousnesses in your body. When you learning how to stop laying claim to them, you have your freedom …
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