Search results for: "Feelings"

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  2. Living Forward, Understanding Backward
     … They feel threatened; they feel attacked; they feel they’re in a weak position and so they strike out. So no matter how much you may dislike a particular person, there’s really no good reason to wish ill for that person. The wise attitude is to wish that that person find true happiness. If he or she could find true happiness within, the … 
  3. Different Minds, Different Bodies
     … The way you work with the breath will have to depend on where you are, what you need in order to, say, give yourself a sense of relaxation when you feel tense in different parts the body, or to energize yourself when you’re feeling tired, or to work with a pain that may be caused by poor blood flow in some part of … 
  4. It’s Good to Talk to Yourself
     … What are you saying to yourself about the breath right now? You can ask yourself if the breath feels good. Where do you feel the breath? What concept of breath are you using? There’s the breath of the air coming in and out through the nose. There’s also the breath of the energy movements in the body. Some of those movements are … 
  5. Practicing from Gratitude
     … How are you breathing right now? What kind of breathing would feel really good? Try a couple of good, long, deep in-and-out breaths to see if that feels nourishing or energizing. If it does, keep it up as long as it feels good. If it starts feeling like it’s too much, then you can calm down, make the breath shorter, more … 
  6. Four Steps for the Heart & Mind
     … Because the mind and the feelings and the breath are all here together, one way of gladdening the mind, of course, would be to breathe in a way that feels really gratifying. What kind of hunger does your body have for the breath right now? Can you satisfy that? Would that be satisfactory to the mind? Sometimes if the mind is feeling weak or … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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