Search results for: "Feelings"

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  2. Against the Stream
     … You can start out with long breathing and see how that feels—and if it feels good, you keep it up. When it gets to the point where it doesn’t feel so good any more, if it feels too heavy or too long, you can shorten it. You can also experiment with fast breathing, slow breathing, deep, shallow, heavy, light, or in long … 
  3. The Gift of Meditation
     … There are some times when you don’t feel up to it, you feel a little bit lazy, but you do it anyhow. It’s like that scene at the end of *Franny and Zooey, where they *remember how their older brother kept staying, “Well, tie your shoes, look good. Do it for the fat lady.” They never found out who the fat lady … 
  4. Training Your Inner Critic
     … Mental is perceptions and feelings. Perceptions are the mental labels you apply to things. Feelings are feeling-tones: pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain. It’s important to see the connection between these two levels. Every intentional bodily action is going to involve the breath. If you couldn’t breathe, you couldn’t move the body. Every verbal act is going to require that … 
  5. The Uses of Right Concentration
     … So you want to be able to notice when these perceptions and feelings come, when they go, which particular perception or feeling has replaced an earlier one. Then you begin to notice other things about perceptions and feelings as well: When a particular perception is in your mind, what level of stress or disturbance accompanies it in the mind? Or in the body? When … 
  6. Intro to Breath Meditation
     … You can start out with a couple of good long, deep in-and-out breaths and see how that feels. If it feels comfortable, stick with it. If not, you can change. Make the breathing shorter, or you can learn how to relax into a longer breath. Find out which parts of the body seem to be fighting the longer breath and allow them … 
  7. Noble Priorities
     … I can’t feel your suffering; you can’t feel mine. We can see the outside signs and we can try to help, but this area inside where you’re relating to your own body, you’re relating to your own mind: That’s yours, exclusively yours, and this is where suffering is. When the Buddha established his teachings, he started with the truth … 
  8. Everything Gathers Around the Breath
     … So try to get a sense of what healthy breathing feels like. Right there, you’re going to gain some practice both in dealing with the breath and in dealing with feelings and the mind. There’s a passage in one of the texts where the Buddha talks about how you can work on the factors for awakening by dealing with any one of … 
  9. Fear of Death
     … Would longer breathing feel good? and the body will respond. It’ll breathe longer for a little while, and then you can decide, no or yes, depending on the condition. There is a part of the mind that’s already very sensitive to what feels good and what doesn’t feel good, and you can start tapping into that. This gives you a good … 
  10. Take an Interest
     … Notice where you feel them, and if long breathing feels comfortable, keep it up. If it doesn’t feel comfortable, you can change. You can make a game of it, figuring out what kind of breathing feels best for the body right now. What does your body need? The breath is like free medicine. For the most part, we just throw it away, don … 
  11. The Arrows of Emotion
     … Common Problems The Arrows of Emotion April 21, 2010 There’s a famous discourse when the Buddha talks about pain, how the wise person experiencing pain feels it as the pain that comes from being shot by one arrow. The person whose mind is not trained turns around and shoots himself with another arrow. But it’s not really just one arrow—there are … 
  12. Blessings
     … Be aware of where the breath comes in and where it goes out, or where you *feel *it coming in and going out, which may not be at the nose. Sometimes you feel the energy of the breath moving in different places in the body. Try to gain a sense, when you breathe in and breathe out, of exactly how you feel it. The … 
  13. The Noble Path to Happiness
     … Well, you can move to any other part of the body where it feels comfortable to stay focused, stay centered. Stay there, and make it feel like you really can settle in and feel at home. You might try focusing through the body in a systematic way to see where in the body it feels most interesting to stay. So these are four qualities … 
  14. Patience & Sensitivity
     … Then, how does it feel before you try to put it through its paces? Notice that. If it already feels good, then allow it to stay feeling good. If it feels tight or constricted, what can you do to loosen up some of those restrictions? We’ve talked about having a sense of urgency in the practice, but you also have to be patient … 
  15. Finding Balance
     … If you’re feeling lazy, try to breathe in a way that gives you more energy. If you’re feeling tense, and overworked, try to breathe in a way that’s more relaxing, more soothing. Right there you’ve got some directed thought and evaluation. You direct thoughts to the breath and then evaluate what you’ve done: Is the breath appropriate right now … 
  16. Thoughts, Wanted and Unwanted
     … When you breathe in, how do you feel the energy in that part of the body? Does it feel constricted? Does it feel like you’re pulling the breath in a direction that doesn’t feel good? How about imagining the breath going in another direction – the opposite direction. See what that does. Or think of the breath flowing right through the body, not … 
  17. To Gladden the Mind
     … There’s the body, there are feelings, and there’s the mind. With the body, of course, we’re mainly concerned with the breath. The mind is your awareness right here. And we’re trying to create a feeling of pleasure, as a kind of glue to keep the mind with the body. If, as you survey these things, you find that one of … 
  18. Exercising Discernment
     … And be alert to how the sensation of breathing feels. Where does it feel satisfying when you breathe in? Which part of the body feels refreshed by the breath? Can you let other parts of the body feel refreshed by the breath too? Watch. That’s where the ardency comes in. It’s not that we’re sitting here straining till beads of sweat … 
  19. Exploring Fabrication
     … Then you breathe in and out sensitive to mental fabrication, noticing the effect of feeling and perception on the mind: the feelings of rapture and pleasure you’ve been inducing, and also the perceptions by which you can stay focused on the breath. What affect do those have on the mind? Then you try to calm that affect. In other words, you move from … 
  20. The Energy to Be Generous
     … They breathe in ways that feel burdensome, heavy. It’s just a struggle sometimes to breathe. So one way you can have more energy for helping other people—or at the very least being good to other people in situations where they’re not good to you—is to learn how to breathe in a way that feels good and energizing. As for the … 
  21. Compunction & Awe
     … There’s a passage in the Canon where the Buddha talks about a lion coming out in the afternoon and roaring its lion’s roar, and the animals of the forest all feel saṁvega. They don’t just feel emotion. They feel terror, they feel awe, because the lion is so much more powerful than they are. I think “awe” is the best English … 
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