Search results for: "The Breath"

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  2. Appropriate Attention
     … You’ve got the perception, say, of the breath that holds you here. You’ve got directed thought and evaluation—those are the *saṅkhāras *or fabrications. Then there’s your consciousness of all these things. It’s as if you’ve roped the five aggregates into one place where you can watch them all at the same time. And you’re making good use … 
  3. Ingenuity
     … You look at Ajaan Lee, the way he talked about the breath. In some cases, it was because he actually watched other people do his meditation to see what they did with their breath energies. In some cases, it was a matter of experimenting on his own. He was able to take a teaching and turn it around. For example, there’s a passage … 
  4. Generosity First
     … At the same time, the spaciousness that comes from generosity gives you the right mindset for the concentration practice, gives you the right mindset for insight practice — because when you sit down and focus on the breath, what kind of mind do you have? The mind you’ve been creating through your generous and virtuous actions. A spacious mind, not the narrow mind of … 
  5. Thinking Seriously about Happiness
     … We’re using the body, focused on the breath, as our object of meditation, trying to feel the body, the entire body, from the top of the head down to the tips of the toes, as we’re grounding the mind. So even though the body does have its limitations, it does have its uses as well. It’s just that you have a … 
  6. Open Are the Doors to the Deathless
     … The Buddha himself had found this on the night of his awakening by focusing on the breath, like we’re doing right now. You can breathe in ways that are intensely pleasurable. And, as he said, you can take that sense of pleasure and spread it through the body, together with rapture or refreshment. That way, the mind gets to feed on a healthy … 
  7. The World Is Swept Away
     … Where do you feel the energy moving in the body? That’s the breath we’re talking about. Ask yourself if it feels good. If you’re not sure, you can experiment with different kinds of breathing. Longer, shorter. Heavier, lighter. Faster, slower. Deeper, more shallow. See what feels good for right now: energizing if you’re feeling tired; soothing if you’re feeling … 
  8. Toughen & Tenderize the Mind
     … If the body needs it, you focus on the breath and there it is. Its intensity will change over time, depending on how much wear and tear the body and the mind have been through. But there will come a point when you just have to let it fade away on its own so that the mind can get down to a sense of … 
  9. Stay Principled
     … being aware of the whole body as you breathe in, breathe out; learning how to calm the effects of the breath in the body; how to breathe with a sense of rapture, sense of pleasure. These are the tasks that the Buddha sets for you, but he doesn’t tell you how to do them. For that, you need to use your own powers … 
  10. Days Fly Past
     … So what is your intention right now? Focus on the breath, get the mind to settle down. And in the process of settling down, learn to see what’s going on, to see more and more clearly what you are doing. The whole point of the practice is to get clearer on what it is to act. What does it mean to do something … 
  11. Inner Strength, Inner Wealth
     … You’ve got the form of the body, so you learn how to inhabit it through the breath to develop feelings of pleasure. You hold on to that perception of breath. You think about it in ways that help ease any sense of dis-ease or discomfort in the body. That’s the fabrication. Then there’s consciousness. Start looking at the mind in … 
  12. Contemplation of the Body
     … If you do it wrong and develop a sense of aversion like the monks in the story, then — as the Buddha advised them — go back to the breath. That will help dispel the aversion in the same way that the first rains of the rainy season dispel all the dust that has filled the air during the hot season. But that doesn’t mean … 
  13. Ups & Downs
     … Go back to the beginning and try to be very careful, very perceptive, very precise, in how you focus on the breath. Don’t try to take on too much. Ajaan Lee gives the example of someone who’s planting a new orchard. It’s not a good idea, he says, to clear all the land you’ve got and plant all the land … 
  14. Slowing Down to Look
     … You’re going to stay right here at the breath. You can’t wander off, can’t go anyplace else. And like the elephant with its forest memories and forest desires, the mind is going to stray. But if you treat it right, if you feed the elephant properly, play nice flute music in its ears, after a while it’ll like being next … 
  15. The Sublime Attitudes
     … Mindfulness means keeping something in mind, as when we keep reminding ourselves to stay with the breath as we meditate; alertness means noticing what’s going on, being alert to what you do and to the results of what you’re doing. For mindfulness to be effective in training the mind, it always has to be paired with alertness. And both of them have … 
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