Search results for: "The Breath"

  1. Page 143
  2. The Dhamma Wheel
     … So right now, we’re developing concentration, focusing on the breath. That’s working on the duty with regard to the fourth noble truth. Everything in the path can be found in the four noble truths and their duties. Simply knowing about the four noble truths—even though we may know them thoroughly and say, yes, it’s true what the Buddha said—is … 
  3. Frame Your Questions Well
     … You focus your attention on the breath, and try to breathe in a way that’s comfortable. Then you try to spread that comfort so that it fills the body, so that your sense of breath fills the body, and your awareness fills the body. You want all of these three things to come together, each filling the others. That’s the world of … 
  4. Into the Light of Consciousness
     … So every bodily movement starts with the breath. As for verbal fabrication, as the Buddha said, before you break into speech, you have to direct your thoughts to a topic and evaluate it. The same with mental fabrication: Before you have any mental intention, there have to be perceptions and feelings on which that intention is based. So we’re seeing these things as … 
  5. Karma & Gratitude
     … What you’re doing right here, being with the breath, even though you may not be seeing all the results you want right away, at least it’s headed in the right direction. We don’t just sit in the present moment. The present moment has an arrow. Time has an arrow. It moves into the future. What you choose to do now will … 
  6. Lessons for New Monks
     … Instead of looking for your pleasures in the senses, you’re going to learn how to look for your pleasure inside because an important principle in restraint of the senses is that you keep mindfulness established in the body—which could include being mindful of the breath—and you’re going to look for your pleasure there, because if you can find a sense … 
  7. Part V : Finding a Teacher
     … It could be clinging, it could be craving, it could be feeling, intention, attention, verbal fabrication, mental fabrication, or bodily fabrication like the breath. When you think about dependent co-arising and all the various ways that suffering and stress can arise in the mind, it’s useful to know that whatever the factor that’s coming or contributing to that, all you have … 
  8. Mature Strategies
     … Find the breath sensations in the body that feel comfortable and stick with them. Allow them to stay there, undisturbed. As that sense of comfort begins to grow, be careful not to get sucked into it too much. Try to maintain your mindfulness and your alertness so that the mind doesn’t start drifting off. That’s one of our problems: We get a … 
  9. Active Truth
     … In the beginning you’re dealing for the most part with individual truths, because sometimes a particular focus or a particular way of conceiving the breath is going to work for one session — in other words, it works for a particular problem — and the next time you sit down and meditate, it doesn’t. That’s because you’ve got a different problem. The … 
  10. Eyes in the Back of Your Head
     … Maintain that steady sense of fullness all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out-, and you notice that it depends how long the breath is. Sometimes if your out-breath is too long, you start squeezing your spot, so that’s not good. As soon as you sense that you’re squeezing it, stop and breathe back in, until … 
  11. Birth Is Suffering
     … We get hands-on experience with bodily fabrication in the breath, verbal fabrication in the way we talk to ourselves, and then mental fabrication—feelings and perceptions—seeing how we put these things together to create a state of concentration. Then, as the concentration deepens, some of them will peel off. That’s how you see that they are distinct. The first one that … 
  12. The Middle Way
     … But then there’s homage through the practice, like we’re doing right now, concentrating the mind on the breath, trying to give rise to right mindfulness, right concentration. This, as the Buddha said, is genuine homage. That’s why he taught to begin with. He didn’t want candles and incense. He wanted to lead others to the same Dhamma that he had … 
  13. The Wheel of Dhamma
     … Try to make the breath as comfortable as you can in some part of the body. Find some part of the body that you can consciously keep relaxed and stay there. And practice just staying there. Whatever ideas come up that will pull you back into the stress or suffering, learn to say No to them. Actually, the stress doesn’t suck you in … 
  14. Restraint
     … The post, the Buddha said, is mindfulness immersed in the body, which means that when you’re meditating, focusing on the breath, you’re not in a different place from where you should be for the rest of the day. This is where you should stay as you get up and leave the meditation and go back to your resting place. Continue meditating as … 
  15. Alone at Death, but Not Lonely
     … So we focus on the breath, we focus on our mind in the present moment, because this is the starting point of so much of our suffering. We want to understand why: what’s causing us to act in ways in the present moment that are causing suffering now and on into the future. After all, it’s our intentions that shape our life … 
  16. The Real Thing
     … You look at the body, look at the breath. Try to get your awareness focused on what’s right here in the present moment to see what’s right here. The Dhamma’s proclaiming itself day-in, day-out, and yet we’re ordinarliy turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to it. When we talk about ignorance: Ignorance is not just a … 
  17. Maybe the Buddha Knew Something
     … At the same time, you have to learn how to develop a sense of ease and well-being around the breath or whatever your topic of concentration is, so that you’ll survive. Look for your pleasure here, and you’ll be more willing to give up the things outside that you may like but are actually going to be a problem for the … 
  18. Limitations
     … He keeps coming up with new ways of thinking about the breath, to deal with the problems that were coming up in his body. And of course, discernment requires imagination. You’ve got a problem, say, with pain. You’ve got a problem with distraction. You’ve got a problem with lust. How can you use your imagination, not in the service of defilements … 
  19. Smoothing It
     … Focusing on the breath energy helps you to erase that line, the idea that your body ends with the earth element. There’s breath around the body as well, and the borders of that breath-body are very ill-defined. So as you’re sitting here meditating, you can think in those terms. You can erase a lot of perceptions you have about the … 
  20. A Meditative Life
     … When you’re alone in this way without a lot of outside input, it’s natural that the mind will tend to stay with the breath more easily. There may be a lot of mental chatter at first, but after a while you get fed up with it. You prefer just to be quiet. At the same time, you get away from the influence … 
  21. Clinging, Addictions, Obsessions
     … You’re actually looking directly into your breath right now; looking into your mind as it relates to the breath so that you can understand it. Figure out this mind that’s so obstreperous. You think it’s you, you think it’s yours, but there’s so much in it that’s going against your best interests. Learn how to be fascinated with … 
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