Search results for: "Feeling"

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  2. Spread Goodness Around
     … So when King Pasenadi asked him, “Where should a gift be given?” he replied, “Give where you feel inspired or you feel it would be well-used.” Then the king went on to ask him, “When a gift is given, where does it give great fruit?” And the Buddha said, “That’s another question entirely. You want to give to people who are free … 
  3. Protection for the Holidays
     … Remember that our feelings are not handed to us ready-made. As the Buddha said, there’s an element of fabrication in terms of which feelings you’re going to focus on, and which ones you’re going to ignore. When you focus on certain potentials, you actually turn them into full-fledged feelings. So how are you going to fabricate something skillful out … 
  4. Study to Practice
     … perceptions and feelings. What are the perceptions that aggravate the anger? What perceptions might help put the anger aside? The same with the feelings: What kind of feelings are you focusing on? The Buddha gives lots of recommendations for how to deal with these three kinds of fabrication. He tells you even how to breathe: Breathe in a way that gives rise to rapture … 
  5. The Web of Pain
     … Let the breath come in, go out, in a way that feels good for the body. And focus on the comfortable sensations related to the breath. These can be anywhere in the body at all. When you emphasize the comfort like this, you find it easier to stay in the present moment. This is to combat a tendency the mind has, which is to … 
  6. The Missing Truth
     … That connects with the feeling, the feeling of ease that you’re trying to create here. That gives you three of the establishings of mindfulness right there: body, feelings, mind. When you can bring those together, they gain strength from one another. In other words, your intentions are focused on the breath. Your awareness fills the body. The breath fills the body. The sense … 
  7. All-around Alertness
     … finding ways of breathing that feel really good right now—and what feels good right now is not necessarily what’s going to feel good tomorrow. So look at this with fresh eyes. Where do you not ordinarily focus on breath sensations in the body? Have you ever spent much time with your right flank, or your left flank, or your tailbone? Give them … 
  8. Rebirth & Not-Self
     … And you can feel the in-and-out breath anywhere you want, wherever you notice that it’s clear to watch the breath, where you find that it’s in a part of the body that’s especially sensitive to how it feels when you breathe in, how it feels when you breathe out. It might be down in the chest, in the throat … 
  9. Off the Continuum
     … What can you do to calm the effect of the breath on the body until there is a sense of ease, well-being, where it feels like the breath currents in your body are all flowing together, and they’re not working at cross-purposes? The next step in the breath meditation is to breathe in a way that induces feelings of rapture, feelings … 
  10. Gratitude to Things
     … You feel underappreciated; you feel that nobody cares. And you wonder, “Why should I be doing good things for other people when they don’t appreciate it, when they don’t feel gratitude?” This is how a lack of gratitude causes society to unravel. Real civilization doesn’t lie in having good things. It lies in having good intentions for one another. Ajaan Fuang … 
  11. Painful Feelings, Hurtful Words
     … So look at this territory that you’ve claimed as yours, such as a relationship when you feel that someone has said something unpleasant in the relationship: You feel that the territory of your relationship has been violated. But the whole part about being in relationships with other people is that there’s a lot that’s not under your control, and even though … 
  12. Fabricating with Awareness
     … your feelings and perceptions. Again, the breath is helpful here. You can create feelings of ease and well-being throughout the body, which will have a really healthy effect on the mind. You look at greed, aversion, and delusion, and you begin to realize that they’re not worth the effort they require because there’s already a sense of well-being. The reason … 
  13. The World Is Swept Away
     … Where do you feel the energy moving in the body? That’s the breath we’re talking about. Ask yourself if it feels good. If you’re not sure, you can experiment with different kinds of breathing. Longer, shorter. Heavier, lighter. Faster, slower. Deeper, more shallow. See what feels good for right now: energizing if you’re feeling tired; soothing if you’re feeling … 
  14. The Long-Distance Meditator
     … On the days when you feel like practicing, you practice; on the days when you don’t feel like practicing, you practice. When things are going well, you practice; when things are not going well, you practice. That stick-to-itiveness requires all of the qualities that the Buddha said go into a good determination, starting with discernment. Most of us are like sprinters … 
  15. Unraveling the Present
     … Then there are mental fabrications, feeling and perception, and those are right at the breath as well. There’s the feeling of pleasure or pain, or the neutral feelings that come with the breath. And then perception: Those are the labels you put on things when you say, “Okay, that feels good. That doesn’t feel good.” All these things are right here. The … 
  16. Goodness Comes from Heedfulness
     … What usually happens is that the mind is with the breath, but there’s a part that gets bored, that wants something new to think about, that wants a little entertainment, and even while you’re with the breath, it starts feeling around for someplace else to go. So you’ve got to watch for that. This quality of watchfulness is probably one of … 
  17. Goodwill as Restraint
     … It comes out in times of weakness, times when you’re feeling threatened. It comes out in times of fear. You’ve got to learn how to defend yourself from unskillful behavior that would come at any of those times, so that even when you’re feeling weak and threatened and fearful, you hold onto the principle, “I want genuine happiness”—which may require … 
  18. Concentration Work
     … If you want to come away feeling strong, you have to be willing to exercise. Here, the work or exercise is directed thought and evaluation around the breath. Establish a beachhead in the body, an area of the body where you feel at ease and confident. Then learn how to expand from there, listening to the needs of the body. Does it need deep … 
  19. Insight Is Seeing What’s Worth Doing
    Try to stay focused on the breath, wherever you feel it most vividly. If you don’t know where it’s most vivid, take a couple of good, long, deep in-and-out breaths. Let it calm down until it feels just right—not too heavy to be comfortable, but not so light that you can’t follow it. And don’t put too … 
  20. Time & Place
     … He says, “Maybe this monk was thinking about the fact that all feelings are painful, all feelings are dukkha. Since actions result in feeling, all actions would result in pain.” The Buddha says, “Here’s another fool. When you’re talking about karma, you talk about the three kinds of feeling: pleasant, painful, neither pleasant nor painful.” That’s because when you’re talking … 
  21. A Seeker’s Habits
     … The concentrated mind is a good place to start seeing deeper into the processes of the mind.” So these feelings of ease, sometimes feelings of rapture—these become tools as well. And even insight into the four noble truths: That ultimately is a tool, a way of looking at things that helps you break free from attachments. So this is very much a “doing … 
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