Search results for: "The Breath"

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  2. Safe Haven
     … If you’re thinking about other things, you tend to squeeze the breath or limit the breath in the body, so you don’t get as much good out of the breathing as you normally could. Thinking and planning or whatever take up so much energy, so much space in your body. So for the time being, you give the body entirely over to … 
  3. Figuring Out Concentration
     … What do you direct your thoughts to? What do you evaluate? To begin with, you try to direct your thoughts to the topic of the concentration itself—in this case, the breath. So, keep thinking about the breath. Of course, you don’t just think. You watch the breath. You feel the breath. Ask yourself, where do you actually feel it? And is there … 
  4. Tranquility, Insight, & Concentration
    Take a couple of good, long, deep in-and-out breaths, and notice where you feel the breathing process in the body. It might be at the nose, the base of the throat, the chest, the abdomen. Wherever it’s clearest—that now the breath is going in, now the breath is going out—focus your attention there. Then ask yourself if long breathing … 
  5. Nourishing & Interesting
     … What can the breath do to help with those things? The body gives you these challenges, and the Buddha says to stick with the meditation. Ajaan Fuang would say, “Take the breath as the basis for your skill.” The question always is, “What can the breath do here?” or “What can your awareness of the breath do to help with whatever’s coming up … 
  6. Greed & Distress with Reference to the World
     … Your interest simply is learning how to settle down with a sense of the body, a sense of the breath right here. You want to make this your home, so learn how to feel that you’re surrounded by the breath. It’s not just in one spot of the body. It’s all around. Allow yourself to feel bathed in the breath, bathed … 
  7. Put Your Books Back on the Shelf
     … You want the breath and the mind in the present moment to run your practice, because that’s where the real problems are. The problems are not in the books. The problems are here. One, how to get the mind to be with the breath. Two, how to think about the breath in a way that helps you to settle down. And the more … 
  8. Wise Choices
     … If you find it difficult to settle down with the breath, you can focus on other ideas that you find inspiring, things that encourage you to do what’s good, encourage you to do what’s wise. Then, when the mind is ready to settle down, it can stay with the breath. It’s important to learn how to settle yourself in the present … 
  9. Breathing Easy
    One of the first things you discover when you meditate is that you can set up intention to stay with the breath and it can very quickly disappear and be replaced by another intention, even though you were sincere in the first intention. It’s almost as if you have many minds. Strictly speaking, there’s just one mind in any one person, but … 
  10. Right View, Right Attention
     … So each time you breathe in, each time you breathe out, you ask yourself, “Where is my mind right now? Is it with the breath?” If it’s not, you bring it to the breath. That’s what right effort does. If it is with the breath, you try to get more sensitive to how the breathing feels. As the Buddha said, you can … 
  11. Breath Energy
    When we focus on the breath, it’s not so much the air coming in and out through the nose. It’s the feeling of energy in the body. Some people say, “Where is the energy?” It’s in your sense that you have a body. You sense that through the breath, through the breath energy. If you were to hold your hand out … 
  12. The Teacher Inside
     … First you do this, this is how you focus on the breath, this is how you make the breath comfortable. Sometimes you consciously work with it, sometimes you simply try to make your awareness of the breath as continuous and non-stop as possible. The fact that you’re consistently watching it seems to iron out a lot of the wrinkles. Once you’ve … 
  13. Fabrication
     … the feelings that come with the breath, the perceptions that label the breath: “Now the breath is coming in. Now the breath is going out. Now the mind is like this. Now it’s like that.” The directed thought and the evaluation are there as well, keeping you focused on the breath and on evaluating the breath. So these things are all together. If … 
  14. Twigs & Branches
     … You work with the breath energy. When you breathe in, how does it feel? When you breathe out, how does it feel? We’re trying to create a feeling of well-being here. The Buddha says that simply by careful attention to the breath, being alert to the breath, you can make the breath comfortable. He doesn’t go into the details, but Ajaan … 
  15. Genuine Happiness
     … That thought gives you more impetus to come back to look carefully at the breath. Because that’s the next step. Take a couple of good long deep in-and-out breaths. Notice where you feel the breathing. Focus your attention there. Often it’ll be in someplace you might not expect. Because the breath is not just air coming in and out of … 
  16. Bases of Power
     … You’re maybe pushing the breath energy in the wrong direction or squeezing it too much. You can look at the cycle of the breath. When the breath comes in and goes out, do you have a tendency to squeeze a little bit at the point between the in-breath and the out-breath, just to mark it, to make it clear? Well, try … 
  17. Your Territory
     … Just put those aside for the time being as you’re mindful of the breath in and of itself. You’re going to find your pleasure with the breath. Be with the breath coming in; be with the breath going out. Experiment for a while to see what rhythm feels good. When you’ve found something that seems to feel good, stick with it … 
  18. Papañca
    As you sit here focused on the breath, you get some hands-on experience in seeing how the mind relates to objects. On the one hand, you have the object that you intend to stay with: the breath. And you’ve got to ask yourself: Where are you in relation to the breath? And what does it mean to keep the breath in mind … 
  19. Giving to the Meditation
     … And then come back and be as alert to the breath as possible: 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 … 
  20. Go, Do Jhana
     … You direct your thoughts to a particular topic like the breath. Keep reminding yourself to stay with the breath. Then you evaluate it. How is the breath going? Where do you feel the breath? When the breath comes in, what are the sensations that let you know it’s coming in? When it goes out, what sensations let you know it’s going out … 
  21. Medicine – Timely & Timeless
     … But if you see the breath energy as something present in the body all the time, try to hold that perception in mind. You’ll come to sense the breathing process in a different way. The breath is always there, it’s just a matter of letting the in-breath meld with what’s already there. Then you check to see whether “what’s … 
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