Search results for: "The Breath"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. Four Steps for the Heart & Mind
     … What kind of hunger does your body have for the breath right now? Can you satisfy that? Would that be satisfactory to the mind? Sometimes if the mind is feeling weak or frazzled, just breathing really fully and comfortably makes you happy to be here. Other times, the mind seems disinclined to deal with the breath at all. It’s been looking at the … 
  7. Withstanding Pleasure & Pain
     … This is why we use directed thought and evaluation with the breath. Watch your breath for a while and notice where it’s comfortable, where it’s not comfortable. At what point does the breath get too long? Or how does it feel when the breath is too short? You explore these things. You think about them, you ask questions, and you evaluate. When … 
  8. Do Jhana
     … As with the breath: The breath energy is something that’s present throughout the body, which is one of the reasons why it’s the number-one topic of concentration. We’ve got the in-and-out breath. But also we’ve got the breath energies moving in the nerves, the breath energy moving down the muscles and through the blood vessels. Every part … 
  9. Evaluation
     … You evaluate the breath. You evaluate the way you’re perceiving the breath, the mental images you have of the breath, the way you discuss the breath with yourself, and then you make adjustments. That way, the breath becomes comfortable, the mind can begin to settle down with a sense of ease and well-being, and the mind and the breath can become snug … 
  10. Right View Tells You What to Do
     … focusing on the breath, and clearing out other things that get in the way. And then we bring three qualities to this practice: ardency, alertness, and mindfulness. Ardency is trying to do it well. If you’re not with the breath, you try to bring your attention back as quickly as possible. When you are with the breath you try to be as sensitive … 
  11. Do You Want to Stop Suffering?
     … You keep returning to the breath. If the mind wanders off, just drop whatever it’s wandering off to and think about the breath again. Get back in touch with the feeling of the breath. Now, if you can think about the breath and evaluate it with the purpose of getting to settle down, you’re developing both concentration and insight at the same … 
  12. Pleasures & Pains on the Middle Way
    Start with some good, long, deep in-and-out breaths—long in, long out—to alert yourself to the breath. Then the next question is: Does it feel good? If it feels good, keep it up. If not, you can change the rhythm of your breathing. You can think of all kinds of variations: shorter’ even deeper or more shallow; heavier, lighter; faster, slower … 
  13. Unskillful Thinking
     … How is the breath energy going in the body? They say that the breath energy can be felt all the way down to the toes. Can you feel it? So when you’re sitting around doing nothing, you don’t have to do nothing, you can watch your breath, you can play with the breath, you can learn about the breath. At the same … 
  14. Everybody Benefits
     … We work with the breath, trying to be alert to all the different ways the breath is moving in the body and to all the different levels of the breath, so that we can also become more and more alert to different levels in the mind: levels of awareness that may get covered over by our ordinary concerns, our ordinary desires, our ordinary considerations … 
  15. See Yourself as Active Verbs
     … Bring the mind to the breath, keep thinking about the breath, evaluating the breath. How does it feel right now as you’re breathing in? Question the breath: What’s going on with it? And what are you doing? How are you relating to the breath? You’re trying to bring the breath and the mind together. Both of these are activities. The way … 
  16. The Power of Attention
     … But the breath is a good topic to have as your home base in any event, because other topics do have their drawbacks. The breath is the safest. It’s also the one where the Buddha says you see the processes of fabrication most clearly. He talks about bodily fabrication, which is the breath itself, and mental fabrication, your perceptions and feelings. This is … 
  17. The Positive Side of Heedfulness
     … Change the breath. Change the way you focus. Change the way you adjust the breath. There are lots of different ways of adjusting the breath. Sometimes you put a little pressure on the breath. Other times you just pose an image in the mind and see how the breath responds. Then you pose another image to see how the breath responds then. Then for … 
  18. Looking at Your Life
    When you bring the mind the breath, you’re developing a good vantage point, a good place to look at what’s going on in the body, a good place to look at what’s going on in the mind—and a good place to look at what’s going on in your life. There tends to be a lot of confusion in all … 
  19. Make the Most of What You’ve Got
     … We’re thinking about the breath. We’re evaluating the breath to make the breath into a good place to stay. So notice as you’re breathing in and out: What kind of breathing feels good for the body right now? Does your body need long breathing or short breathing, heavy or light, fast or slow, deep or shallow? Experiment for a while to … 
  20. Immersed in the Body
     … So as you focus on the breath, try to get past the idea that you’re in one part of the head watching the breath in other parts of the body. You want to occupy the whole body, bathed in the whole breath. The breath and the body should be surrounding your sense of where you are. And then you want to maintain that … 
  21. Complexities of the Mind
     … That’s another reason why the breath is home base—because when you’re in the present moment, when the mind is still, you can’t help but see the breath. It’s there. And the fact that the breath feels comfortable, feels nourishing: That’s a sign that the concentration is right. So as the Buddha says, if you try to focus on … 
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