Search results for: "Feelings"

  1. Page 152
  2. Who Are You Trying to Please?
     … As you look for happiness that’s really long-term, you inevitably find that it has to be a happiness that doesn’t harm anybody else, partly because it just doesn’t feel right harming other people, and secondly, because on a purely pragmatic basis, long-term happiness can last only if it’s not harming anyone else. That blurs the distinction between your … 
  3. Why the Breath
     … They do this partly because of the familiarity—they feel better doing something they’re familiar with—and partly because they haven’t really examined what they’re doing, and what the results are, and how they might be improved. We’ve talked many times about the Buddha’s instructions to his son Rahula: Before you do something, look at your intention and ask … 
  4. Perfection in an Imperfect World
     … This is what happens when you push yourself a little bit more than you would feel comfortable with. You stick with it, stick with it, stick with it, and if you look for it, you’re going to find something in there—a resource you didn’t realize you had. So learn to perceive the fact that you have more inside of you than … 
  5. Your Highest Aspiration
     … If you look at these things carefully, you begin to realize that the drawbacks way outweigh the advantages, especially when you’re coming from a feeling of fullness, well-being. The simple stress that comes from that craving and clinging becomes more and more apparent. You come to realize that it’s not really necessary. We used to think that to be happy we … 
  6. Examine Your Happiness
     … You focus instead on the fact that some aspects of form, feeling, perception, mental fabrication, and consciousness are actually pleasant, and you want to pursue them for that pleasure. There’s the pleasure of the precepts, the pleasure of generosity, both of which are conditioned things. There’s the pleasure in concentration, which is also conditioned, and you want to motivate yourself to develop … 
  7. The Need for Agency
     … Some people feel that if that’s where we’re going, we might as well start out with that. But you can’t start out with that. You’re actually suffering, no matter how much you say you aren’t. There has to be a sense of you doing the path here before the path can take you to the point where you no … 
  8. Maybe the Buddha Knew Something
     … The common principle here is that we’re not just here for our leisure, for our entertainment, or to do what we feel like doing. We’re here to be trained, and training often means doing things you don’t like. The image the Buddha gives is of capturing a wild elephant and tying it to a post. The elephant is going to pull … 
  9. Right View
     … The aggregates of form, feeling, perception, fabrication, and consciousness come in a potential form and then—based on which things we’re interested in, which things we want to create, which things we want to destroy—we actually create our experience of the present out of these different potentials. So we need to do a lot of digging down into our experience of the … 
  10. Wisdom for Dummies Revisited
     … You’ll remember that once you make the effort of settling in, it feels really, really good. That becomes your incentive to get up early the next morning and to try it again. The other basic role of wisdom is that when things go wrong, when things don’t go well in life, you learn to give yourself pep talks. This can apply to … 
  11. Trading Up
     … There was that article that appeared in Israel recently about the monastery,\ and some of the feedback was, “I feel sorry for all these people. They’ve just given up so much for what? For nothing”—as if we’ve given up all our desires and see nothing but bad things in the world. Well, we see that there is a lot of bad … 
  12. Faith in the Buddha’s Awakening
     … There’s an element of intention in how you experience form, feeling, perception, the process of fabrication, and your sensory consciousness. So it’s not just that you’re experiencing a given that’s been provided by the past, you’re actually shaping it here and now. On top of that, it’s possible to shape it in such a way that there is … 
  13. Mindfulness of Death
     … You have to ask yourself, “Well, what needs to be done?” Look at the breath as bodily fabrication; the way you talk to yourself as verbal fabrication; and the perceptions and feelings you focus on as mental fabrication. What needs to be worked on in those three things? What insight can you gain into the process of fabrication as you work with them? That … 
  14. A Meditative Life
     … The mind starts hankering to feel lust and so it goes out looking for something to incite the lust, and grabs hold of whatever little details it can find, even when those details are surrounded by all sorts of unclean things. So keep watch on what comes out of the mind and what comes in. For lay people, this means being careful about the … 
  15. The Prison Break
     … Then you try to think of mixing these elements together so that everything feels right—not too cold, not too hot, not too light with the breath, not too heavy with the solidity. Get it just right. What you’ve done is to learn about the power of perception, how it can affect your experience of the body. You’ve learned how to control … 
  16. Willing to Question Yourself
     … What way of relating to the breath is going to be helpful? How do you relate to the breath in a way that allows the mind to settle down? How do you perceive the breath—in other words, what are the images you hold in mind about what’s happening when you breathe? What kind of breathing feels good? What kind of breathing is … 
  17. Delight
     … Physical seclusion is learning to find joy in being apart from other people, turning off your phone, turning off all your devices, and just being with your mind—and learning that you can develop qualities in the mind that are really enjoyable, so that you don’t feel deprived of company. You’re happy to find some time by yourself. As for mental seclusion … 
  18. Refuge in an Admirable Friend
     … He doesn’t tell you to be embarrassed that you want happiness or make you feel that you’re selfish because you want to find happiness, because as we’ll see, the kind of happiness that he’s recommending, the kind of happiness that he exemplified, doesn’t just stop with you or with him. The first quality is wisdom, discernment. As he says … 
  19. The Path to Stream Entry
     … There’s no form, no feeling, no perception, no fabrication of anything, and no consciousness of the six senses—and yet there is an awareness. As a result, there’s no tendency to want to identify yourself with any of the aggregates ever again. You still have a lingering sense of self that hovers around them, but you never hold to the view that … 
  20. Views & Vision
     … But right now, if you feel harassed by all the chatter going on in the mind, that sounds pretty good. Just hold on to one thought, one object, and get away from all the torment of what’s being said inside the mind. But you can’t get there until you’ve learned how to train the mind how to talk to itself skillfully … 
  21. Decisions
     … You don’t have to be upset about past mistakes or feel guilty about them. Just look at them as learning experiences and resolve not to repeat them. That’s the best that can be expected of any human being. So this is why we meditate in the present moment, trying to bring the mind into the present moment, because everything important in our … 
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