Search results for: "The Breath"

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  2. The Noble Path to Happiness
    The mind is bound to chatter, so if you’re doing meditation, have it chatter about the breath. What should it say? “Just focus on the breath. Be alert to the breath. Know when it’s coming in; know when it’s going out. Let it be comfortable. Don’t try to force the breath or to put yourself into a trance.” What you … 
  3. The Power of Intention
     … Bring it back, bring it back to the breath. If the breath is interesting, if the breath is comfortable, the mind will be more inclined to want to stay. You can begin to change its allegiance. Its old allegiance was to running around. Even before they had the word multitasking, our minds liked to multitask. Here, we’re going to do some mono-tasking … 
  4. Sensitive to Fabrication
    A lot of people, when they focus on the breath, want to be with the pure sensation of the breath without any mental images, without any words. But these things are intimately tied together. If you’re not clear about the image you’re holding in mind about the breath, it goes underground and has an impact on the way you’re seeing things … 
  5. Surprise Yourself
    It’s possible to focus on the breath and not learn much of anything. One of Ajaan Lee’s friends, who was also a student of Ajaan Mun, complained to Ajaan Less one time, “Why do you teach people to focus on the breath? All there is in and out, in and out.” And as Ajaan Lee replied, “If that’s all you can … 
  6. Dealing with the Hindrances
    Ajaan Lee talks about directed thought and evaluation in the meditation as dealing with the breath: figuring out what kind of breathing feels best for you right now, where you can create a sense of well-being in the body, and then how you can make the best use of that sense of well-being, letting it spread down the nerves, down the blood … 
  7. Breath by Breath
     … So keep the mind with the breath continuously, and then let them do their work. The mind does its work on the breath, and the breath does its work on the mind. And bit, by bit, by bit, the sense of ease, the sense of pleasure, grows. But even when it gets large and intense, you can’t abandon that producing mode. The ease … 
  8. Cooking Skills
     … Hold that image in mind and see what it does to the way you breathe. **And where are **you **in relationship to the breath? Sometimes there’s the tendency to feel that we’re outside of the body a little bit, looking in. But you have to remember: The breath is all around you. All too often we say, “Watch the breath,” when it … 
  9. Saying No to Distraction
     … So you work with the breath; you work with your perceptions of the breath, keeping track of body—in other words, the breath itself and its relationship to the body—the feelings that arise, and the mental state that’s watching over this. You want to bring those three things together. And get interested in this. This is a big problem that a lot … 
  10. Exploring Fabrication
     … With the perceptions, you try to find ways of perceiving the breath energy in the body that make things easier for the mind, lighter for the mind. In fact, that’s a lot of what it means to go through the various levels of concentration: Your perceptions of the breath grow more refined. For instance, you think of the breath as an energy filling … 
  11. In Search of What is Skillful
     … Then you look at the breath: This is where Ajaan Lee gives lots of recommendations for evaluating the length of the breath, the quality of the breath. You’re evaluating—once you get a sense of pleasure out of the breath—how you can make the most of it: spreading it through the body. You also evaluate how you can maintain that full body … 
  12. The Psychology of Harmlessness
     … Then, when everything feels nicely energized by the breath, the breath energy in the body feels full, you can allow the breath to calm down. Those are the basic steps in terms of the breath. One of the interesting features of those steps is that the Buddha doesn’t say simply, “Let the breath calm down.” He says, “Calm bodily fabrication.” Bodily fabrication*, kaya … 
  13. Attached to Concentration
     … For instance, with the breath: In his Method Two, Ajaan Lee gives a fairly detailed guidelines on where you can focus on the breath and the different ways the breath can flow in the body, but if you look in his Dhamma talks, you’ll see that he played with the breath in lots of other ways as well. He was always coming up … 
  14. Breathing Skillfully
     … This is why our skill starts with focusing on the breath and then looking at how we’re talking to ourselves about the breath. Usually, in the very beginning, your mind will be talking about other things. It drops the breath and goes running after whatever comes past. You’ve got to learn how to drop those other things and come back to the … 
  15. A Path of Skills
     … Notice where you feel the breath in the body. Wherever there are sensations that enable you to know, “Now the breath is coming in, now the breath is going out,” focus on those sensations. Then notice if they’re comfortable. If they are, keep it up. If they’re not, you can change. You can make the breath shorter, more shallow, heavier, lighter, faster … 
  16. Calming Mental Fabrication
    When the Buddha teaches concentration practice—breath meditation practice—he gives you a physical fabrication to focus on, i.e., the breath coming in, going out, and then he gives you a verbal fabrication, the instructions, “Keep track of the breath; remain focused on the breath—ardent, alert, mindful—putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world.” So you keep reminding yourself … 
  17. Sober Up
     … So you can think of the mind either going up or down, whichever seems to describe how it feels to you as the mind settles in with the breath and you drop all your other concerns. For the time being, you don’t want to be interested in anything else—just interested in the breath. Take a couple of good, long, deep in-and … 
  18. Right Resolve
     … So focus on the breath in a way that feels comfortable. Focusing on the breath is called directed thought. Learning how to make it comfortable is called evaluation. These are the two factors that help build concentration. The third factor is singleness: that you really focus on the breath and try to stay with the breath and nothing else. These are the three things … 
  19. Tenacity
     … There’s a tendency when you’re working with the breath for the mind to have its pauses and its phrases, you might call them—the way music is phrased. The breath comes in, the breath goes out: That’s one breath. Then it comes in, goes out: That’s the second breath. But you treat them like separate phrases. You move from one … 
  20. Invest in the Breath
     … If you want, you can use a meditation word along with the breath, Buddho: Bud, in; dho, out. It means awake. It’s the quality of mind we’re trying to develop here. Notice how the breath feels and where you feel the breath, because the breath isn’t just the air coming in and out through the nose. It’s also the movement … 
  21. 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 … 
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