Search results for: "Feelings"
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- Happy to Be Here… See what feels best right now. Usually, in the beginning, it’s good to breathe long for a while as a way of energizing the body and emphasizing the sensations of the breathing. But then when long breathing starts to feel tiresome, you can shorten it, make it softer, more shallow. Not quite so long, not quite so deep. But experiment. Sometimes if you …
- Preparing for Death… Try to get so that you can see the body as one thing, feeling as something else, your awareness as something else. That way, when feelings of pain come with death, you can go to that sense of being separate. The awareness will realize, as the body falls away, that it hasn’t lost anything. As the feelings fall away, it hasn’t lost …
- Nobility Through Inner Strength… Notice where you feel the sensation of the breathing. If long breathing feels good, keep it up. If not, you can change the rhythm: short in-breaths and long out-breaths, or long in and short out; short in, short out; deep or shallow, heavy or light, fast or slow. Try to get a sense of what breathing feels good for the body right …
- Balancing Tranquility & Insight… And because you are feeling dispassionate for them, you are no longer involved in their creation, so they stop. It’s important to understand that relationship between dispassion and cessation. Dispassion means being dispassionate toward the activities that you’re doing, the things that you’re creating. Once you feel dispassion, you don’t feel the need to create them anymore and they stop …
- Toward Release… When the breath feels comfortable and gives rise to a sense of well-being, even a sense of rapture, what do you do with it? Well, you spread it around. You expand your awareness and try to be aware of the whole body as you breathe in and breathe out. You let the feeling of well-being and rapture spread to fill both the …
- True Friends… So you want to experiment to see what kind of breathing feels good right now: long, short; fast, slow; heavy, light. Or you can try in long and out short, or in short and out long, deep or shallow. Find a rhythm of breathing that feels good right now, refreshing to the body: energizing if you’re feeling tired, calming if you’re feeling …
- Stop Squirming… I have to feel it all by myself.” There’s only so much other people can do when they see you’re in pain. And then they just stand around and feel miserable and helpless because they can’t help you any further. But if you learn how to be with your pain and not feel threatened by it, seeing the distinction between your …
- May I Look After Myself with Ease… How are you feeling this energy in the other parts of your body? Start making a survey, say, down around the navel. Watch that part of the body for a while and see how it feels as you breathe in, how it feels as you breathe out. If you notice any tension or tightness there, allow it to relax. If there’s any sense …
- Beyond Gratitude… Some people say that a feeling of gratitude makes them feel warm and content, thinking about the kindnesses other people have done them. It makes them feel valued. But it’s like playing roulette. Sometimes you find yourself indebted to people who are really difficult; other times, you feel a natural inclination to want to help the people who have helped you. It’s …
- A Refuge Inside… Then notice how the breathing sensation feels. Does it feel comfortable? Does it feel comfortable all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out-? Does it feel too long, or does it feel too short? You can adjust it. Try to find some place in the body where the breathing process feels good, feels nourishing coming in and relaxing going …
- Right Exertion at Play… You also get more sensitive to mental fabrications—the feelings that arise with the breath—and what you can do with them. You realize that feelings are fabrications. You’re not just stuck with a pleasant feeling or an unpleasant feeling, willy-nilly. You can play a role in shaping the feelings that dominate your awareness in the present moment by the way you …
- Question Your Actions… What are you doing? Right now you’re trying to focus on the breath, trying to maintain the mind with the breath, trying to breathe in a way that feels good. And you’re talking to yourself about this: “How’s this breath? How’s the next breath? Where does it feel good in the body? Where does the breath feel clear in the …
- Insight from Jhana… Then there are feelings. On the one hand, there’s the painful feeling of hunger when you’re lacking something. This applies not only to the body but also to the mind, as when you’re hungry for companionship or hungry for praise. On the other hand, there’s the pleasant feeling of fullness and satisfaction that comes when that hunger has been assuaged …
- An Auspicious Day… Take those lists of feelings in the Satipatthana Sutta. There are feelings of pleasure, feelings of pain, feelings of neither pleasure nor pain. There are pleasures of the flesh and pleasures not of the flesh; pains of the flesh, pains not of the flesh; feelings of neither pleasure nor pain of the flesh and not of the flesh. If you look at the list …
- Part II : Common Problems… You see this with feelings of rapture. Rapture is something that affects both the body and the mind. Sometimes the sensations in the body get extremely full, so full that you feel like you’re drowning. Then, when the perception comes in that you’re drowning, the rapture becomes unpleasant, something you want to run away from. But if you give the sensation some …
- Oneness is a Water Snake… Does that feel like a good breath? It felt like an okay bone or an okay organ of one kind, but does it feel like a good breath? If not, work with it. That gives you something to do. As you go through the body like this, you get to the point where you can perceive all the sensations in the body as having …
- Choosing & Watching Your Choices… Now notice how you feel the breathing. Try to focus your attention on any spot where it’s most obvious and where it feels easiest to stay focused. If you wander off, just keep coming back. This is called establishing mindfulness. In other words, you keep reminding yourself that this is where you want to stay. And alertness: You want to watch what you …
- Wise about Pain… So what kind of breathing feels good for the whole body? That’s something you can explore. You can spend the whole hour doing just that one exploration. But if you find something that you can stay with and it feels good, stay with that breathing. Try to maintain it as long as it feels good. If it reaches a point where it doesn …
- Guardian Meditations… This is for times when you’re feeling discouraged, when you’re feeling that you’re not quite up to this path, or you start having doubts about the path itself. You reflect on the Buddha: What kind of person was he? He was someone who was totally honest and totally harmless. He wanted a happiness that was blameless, which meant a happiness that …
- Remembering Ajaan Lee… You have to evaluate for yourself what feels best right now. If you’re not really sure, well, you take a stab. Just stick with one way of breathing for a while. After a while, you begin to realize, “This feels really good,” or else, “This doesn’t feel right at all.” If that’s the case, you can change. Ask yourself, “If it …
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