Search results for: "The Breath"

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  2. Past & Future in the Present
    Close your eyes and make up your mind that you’re going to stay with the breath for the rest of the hour. Watch the breath as it’s coming in, and watch it as it’s going out. And remember to stay here. It’s very easy to forget. You’re basically doing three things. You make the intention to stay, which is … 
  3. A Meditation Karma Checklist
     … Generally, it’s the breath. As Ajaan Lee said, make the breath your home base. So make sure that you really are with the breath. Now, you may discover that the mind has other problems. Sometimes it’s having problems with lust, so switch over to the 32 parts of the body. If you’re having problems with ill will for somebody, okay, try … 
  4. The Mind Comes First
     … As you’re focused on the breath, talking to yourself about the breath, your knowledge about these things will then get lodged in the breath. That will become your reminder. When unskillful thoughts come up, you can remind yourself, “Okay, one of the ways of undercutting them is to turn around, look at the breath again.” Drop whatever that frame of reference was, and … 
  5. Single-minded
     … So in this case, with the thoughts directed to the breath, you keep reminding yourself to stay with the breath. The evaluation is to make sure that the breath is a good place to stay. It’s just right for the body, just right for the mind. If it’s not comfortable, you figure out what could be done to make it more comfortable … 
  6. Wisdom & Compassion
     … And allow the breath to be comfortable, because the breath is the main function of the body that has an influence over the other ones. It’s basically the point where the mind and the body meet. Breathe in a way that’s good for the body, good for the mind. Think of the breath surrounding you on all sides. It’s not just … 
  7. Three Levels of Concentration
     … Normally, as you get more settled down, and the breath gets softer, more refined, it gets harder and harder to keep track of. So you need to expand your frame of reference to include the whole body. That you can keep track of, even if the in-and-out movements of the breath grow still. There are lots of ways of working with the … 
  8. Heedful of Death
     … As you keep the breath in mind, you’re developing mindfulness. As you focus on what’s actually happening with the breath, and on whether the mind is staying with the breath, that’s the quality of alertness. Ardency, however, is what actually develops these things. In other words, as soon as you’ve noticed that you’ve slipped off the breath, if you … 
  9. Cooking the Present Moment
     … The way you breathe, the way you think about the breath, comment on the breath, ask questions about the breath, your basic perceptions of the breath: These are all present karma. It’s through your present karma that you can make your food edible. Now, we’re used to our old ways of fixing the food. And, as with physical food, sometimes it takes … 
  10. A Good Foundation
     … I realized that a lot of the problem had to do with where, in my mental picture of the breathing, the breath was coming in. That tended to activate certain muscles and made them do the work. So I learned to change the spot where I thought the breath was coming in, so as to share the load. The muscles I had been working … 
  11. Concentration & Insight
     … The carrot is a nice comfortable feeling you can develop with the breath. If you work with it, if you explore it, you find that the breath can be really, really comfortable. Sometimes it gets so good that you get absorbed in the breathing and you can’t imagine why you would need anything else to make yourself happy—it just feels so good … 
  12. The World of the Body
     … Notice where you feel the breath, the sensations that let you know that now the breath is coming in, now the breath is going out. Give all your attention to those sensations. Notice whether they’re comfortable or not. If they’re not, you can change them. You can change the rate of the breath. You can breathe shorter or longer, faster or slower … 
  13. Where Perceptions Can Take You
     … Ajaan Lee is very helpful when he talks about perceiving the breath-energy channels flowing through the body and the different centers of the breath, allowing the breath to flow from those centers out through the entire body via the breath channels. Some people find that if they can focus on the center right around the breastbone, breath seems to fill the body. It … 
  14. For Your Benefit Here & Now
     … You come to the breath because that’s your anchor in the present moment, and you try to stay here. To stay here solidly, figure out how to keep the mind interested in the breath. This is one of the reasons why Ajaan Lee teaches that you work with the breath energies. Notice how you feel the breath in the chest, how you feel … 
  15. The Time & Place to Let Go
    Close your eyes and focus on the breath. Watch it as it comes in; watch it as it goes out. Notice how it feels. Notice where you feel it most predominantly. It might be at the nose, the rising and falling of the chest, the rise and fall of the abdomen, or anywhere in the body where you can clearly sense: Now the breath … 
  16. Tapping into the Breath
    Tapping into the Breath July 17, 2017 Time and again, I say—when you’re focusing on the breath—to remember that the breath is not so much the air coming in and out of the lungs, as it is a flow of energy in the body. One of those flows is the flow that allows the air to come in and out. The … 
  17. Just-Right Concentration
     … Once the breath has the right rhythm, you can think about the breath energies in the rest of the body. How do they connect? There’s breath there already. If there weren’t breath, you’d be paralyzed. It’s already running through the nerves, running through the blood vessels. How do you sense where it’s blocked, where it’s not flowing as … 
  18. Mental Stirrings
     … The quicker you get at eliminating the thought—whether it’s simply just dropping the thought and coming back to the breath or when the breath gets really refined and spreads throughout the whole body—you can actually zap the thought with the breath in its more incipient stages. As you do this, you begin to see that the issue is not so much … 
  19. Blessings
     … We’re focusing on the breath, we’re trying to develop right mindfulness, right effort and right concentration—all of that based on right view. These are all qualities of the path, factors of the path that we want to develop. This is why we use the breath as a gathering place for the mind. Be aware of where the breath comes in and … 
  20. Mindfulness, Discernment, & Peace of Mind
     … This is one of the reasons why we start with the breath, because you can breathe in a way that feels really soothing. When you think of the breath, especially as the energy going through the different parts of the body, you can ask yourself, “Where in the body do I need a little soothing right now to calm the nerves?” Think of the … 
  21. Four Bases of Success
     … You also want to learn how to be familiar with how the breath energy feels as you walk around, as you stand, as you lie down. When you talk with other people, can you stay in touch with how the breath energy in the body feels? Because when we talk about “breath,” it’s not just the air coming in and out of the … 
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