Search results for: "Feelings"

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  2. Commit & Reflect All Around
     … In other words, you stay with the breath, wherever you feel it in the body. When the Buddha is talking about breath, he’s not talking about the air coming in and out through the nose. That’s a tactile sensation. He’s talking about one of the properties of the body itself—the energy you feel as you breathe in and breathe out … 
  3. Reclaiming the Breath
     … Find at least one toehold in your body where the breath feels okay—where the energy feels okay. You may want to find a still spot. They’re located in different parts of the body. Ajaan Lee talks about the still spot that’s right at the diaphragm. But you could find others as well—the middle of the head, right where the legs … 
  4. The Uses of Concentration
     … Then allow the breath to find a rhythm that feels just right. See where your sense of ease is right now: which parts of the body feel okay, not tense, not tight. This may involve a slight trick of perception. We tend to focus on the pains, the tight areas, the problems, and we miss the areas that are actually okay. It’s like … 
  5. The Sublime Attitudes in Context
     … When you tell yourself you should have compassion for a certain person, but you don’t feel it, or you harbor very uncompassionate feelings about that person, you have to look at those feelings. You can’t just slather over them with clouds of goodwill, because they won’t go away. You’ve got to probe and ask: Why would you want this person … 
  6. Achieving Balance
     … Where are those bones? In other words, when you think about the bones in the toe, focus on the feeling in the toe. With the bones in your feet, focus on the feelings in your feet; and so on, up through the body. This way you give the mind work to do. If your mind won’t settle down with the bones, survey the … 
  7. Discernment Fosters Concentration
     … This is an energizing quality, and you maintain it as long as it feels needed, as long as it feels good. Some people read the descriptions of concentration and say, “I’ve done this so far, now what’s next?” Well, allow each step to do its work. We’re not here to do the seven-minute jhanas. As the mind begins to settle … 
  8. Cooking the Present Moment
     … The way you breathe is going to make a big difference in how you feel your body from within right now. That’s why the breath is called a bodily fabrication. Then there’s verbal fabrication—your inner chatter right now: asking questions, making statements, commenting on this, commenting on that. If you leave that mental chatter to its old ways, it just wanders … 
  9. Turn Off the Automatic Pilot
     … How can you breathe in a way that feels really good? If you haven’t been paying much attention to the breath, it’s going to take a while to get sensitive to what really does feel good for the body. Because when you’re using your mind for other things, the breath energy gets trampled on. And, as with anything that’s been … 
  10. Values
     … What kind of breathing feels good? What kind of breathing doesn’t feel good? You train yourself to develop breathing that gives rise to a sense of refreshment, gives rise to a sense of pleasure. If the mind is scattered, you learn to breathe in ways, think in ways, that get it to settle down, be more concentrated. If it’s feeling low, you … 
  11. How to Leave Meditation
     … If you can notice how the body feels when things are settled in and feeling good, refreshed, nourished, at ease, energized, relaxed, or whatever feels good for you, see if you can remember that and try to recreate it the next time around. This is especially important if you have a tendency to regard the whole hour as a time to settle down. This … 
  12. Right Resolve & Right Concentration
     … When an emotion feels strong, it’s because it has taken over our breathing. It changes your heart rate, changes the way you digest things: All kinds of things get changed in the body through unskillful breathing. Then you feel that you’ve got to give in to that unskillful intention just to get rid of all the symptoms you’re feeling in the … 
  13. Seeing Through Your Defilements
    Take a couple of good long deep in-and-out breaths, and notice where you feel the process of breathing in the body. Where is it most prominent? Focus your attention there. It may not be on the air coming in and out of the nose. It may be the movement in the chest or the movement of the stomach. But wherever it’s … 
  14. Will Meditation Make You Grim & Dull?
     … You want to have a sense of positive enjoyment in how it feels to have a body. One of the reasons you work with the breath is so that you feel comfortable inside your body. No matter what the world outside may say about your body, you’re perfectly fine with it inside. That way, you’ve got a friend inside. You’ve got … 
  15. Perceptions of the Breath
     … When the mind’s settling down with a sense of mental solidity where it feels at home, feels strong, effortlessly strong, you know you’re heading in the right direction. If you’re feeling strung out, you’re pushing things too much in the wrong direction. We’re not here to bring the mind to the brink. We’re here to let it settle … 
  16. Training Your Moods
     … In this case, as you’re sitting here with your eyes closed, focused on the breath, you’re trying to breathe in a way that feels good. You’re trying to notice which parts of the body are sensitive to how the breathing feels. A lot of people like to focus on the nose, but that’s not a very sensitive part of the … 
  17. Not Getting What You Want
     … Then there’s mental fabrication—perceptions and feelings. Perceptions here are the images and labels you apply to things, identifying this as this, and that as that. Feelings are not emotions so much, they’re more feeling tones: feeling tones of pleasure, pain, or neither-pleasure-nor-pain. There’s an intentional element in all of these things, which is why the Buddha calls … 
  18. Choosing Freedom
     … When you breathe in, where do you feel the movement of the body as you breathe in? When you breathe out, is there any movement? Often, the out-breath is more subtle than the in-breath. And you don’t have to create sensations of movement. Just notice when you breathe in, where does it feel most obvious? Then notice if it feels comfortable … 
  19. Strategic Wisdom
     … Breathe in a way that feels refreshing to the body, that feels good to stay here and feels good in trying to maintain that. As Ajaan Fuang once said, the sense of fullness, the sense the rapture you can develop through the breath is the lubricant that keeps meditation going. Without that lubricant, things dry up. Like a motor, things seize up and stop … 
  20. The Mind’s Song
     … It might be at the nose, the chest, the abdomen, the neck, the middle of the head — any place where all the different pressures of the breath coming in and going out and the pressures of your blood circulation feel right together. Focus right there and allow the breath to find whatever rhythm feels good, feels gratifying. If the mind wanders off, bring it … 
  21. Acceptance
    As you focus on the breath, see what kind of breathing feels best. You can focus on any spot in the body where you’re sensitive to the sensation of breathing. It doesn’t have to be where the air is passing through the nose. It can be the rise and fall of the stomach, the rise and fall of the chest, or anyplace … 
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