Search results for: "Feelings"

  1. Page 145
  2. Truths of the Will
     … Now you may look at your life and feel that your circumstances are not conducive enough. That’s when you may decide that you have to change the circumstances of your life. But the basic conditions you need are the two I mentioned just now. Learn to associate with people who believe, one, in the importance of developing skillful qualities and, two, in your … 
  3. Insight Is a Judgment Call
     … For some reason, we seem to think that when we’re feeling lust we become attractive, but when you see other people doing that, you realize how ridiculous it is. This is where it’s good to look at other people’s thinking and emotions as they show them, and say, “It’s pretty ridiculous.” Then turn around and say, “Well, I’ve got … 
  4. The Choice Not to Suffer
     … Those patterns of tension often become the burden that the mind actually feels. One of the Buddha’s insights is that pain comes in two forms. One is pain in the three characteristics: the fact that there is stress simply because things are put together and fabricated—and that’s everywhere. But the stress that weighs down the mind is a different kind of … 
  5. Knowledge over Fear
     … But it’s because she can read them that she feels comfortable with them. She has trouble reading human beings. This just goes to show that people’s fears can be very different, but a lot of them have to do with what you don’t know. We had someone here years back who was afraid to stay in the tent out in the … 
  6. Respect for the Mind
     … Adjust the breath so that it feels comfortable coming in, going out. Place your mind there, both with the breath and with the sense of ease that comes from breathing comfortably. Spend a lot of time with the breath so that you get to know it well, seeing what kind of breathing is good for the body, what kind of breathing is not; what … 
  7. Guardian Meditations, Right & Wrong
     … So we think about the unattractive side of the body whenever we feel tempted to get attached to the body, either our own body or to the bodies of other people. There’s not much there. Remembering that this negative side to the body is universal: That’s what it means to have a healthy negative image. The unhealthy negative image is one that … 
  8. Chickens from Hell
     … And equanimity is the feeling you have when everything is satisfied. The different parts of the body that have been lacking energy now have their energy supplied, so you don’t have to keep gobbling things down. So try to tune-in to a sense of well-being. Notice how you breathe and which parts of the body are especially sensitive to the breathing … 
  9. All About Change
     … If you see that your attachments are unskillful, try to see their drawbacks so that you really feel that the attachment is not worth it. At the same time, you provide yourself with something good to hold on to. Otherwise, no matter how much you may let go, you just grab hold again. It’s like climbing a ladder. If you have only one … 
  10. The Whole Elephant
     … So take heart in the fact that, however blind you may feel around the path, blindness can be cured. This is what the noble eightfold path is all about. If you develop right view all the way through right concentration, these qualities enable you to see more clearly. And here, again, think about that interpretation of the story of the elephant. If you say … 
  11. Up for the Challenge
     … First, you should try to comprehend suffering, which means seeing that suffering is in the act of clinging to form, feeling, perceptions, thought fabrications, consciousness. You want to see yourself suffering in the act of clinging itself. Sometimes we’re told that we suffer because we cling to impermanent things. But it’s possible to cling even to permanent things and still suffer. You … 
  12. The Body Doesn’t Care
     … Then you see how your perceptions and feelings around the breath, as the Buddha says, fabricate the mind. And the way you talk to yourself as you remind yourself of these instructions is going to fabricate the way you experience both body and mind. So these processes of fabrication are what you’re getting to know. And when you see the processes of fabrication … 
  13. Skills of the Dhamma Wheel
     … When the Buddha places attention in the series of conditions in dependent co-arising, it’s under the category of “name,” mixed up with contact and intention and perception and feeling, and all of these factors have fabrication underlying them. So there’s a lot going on even when you think you’re just giving bare attention to something. One of your tasks as … 
  14. Purity
     … Oftentimes, we feel our lives are shaped by the events that happen around us, the things that other people do. And to an extent, that’s true. But the important factor is what you do with the events that are presented to you. It’s like being dealt a hand of cards in a card game. You don’t have much control over which … 
  15. Admirable in the Beginning, Middle, & End
     … Breathing in a way that allows you to see how your perceptions and your feelings are having an impact on the mind, and learning how to calm that impact. Energizing the mind when it needs to be energized, steadying it when it needs to be steadied, releasing it from its burdens when it needs to be released. You do all this by developing that … 
  16. Cook Your Mind
     … the way you breathe, the way you talk to yourself, your perceptions and feelings. Those are aggregates. You get hands-on practice in using those aggregates to develop skillful thoughts, to calm the mind down, to create a state of concentration. Then when the mind is in concentration, you begin to see the aggregates even more clearly—and you can see that they really … 
  17. Negotiating with the Committee
     … So it’s hard to really call them skills, but there was one point in your path where you got results from them, so you tend to keep those particular identities in your menagerie and bring them out whenever you feel like it. And because a lot of this stuff goes on in a very unskillful way, we don’t like to admit to … 
  18. Admirable Friendship
     … Your feelings are fabricated. The voices in your mind are fabricated. It’s just that some are more habitual than others, and it’s very easy to fall into the groove and the ruts of old habits. Then if you’re not careful, they can be like the ruts that develop in snow in the winter. If the car that went before you went … 
  19. The Noble Truth of Suffering
     … So the Buddha is saying something pretty counter-intuitive—that we suffer because of the things that we cling to, the things that we feel desire for. A lot of people don’t like to hear that, but he’s saying that if you take a noble attitude toward these things, you can separate yourself from the suffering. You really look at the things … 
  20. A Foundation for Restraint
     … A huge part of your brain is devoted to keeping track of how things feel in the body, especially in the digestive tract, and in other parts as well. And it’s a big concern. But you want to learn how to make it not such a big concern, so that it doesn’t take up so much of your mind. The question then … 
  21. The Stairway Up
     … And you do this not by thinking about the ideal of balance, but by gaining an intuitive feel for it by poking at this, poking at that, leaning this way, leaning that. Whatever the attitude that’s coming up in the mind — the discouragement, the frustration, the irritation, whatever — you poke at it. You don’t necessarily have to believe it. And whatever positive … 
  22. Load next page...