Search results for: "Feelings"

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  2. Talking to Yourself
     … When the body feels at ease, the mind feels a lot more comfortable in the present moment. When the mind feels comfortable, its thinking is going to be clearer. So this is a good place to stay. This way, when you’re keeping the mind here, it’s not just a matter of forcing it. Sometimes you have to cajole it and then you … 
  3. Jhāna & Discernment
    Take a couple of good, long, deep in-and-out breaths, and ask yourself, “Where do you feel the breathing in the body?” We know the air comes in and out through the nose into the lungs. But when the Buddha’s talking about the breath, he doesn’t talk about the air, he talks about the energy in the body itself. You have … 
  4. Seeing Distinctions
     … And there’s the whole issue of feeling: There’s an intentional element in all of our feelings. There are perceptions that are related to our feelings. There are acts of attention related to our feelings. You want to be able to tease them out. This is one of the reasons why the Buddha has you focus on suffering or stress as the main … 
  5. Tranquility & Insight with the Breath
     … where you feel the breath coming in and going out, or you feel the breath energy spreading from some spot in the body out to the rest of the body, and it feels good. Let yourself rest there. Ajaan Lee’s image is of having some money and wanting to start an orchard. If you make the mistake of investing in enough trees to … 
  6. Think Your Way to Stillness
     … How does it feel? If you say, “I don’t know,” then just sit and watch it for a while. Ask yourself, “Could it feel more expansive? Could it feel more energizing? Could it feel healthier? Could it feel more calming? What do you need right now?” And if you say, “I don’t know,” then watch it for a while again. Experiment. Try … 
  7. Emotion
     … And then there’s mental fabrication, which comes down to feeling and perceptions. When you learn how to breathe in a way that feels good, feels comfortable inside, it’s harder to hold on to a negative emotion. At the same time, you don’t feel so hungry. Often lust or anger comes out of a hunger for immediate gratification. But when you’ve … 
  8. The Duties of Happiness
     … You’re simply breathing in and breathing out, and it feels fairly ordinary. But if you pay really careful attention to the breath, you can notice: At what point does the in-breath start to feel uncomfortable? Well, stop. And then you can breathe out. At what point does the out-breath feel uncomfortable? Stop. Then, in between the stopping points, does it feel … 
  9. The Mind's Immune System
     … And as for delusion, that usually centers on feelings that are neither pleasant nor painful: neutral feelings. You don’t pay much attention to them. You don’t really see them, because you’re out looking for the pleasure and trying to push away the pain. The neutral feelings seem unimportant, and so a lot of delusion comes into the mind right at that … 
  10. Physical Pains & Painful Words
     … But don’t expect that you’ll master everything with regard to the breath before you have to think about feelings and the mind, because they can come in and intrude pretty quickly. Feelings are a big issue. You sit here and there’s going to be pain in some part of the body. How do you deal with that? The Buddha doesn’t … 
  11. Potentials
     … Notice where you feel the breathing in the body, and ask yourself if that rhythm feels good. If it doesn’t, you can change. Does deep breathing feel good, or shallow breathing? Heavy, light? Fast, slow? There are lots of ways you can breathe right now. As you get sensitive to the breath in the body, you begin to notice that it’s not … 
  12. Relationships
     … Why you feel certain ways: One, be honest with yourself about how you feel. And then two, look into it, “Why do I feel this way? What’s the logic behind this?” We tend not to think about logic in line with our emotions, but actually they do have a logic of their own. There are reasons for why you feel certain things, and … 
  13. Body & Mind from Within
     … perceptions and feelings. Feelings are feeling tones of pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain. Perceptions are the labels you put on things, images or words that you use to identify things: what they are, what they mean, how important they are. All these activities come together as you focus on the breath. You’re talking to yourself about the breath. You have feelings that … 
  14. The Dhamma Protects
     … Then, to get sensitive to feelings of pleasure or rapture, you have to breathe in a particular way to induce those feelings to begin with. They’re not just going to come on their own. They’re the result of a conscious effort. Then you notice the impact that those feelings have on the mind. Sometimes they’re strong feelings of energy—which feel … 
  15. Guided Meditation
     … Notice how the breath feels as it comes in. If it feels comfortable, allow it to stay that way. If it doesn’t feel comfortable, you can change it. You can make it go deeper or more shallow, longer or shorter. Ajaan Lee recommends starting out with a couple good long deep in-and-out breaths, and then allowing the breath to calm down … 
  16. Giving to the Meditation
     … How does it feel? Where do you feel the breath? Try to put aside whatever notions you have about how the breath should feel or where you should feel the breath, and try to be sensitive to how you actually feel. Where are the sensations that let you know now the breath is coming in, now the breath is going out? And what’s … 
  17. Learning by Doing
     … How does that feel? Try breathing in long and out long. Does that feel good? If it does, keep it up. Keep it up until it doesn’t feel good anymore. Then you can change. Make it shorter, or in short, out long; in long, out short. In short, out long tends to be relaxing. In long, out short tends to be more energizing … 
  18. Technique & Attitudes
     … In some places it feels easier; in other places it feels forced. Learn how to let it feel easy. Ask yourself: When you think about the breath, how do you conceive it? What’s your picture of how the breath comes in, how it goes out? Where does it come in? Where does it go out? Actually, the breath energy can come in and … 
  19. Goodwill Is Respect
     … by the way you breathe, by the way you talk to yourself, by the perceptions you hold in mind, and the feelings you focus on. Be careful as you focus on the feelings, because if you generate a feeling of ease and then leave the breath and just focus on the ease, that’s going to last for a little while and then start … 
  20. New Feeding Habits for the Mind
     … When you see a cruel action, it’s usually coming from the person’s feeling weak, feeling threatened, at his wits’ end. Acts of kindness and compassion come from a feeling of well-being in the mind. So when we look for true well-being, true happiness, it’s not a selfish desire. But still, we’re stuck with this problem: the body is … 
  21. Why We Meditate
     … Then after a while, think “deeper,” see how that feels. “More shallow,” see how that feels. In other words, take some time to experiment with the sensation of breathing to see how it feels until you get a rhythm that feels just right. Then stick with that rhythm as long as it feels good. If you find that after a while it starts getting … 
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