Search results for: "Feelings"

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  2. A Load Off the Mind
     … Experiment to see what feels best right now. What does your body need? Does it need long breathing or short breathing? Does it need to be energized? If that’s the case, breathe in a way that gives it more energy. Does it need to be relaxed? Breathe in a way that’s more relaxing. Try to have a sense of what would be … 
  3. Anumodana
     … It’s because basically you feel bad about enjoying things, but if you feel bad about enjoying things yourself, then how are you going to feel good about other people enjoying things? How are you going to want to make other people have joy? The mind just shrivels up, the heart shrivels up, with an attitude like that. So to nourish the heart, it … 
  4. The Bright Tunnel
     … If there’s guilt there may be a feeling that, “Maybe I deserve to suffer.” If there’s denial, then there’s the feeling, “This suffering is unjust, it shouldn’t be happening.” Or you just cover it up, pretending that it isn’t happening. Either way you don’t really get to the root of the problem. You don’t understand it. If … 
  5. Gladdening the Mind
     … And the path is asking you to do only good things, things you can be proud of, things that feel noble, honourable. You’re not being asked to compromise your ideals when you practice the Dhamma. In fact, you’re being asked to raise your ideals to a higher standard. Then there’s recollection of the Sangha. When your mind feels full of defilement … 
  6. A Small, Steady Flame
     … Actually it can be anywhere in the body where you feel that the sensation of in-breathing feels good and the sensation of out-breathing feels good. Then you train yourself to stay with that sensation. In the beginning the sensation may not be all that impressive — just a simple, comfortable feeling, sometimes a neutral feeling — but you find that if you stick with … 
  7. Why Now
     … Does long breathing feel good? If it doesn’t feel good, you can change. You can try shorter breathing, deeper, more shallow, heavier, lighter, faster, slower. Experiment to see what kind of breathing feels best right now. You can either try specific kinds of breathing, or you can simply pose the question in the mind, “What kind of breathing would feel good now?” And … 
  8. Breathing Skillfully
     … Notice where you feel the breathing in the body. When we talk about breath, it’s not so much the air coming in and out through the nose. It’s the feeling of energy that flows in the body, that allows the air to come in, allows the air to go out. Where do you feel that? Focus your attention there. Then ask yourself … 
  9. Afraid of Inner Pleasure
     … Here again, you find sometimes you may be scared to feel a sense of well-being as you go into the world. You feel exposed. After all, your pores are all open. It’s like going out into the cold after a really hot bath. You may feel exposed to other people. Well, remember that the breath energy has a kind of force field … 
  10. The Fabrication of Pain
    There’s a peculiar passage in the Canon where the Buddha says that we fabricate feelings for the sake of having a feeling. This applies both to pleasures and to pains as well as to feelings that are neutral, neither pleasant nor painful. You might think it would be strange that we would fabricate pains, but all of our feelings are fabricated. You have … 
  11. Put the Other Person’s Heart in Yours
     … It goes together with empathy, sympathy, having a sense of how other people feel, putting yourself in their place—or as the Thais say in one their nice idioms: Take the other person’s heart and put it in your heart and see how it feels. Take their feelings into account. In these days of intersectionalism, we’re told that people of different genders … 
  12. The Pain of Conviction
     … You breathe in the way that feels refreshing: It refreshes your torso, refreshes all the different parts of the body where you can feel the breathing process. It starts out very gently, just a sense that things feel okay; they feel like they’ve settled in where they belong. But if you give this sense of “okay” some space, give it some time, it … 
  13. Respect Your Center
     … the place in the body where the breath feels good, and the mind feels at home when it’s focused there. You want to know that spot and learn how to work with it, learn how to come back to it as quickly as you can if you’ve lost it. This will take some exploration, experimenting with different spots and noticing where your … 
  14. Calming the Breath
     … But the Buddha here is talking about elementary feelings: how your body feels to you from the inside. Again, this can be willed. You focus on solid sensations, and the earth element or the sense of solidity gets stronger. You can focus on the warmth in the body, and you can actually make the body feel warmer if you intend to make it warmer … 
  15. The Skill of Renunciation
     … What kind of breathing would feel best right here? Longer? Shorter? Heavier? Lighter? Faster? Slower? Experiment for a while to see what kind of breathing feels good now. As for any other thoughts that come into the mind, no matter how important they may seem, no matter how potentially entertaining they might be, tell yourself, No. You’re trying to learn a skill, the … 
  16. Befriending the Breath
     … How does the breath feel good? How does the breath not feel good? What parts of the breath are you not acquainted with? Start out with the areas where it’s easy to notice the sensation of breathing coming in, going out—the areas where you’re familiar with the breath. But always keep in mind that you may have a strange way of … 
  17. Choiceful Awareness
     … If it feels good for a while, that’s okay. Choose to stick with it. If after a while it doesn’t feel good anymore, you can choose to change. It’s through exercising your powers of choice that you become more sensitive to how they function and to the impact that they have. That enables you to get better and better at making … 
  18. Factions in the Mind
     … It feels good to breathe in, feels good to breathe out. You don’t have to force the breath, you don’t have to hold it in, you don’t have to count. Let the breath come in and out at whatever rhythm feels good for the body. If the rhythm keeps changing, fine — as long as it feels good. Be on top of … 
  19. Like a River Full of Water
     … It’s not just that you can feel goodwill, sometimes, or compassion, sometimes, for some people. You want to train the mind so that you can feel these attitudes for everybody—people, animals—always and everywhere. You start with yourself, but you don’t end with yourself. You think of how the suffering of others doesn’t benefit you in any way, so why … 
  20. Starting from Within
     … And be on friendly terms with it, allow it to come in and out in whatever way feels really good. To find what way feels really good, you can experiment. Longer breathing, shorter breathing, faster, slower: There are ots of ways you can play with the breath, until you get a good idea of what the range of possibilities is right now, exactly how … 
  21. Over the Pass
     … So when a feeling comes, it’s just a feeling. Any narrative around, “What kind of person am I, having feelings like this?” or “Is this a feeling I would really like to get into?”—those kinds of narratives, you’ve got to drop. Because as soon as you get into the narratives, you get ignorant about what you’re doing. And wherever there … 
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