Search results for: "The Breath"

  1. Page 142
  2. Joy in Getting It Right
     … Which is why an important part of the meditation is not simply sitting here, knowing how to stay with the breath, but living a life of being generous, being virtuous, and developing goodwill for all beings—perfecting these good habits as skills. In other words, you want to get it right, because after all, you’re going to be trying to develop a path … 
  3. The Triple Training
     … You want to be right here, right where the body and the mind meet at the breath. You learn how to make that your default mode. This is where you’re concentrated. This is your home. So if you find yourself slipping away from this, try to bring yourself back. It is possible to stay focused, centered inside, as you go through the day … 
  4. Gratitude, Goodwill & Generosity
     … So if you find yourself having trouble sticking with the breath, look back and think, “What issues are preventing you from settling down?” There are skillful ways of learning how to counteract those thoughts. We often read the texts that right view consists of seeing things in terms of the four noble truths, but there’s a more preliminary form of right view that … 
  5. Approaching the four noble truths
     … The activity of talking to yourself about the breath reaches a point where it’s unnecessary, so you drop it. You reflect on the fact that “I’m doing this and it’s not necessary.” Drop it. You find that as the mind stays really solidly still, it begins to shed, shed, shed different activities. And you see that because you notice that certain … 
  6. Admirable Friendship, Inside & Out
     … Even in the refined states of concentration, we’re not there just to bliss out, say, on emptiness or space or the quality of the breath. We want to see very clearly: When you do this, when you hold this perception in mind, when you focus in this way, what are the results you’re getting? If you change the focus, change the perception … 
  7. The Possibility of Letting Go
     … Get the mind solidly with the breath so that it has a sense of feeling okay, safe right here in the present moment, not threatened by things, not threatened by the idea of letting go. Then test that. You get to know your mind really well this way. See the ways in which it’s creating unnecessary stories, unnecessary things to weigh you down … 
  8. Imagining Freedom
     … This is why we work with the breath to give us a sense of ease and comfort, a feeling that we belong in our own skin, we belong in our bodies. We know that we have a safe place to go. Then you can turn around and look at the pain and not be afraid of it. You don’t have to run away … 
  9. Ego
     … When you think about the ease and wellbeing that come from just being able to breathe skillfully, breathe with awareness, fill your body with a sense of wellbeing, you can take advantage of the potential of that sense of wellbeing and learn how to use the breath to move it along. In other words, let it develop. Give it some space. You can then … 
  10. Complaining Rights
     … So you focus on the breath, try to make breath as smooth as silk, so that it feels good coming in, feels good going out, and there are not a lot of bumps or distractions, so that the mind can get used to being with something smooth and continuous—and so that it can get used to being smooth and continuous itself. It’s … 
  11. Changing Your Mind
     … Working with the breath and your concentration makes you realize that, yes, a great deal of pleasure can be found here. But that’s just a tool for luring the mind into the present moment so that it gets more and more used to being still. It’s not tensed up, ready to jump, and that way, the sense of stillness in your mind … 
  12. Right Effort
     … It’s the work of the directed thought and evaluation, evaluating the breath so that it can give rise to a sense of ease at least in some spot of the body, and then being able to work that sense of ease and fullness throughout the whole body. That requires that you understand the process of breathing, you understand how you relate to feelings … 
  13. Sensuality
     … We focus on the breath, we focus on the internal sense of the body, we’re aware of the different elements in the body, we learn how to bring them into balance. This can give rise to a very strong sense of pleasure, a very nourishing sense of pleasure that causes no harm. And this knowledge of the elements of the body will also … 
  14. Right Action
     … You’ve got the breath. You can develop that. You’ve got good mental states. Develop those. Develop your own resources. You’ll find that you’ve got all the inner wealth you need, so you don’t need to steal anything from anybody else, good or bad. As for the precept against illicit sensuality, this relates to sensual desires. You don’t want … 
  15. The Not-Self Discourse
     … You try to develop a perception of the breath that gives rise to concentration, and it’ll last for a while, but then it’ll change; and so on through the aggregates. Learn to keep looking at this again and again and again until you’ve finally decided you’ve had enough. And that state of enough is not a dead weariness. It comes … 
  16. Insight Is a Judgment Call
     … Right concentration is where you get to use pleasure in a skillful way, a pleasure you gain while staying focused on the breath. But at the same time, you learn an important lesson about pleasure: that if you go running after the pleasure, you’re going to lose the cause. So you stick with the cause and enable the pleasure to develop on its … 
  17. Faith in Karma
     … After all, what are you doing as you meditate? You’re making up your mind you’ll do something—you’re going to focus on the breath. And then you want to make sure that no other intention comes in to divert you from where you really want to be, what you really want to do. And so you have to become more and … 
  18. A Slave to Craving
     … Now, that could mean focusing on the breath, it could mean going through those 32 parts of the body, realizing you’ve got this human birth, you’ve got this human body, what are you going to do with it? Are you going to let it be a tool for your sensuality, or are you going to learn to look at what you’ve … 
  19. Everything You Need
     … We focus on the breath for our concentration. We use the body as we practice virtue, as we practice generosity. And for those purposes, it’s useful to think of it as yours. But then the body has its illnesses. It grows old. It’s going to die at some point. You’ve got to learn how to put it aside, put it down … 
  20. The Good Fight
     … If you’re very attentive to how the breathing works, you can figure out a way to breathe that feels really solid and nourishing. You’ve got a sense of well-being you can tap into at any time. A lot of the hunger to take more than you really need from the Earth, or more than you really need from the people around … 
  21. Antidotes
     … That’s one of the reasons why we train the mind to be with the breath—so that it can sit there and not take sides prematurely. Just as when you sit here and a thought comes into the mind you learn not to run with it, you’ve got to learn to use this skill in other areas, other parts of your life … 
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