Search results for: "Feelings"

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  2. Sort Things Out
     … When you breathe in, where do you feel it? There’s a movement of energy in lots of different parts of the body. Wherever the movement seems clearest, most blatant, and easiest to follow, focus there. Then, as you breathe in, notice how long the in-breath feels comfortable and when it starts feeling uncomfortable. If it starts feeling uncomfortable, stop. Start breathing out … 
  3. How We Cling
     … They’re actually just activities—perceptions, thought constructs, or feelings—and they’re pretty ephemeral. The purpose of meditation is to get you more directly acquainted with these activities in a hand-on way. As you’re focusing here on the breath, the breath is form. You’re trying to create a feeling of pleasure. You do that by holding certain perceptions in mind … 
  4. What to Tolerate, What Not
     … But you find the areas that feel okay. When you breathe in, they feel okay; when you breathe out, they feel okay. Focus on those parts. xx There are two ways you can do this. One is to find one small part in the body that feels good and stick with that. Make sure you can keep it feeling good all the way through … 
  5. Your Breath, Your Territory
     … They can hear you breathe, they can watch you breathe, but how your breath feels from within, that’s something nobody else can know. But you can use it. You can change the way you breathe, change the way you feel it, think of the breath going in different ways. And it responds. Sometimes it responds more quickly than other times, but the breath … 
  6. Start with Goodwill
     … Where do you feel the breathing in the body right now? You may have some preconceived notions about where the breath comes in, where the breath goes out, but where’s the actual feeling? And what is that actual feeling? It’s a feeling of movement or energy in the body. It doesn’t have any clear boundaries, because it’s not just the … 
  7. Streams of Anger
     … You have to learn how to think more precisely when you’re feeling irritated, feeling angry: You’ve got something you’ve got to take apart—the feeling of anger itself. The Buddha recommends that you think of anger and other unskillful emotions as a stream. There’s a current to the stream and it’s flowing out. The first thing you’ve got … 
  8. Permission to Play
     … The first is simply to pose the question in your mind with each breath: “What kind of breathing would feel really good right now?” See how the body responds. Or you can go about it more systematically. To expand your sense of what the breath is capable of, ask yourself: “What would longer breathing feel like?” And think of the breath going longer for … 
  9. Bigger than the World
     … One of the big mistakes we make as we work with the breath is that we have some cartoon ideas of what we should be feeling as the breath comes in; what we should be feeling as the breath goes out. We then create those feelings and, as a result, add a lot of unnecessary tension to the breathing process. So think of the … 
  10. Stay Tuned
     … Or you can tune in to the feeling of the breath. Like a vapor of alcohol, it can’t be contained. It has no clear or boundaries. It flows through the body, around the body. So allow your mind to tune in to the lightness of the breath in the same way that you tune a radio to a specific station. This is called … 
  11. Happy to Be Here
    Take a couple of good long deep in-and-out breaths and notice where you feel the breathing. Notice if it’s comfortable. If it feels constricted or if you’re not getting enough energy, you can think of longer breathing. Think of the whole torso being involved in the breath coming in, the breath going out. And see what kind of breathing feels … 
  12. An Island of Concentration
     … You try to stay with the breath as it comes in, goes out, and discern when it’s long, when it’s short, and try to figure out if long breathing feels better or short breathing feels better. That’s because the Buddha also tells you to breathe in ways that give rise to a sense of refreshment, a sense of pleasure, and those … 
  13. When You’ve Played Enough With the Breath
     … The theme all the way through these steps is the interaction among breath, feelings, and mind. In some of the steps, the emphasis is on how the mind can have an impact on the breath and how it can shape feelings; in others, it’s how feelings and the breath can have an impact on the mind. The last two steps in the second … 
  14. Beyond Inter-eating
     … And if you don’t get the food source you want, you start scrambling around trying to find another food source, and at the same time you feel threatened, fearful. And we know what the mind does when it feels threatened and fearful: its stupidest things, most heartless things, thoughtless things, mindless things. Someone did a study of prisoners, people who tend to live … 
  15. A Meditator is a Good Friend to Have
     … Then allow the breath to find a rhythm that feels really comfortable. You can experiment for a while, to see what kind of breathing feels most refreshing. Sometimes shorter breathing is what the body needs, sometimes longer, sometimes deeper, more shallow, heavier or lighter, faster or slower. Try to keep on top of whatever the body needs. As for any other thoughts that may … 
  16. The Wrong Uses of Right
     … And since actions lead to feelings, then all actions lead to stress.” And the Buddha says, “Another fool! When you’re asked about action, you respond in terms of the three feelings. There are pleasurable feelings, there are painful feelings, and there are feelings that are neither pleasurable nor painful. If you want to talk about the fact that ultimately, even the pleasure has … 
  17. Healing Breath
     … If you find the way of breathing feels harsh or disruptive to the body, abandon it. Breathe in a way that feel soothing, nourishing. Ajaan Lee recommends that you do it the other way around. In other words, you get the breath so that it feels soothing, and then you spread your awareness to fill the body, at the same time allowing that sense … 
  18. A Rite of Passage
     … Your relationship to the breath will develop as you stay right here, as will your relationship to the feelings that come with the breath: feelings of ease, feelings of fullness, rapture, or refreshment. As long as they feel refreshing, stay with them. When they begin to seem a little bit too much, then you think of a more subtle level of energy in the … 
  19. Learning How to Talk to Yourself
     … Then finally, there are mental fabrications, which are perceptions and feelings. Perceptions are the labels you put on things, like labels on a bottle. Some of these labels are just words, and sometimes they’re images. They give meaning to things: This is this, and that’s that. You identify what this is, what that is, what its meaning is. And then feelings—feeling … 
  20. A Refuge from Karma
     … If you just sit here wallowing in how good it feels, it’s not going to feel good very long, because the cause for that good feeling comes from the fact that you’re alert, paying careful attention to the breath. If you lose that foundation, either you go into delusion concentration, which is pleasant but it’s like falling asleep, or else the … 
  21. Inquisitive
     … Sometimes it feels like it’s coming in from outside, and other times it feels like it’s flowing from certain spots inside the body. It starts, say, at the tip of the sternum or the point just above the navel, and the breath energy radiates from those spots. Other times, it feels like there’s a column of energy running down the middle … 
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