Search results for: "Feelings"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. Learning by Doing
     … Notice where you feel the breathing in your body, because when we talk about the breath, it’s not so much the air coming in and out of the nose—it’s the flow of energy in the body. It’s the flow of energy that keeps us alive, that allows you to feel the different parts of the body. We tend to think … 
  13. Analyzing Anger
     … It went from a feeling to a perception. Or sometimes the perception came first then the feeling. Then there’s the conversation and it turns into craving. And then on up. It causes a lot of problems. So when you’re sitting there with a narrative, ask yourself, “What is it made up out of?” Make it something you can take apart. Cut it … 
  14. Tranquility & Insight Through Jhāna
     … Then there’s mental fabrication—feelings and perceptions. States of right concentration all the way up through the dimension of nothingness are called perception attainments, and the different levels of jhāna are defined by the feeling tone—pleasure and rapture in the first jhāna, more pleasure and rapture in the second, just pleasure in the third, and equanimity in the fourth. So you’re … 
  15. Study & Practice
     … The frames of reference are the body in and of itself, like we’re doing right now focusing on the breath; feelings in and of themselves, i.e., feelings of pleasure, pain, neither-pleasure-nor-pain; mind-states in and of themselves, noticing, say, whether the mind is overcome by passion or is free of passion, overcome by aversion or free of aversion or … 
  16. An Interest in the Breath
    When we focus on the breath, we want to be as sensitive as possible to how the breathing feels, not just at one spot or two spots in the body. We want to be able to feel the breath in* all* the parts of the body. That requires that we have the conception, or the perception, that breath can be everywhere in the body … 
  17. Shelter
     … Adjusting feelings may seem the strangest of the group, but as you work with the breath, with the way you perceive things, with the way you think, then you’re going to change the way you feel. There’s also the fact that the body has lots of different feeling potentials. There are parts of the body that would give rise to a great … 
  18. Everybody Benefits
     … In other words, when you receive a gift, you have to behave in such a way that before giving the donor feels good, while giving and after giving the donor feels good, satisfied that it was really worthwhile, giving that gift. This means that we don’t pressure people into giving beforehand. We receive the gift with respect. And then we use it well … 
  19. Training the Mind to Train the Mind
     … It also helps if you can learn how to really get to know the breath, so that you can figure out, “What kind of breathing feels good? What kind of breathing feels right for the body right now?” And what are the body’s needs right now? Is it tired? Can you breathe in a way that gives it energy? Are you tense? Breathe … 
  20. Developed in Body & Mind
     … And ask yourself, how can you give rise to a sense of fullness? What are the parts of the body that feel empty right now, that could use some fullness? Or they feel depleted, and they could use some energy. Especially after a day of work like this, what can you do to energize the body, to feel refreshed? What parts of the body … 
  21. Stay
     … The breath fills the whole body, and it’s because everything feels connected inside that the breathing can stop, without your feeling any lack, any need to breathe. Sometimes you may find this startling, and as soon as a startled thought goes through the mind, you have to start breathing again. But if you remind yourself that the body’s oxygen needs have been … 
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