Search results for: "The Breath"

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  2. Strength Training
     … Wherever you feel the breath, hang on right there. As you breathe in, as you breathe out, be sensitive to that sensation wherever you feel it in the body. The important thing is that you stick with the breath. You know that there’s no future breath you can watch, no past breath you can watch. So when you’re with the breath, you … 
  3. Understanding Contentment
     … Now bring your attention to the breath and make something good out of the breath. It’s already coming in and going out, but what could you make out of it. Start with how it feels as it comes in, how it feel as it goes out. Wherever the breath is most obvious, wherever there are sensations in the body that tell you now … 
  4. To Make Suffering Crumble
     … You’ve got the breath, which is body or form, and you’re trying to breathe in a way that gives rise to a feeling of pleasure. You use certain perceptions of the breath. Feeling the body and the breath running along the nerves, the blood vessels, the muscles of the body, you talk to yourself about the breath to get it more comfortable … 
  5. Ironclad Technique vs. No Technique
     … the breath in the soles of the feet going up the legs and then up the spine, or the breath starting at the navel and going up the front of the body, whereas in the seven steps he talked about the breath coming in at the heart and then going down through the intestines. So there are lots of different ways you can play … 
  6. To Discern Suffering
     … You can focus on the sensation of the breathing anywhere that’s comfortable. You can explore different parts of the body to see where your comfortable spot is. Then ask yourself, “How can the breath be adjusted to keep this spot right here comfortable?” Learn how to maintain that sense of comfort while you’re sitting here with your eyes closed, when things are … 
  7. Holding on Strategically
     … In fact, ideally, as you’re getting into concentration, you want to have a sense that the body, the mind, and the breath are all one. The breath fills the body; the mind fills the body; the mind is one with the breath. They’re all sitting here together. Then you can use this sense of you inhabiting your space when you’re dealing … 
  8. To Know the Noble Truths
     … And you’re alert to make sure that you actually are doing it. “Is the mind with the breath? Is the breath with the mind?” As long as the answer is yes, you’re fine; you keep that up. That’s the beginning of the third quality, which is ardency: You try to do this well. If you find that the mind and the … 
  9. The Buddha’s Program
     … The way you picture the breath to yourself will have an influence on how the breath actually goes right now. How you tell yourself to focus on the breath will influence how the breath goes right now. This is why we try out different assumptions about the breathing and the breath energy in the body—and why, when the meditation isn’t going well … 
  10. Question & Probe
     … You work with the breath in the body so that even though there may be difficult emotions going on in the mind, you’re here with a sense of well-being, physically at least. And the difficult emotions are not working their way into the body through the breath. The breath forms a cocoon around the body. Then, when you’re coming from that … 
  11. Samvega & Pasada
    Focusing on the breath, trying to get the mind to stay with the breath, can sometimes be a very chastening experience. On the first level, there’s the simple difficulty of getting the mind to stay with one thing: something as simple and nearby as the breath, and yet you find it slipping off, slipping off, slipping off. You start out with the best … 
  12. The Ennobling Path
     … With certain factors of the concentration—such as having to keep reminding yourself to stay with the breath or having to evaluate the breath—there comes a point when they’re no longer necessary. The breath feels good coming in; the breath feels good going out. You can really bore into the breath and feel like you’re penetrating it. There’s a sense … 
  13. Different Minds, Different Bodies
     … Sometimes the breath can do that for you; other times, you have to drop the breath for the time being and work on other issues that will finally bring you back to the point where you’re willing to take on the breath. Even when the mind settles down with the breath, it’s going to settle down in different ways. The descriptions of … 
  14. Attahi Attano Natho
     … The more you’re aware of the breath, the more you explore the breath, then the more you see find that the breath has lot more to offer than just keeping the body alive. The way you breathe can have an effect on your health, and it can have an effect on your mental state. Even when the mind is bouncing around but the … 
  15. Immediate Knowledge
     … This is why we’re focusing on the breath. It’s something right here, right now. Even if you have doubts about other things, you can at least be confident, when the breath is coming in, you know that it’s coming in. When it’s coming out, you can know that as well. When you’re with the breath, you know what you … 
  16. Feeding the Mind
     … If you learn how to savor the breath, you realize there’s a lot to feed on right here: just the sensation of the breath coming in, going out. As you get more and more skilled staying here, learning how to work with the breath, finding what the breath can do for the body, you begin to realize that a lot of things you … 
  17. Your Quiet Corner
     … How to make the breath comfortable is a useful skill to have at all times. You find that when anger arises in the mind, it’s going to have an effect on the breath. When fear arises, when lust arises, it’s going to have an effect on the breath. If you know how to gain a sense of how to adjust your breathing … 
  18. Love is Conditional, Goodwill Is Not
     … You try and develop a sense of ease with the breath, a sense of rapture with the breath, to breathe in and out aware of the whole body, breathe in and out calming the mind. There are lots of things you’re going to be doing. But to do them well, you have to make your mind non-reactive so that you can see … 
  19. The Veils of Delusion
     … This is why we focus first on the breath, because the breath is the anchor that keeps us right here. It also helps pull us out of our heads. So much of our lives is spent up in the gray matter, thinking about this, imagining that. Then these worlds that we create in our mind take over. It’s almost as if every little … 
  20. A Centered but Broad Awareness
     … Sometimes it’s all too easy when the breath feels comfortable and you’re focused on one little spot, the breath gets more and more refined, you lose track of the breath, and you fall into an air pocket or just drift away. So you want to expand your awareness, from the top of the head down to the tips of the toes, all … 
  21. Questions in the Practice
     … What are you doing right now? Why are you doing it? When you bring your attention to the breath, these things become clearer because these intentions appear right next to the breath. So focusing on the breath is not simply a beginning exercise that you drop later for other things. It’s bringing the mind to the point where it should be: right here … 
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