Search results for: "The Breath"

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  2. Harmlessness
     … Your awareness of the breath should be the container for the day. And even when you can’t focus entirely on the breath, or give it your 100% attention, you can still make it the framework. Even though you’re aware of what’s going on outside and you’re responding to what’s going on outside, you can still be aware of the … 
  3. Wake Up from Addiction
    Wake Up from Addiction January 12, 2016 As you’re settling down with the breath, you don’t want to think too much about it, just enough to make it comfortable. You don’t want to analyze things to the point where you start losing the breath and getting caught up in the analysis. So you ask yourself just a few simple questions: Where … 
  4. The Buddha’s Cure
     … Think of the breathing as a whole-body process. If there are parts of the body where the breath doesn’t seem to go, just watch them for a while and ask yourself, “Suppose the breath did flow there?” If you hold that perception in mind, what would that do to those sensations? There are some sensations in the body that seem hard and … 
  5. Your World to Practice In
     … Think of the breath breathing the breath. The breath energies are already in the body. As they move, the in-and-out breath moves with them. When you think of the breath in this way, then it’s easy to have a sense of fullness, a sense of ease in the breathing. Years back, I was teaching in Malaysia, and I was told that … 
  6. Cornered
     … So you do the breathing in. Let the body breathe out on its own. You don’t have to squeeze the breath out. Another thing to watch out for is the moments between the breaths. Instead of trying to squeeze the end of the breath to make a marker that “now the out-breath has ended” or “now the in-breath has ended,” use … 
  7. Jhāna & Discernment
    Take a couple of good, long, deep in-and-out breaths, and ask yourself, “Where do you feel the breathing in the body?” We know the air comes in and out through the nose into the lungs. But when the Buddha’s talking about the breath, he doesn’t talk about the air, he talks about the energy in the body itself. You have … 
  8. An Auspicious Day
     … If you want to observe the body and to observe the mind, the breath is a good place to stay, because you can see influences coming from both directions: the ways in which feelings in the body influence the mind, and the ways the acts of the mind have an impact on the body. Try to filter them through the breath. The breath here … 
  9. To Be Worthy of the Dhamma
     … For example, with the breath: You’re sensitive to how long the breath is, how short the breath is, how it feels throughout the entire body, and then as the Buddha says, you calm bodily fabrication. Now, when you look at some of his other instructions, you realize that you have to energize it first before you calm it down. As he said, if … 
  10. Fear of Death
     … This is why you work with the breath so that it becomes your natural base of operation and your natural foundation—natural in the sense that you’ve made it habitual. And it helps, of course, when the breath is comfortable or you can make it comfortable. After all, there is an intentional element in the breath. This is why it’s called bodily … 
  11. Housecleaning
     … The closer you can get to the center of the body, the core of the body, the more gratifying the breath can be. Or you can think of the breath doing deep, deep, deep into your head. Any part of the body that you’ve neglected for a long time: Let the breath do its work. It’ll take time. Some patterns of tension … 
  12. The Energy You Broadcast
     … This is why we work with the breath: to create a place where the mind can settle down and really feel at home, really feel connected inside. And this is why one of the steps in breath meditation is just that: getting connected. As you get more and more sensitive to the breath energy, you can begin to see areas in which it’s … 
  13. Insight from Jhana
     … So you’ve got the breath as form. Then you’ve got the feelings, of course, that come with the breath—either comfort or discomfort—and the perceptions that hold you with the breath, along with the various ways of perceiving the breath that allow you to get into deeper and deeper states of concentration. When you can drop the breath and go into … 
  14. Karma in the Present
     … What is it? You’ve got the breath coming in and out: That’s bodily fabrication. There’s an intentional element in how you breathe, so try to breathe in a way that creates a sense of well-being right now. Then there’s verbal fabrication: directed thought and evaluation. Direct your thoughts to the breath. Evaluate the breath. Do you like this breath … 
  15. Transparent Becoming
     … So try to take an interest in the breath. Give yourself reasons to stay. If the mind gets bored, give it variations in the breath, variations in your focal point. There are lots of ways you can stay with the breathing, lots of ways you can conceive the breath process in the body. Some things we can learn from tai chi or Chinese teachings … 
  16. Two Eyes, Not Just One
     … When you’re looking at the breath—say, the breath in the nose—how’s the breath going in the back of the neck? If there’s a problem in the front, you might ask yourself, “How’s the breath flowing down the back?” or vice versa. You’ve got a backache or back pain of some kind? Ask yourself how the breath energy … 
  17. Concentration
     … You’re here to focus on the breath, not on thoughts of jhana or absorption. In fact, even the words of this talk: Don’t let them get in the way of your focusing on the breath, watching the breath as it comes in, as it goes out, being intent to stay right here with the breath. The talk is here to encourage you … 
  18. Ekaggata
     … When you think of the breath in a particular way, when you focus on it in a particular way, what happens? Look carefully at this. The more time you spend looking at this, the more you begin to realize that some aspects of the breath can be affected by your present intention, while there are some things you can’t change. That’s something … 
  19. Worlds
     … As those storms come blowing through, sometimes the best thing you can do is simply hold onto the breath. Just as you would batten down for a storm, you just lie low and try to hold tight to the breath for dear life as the winds blow through. You hang onto the breath as tenaciously as you can. Even though it doesn’t fill … 
  20. Encouraging Perceptions
     … When we focus on the sensation of the breathing, we’re also keeping in mind a particular perception of the breath so that we know what to look for, where to look for the breath. For example, if you have a perception of breath simply as air coming in and out of the lungs, you’re going to be looking in one place and … 
  21. Why We Meditate
     … It’s the same with the breath. It takes a while sometimes for the breath to help heal the mind, but it is healing, and when the breath is comfortable coming in, going out, you can get touch with how to let that comfortable sensation spread throughout the body, down the nerves, throughout the body, out to the skin. Then just let it stay … 
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