Search results for: "Feelings"

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  2. Well-armed Efforts
     … There’s bodily fabrication, which is the breath; verbal fabrication, which is directed thought and evaluation, in other words, the way you talk to yourself; and there’s mental fabrication, which are perceptions, the labels you have for things, and then feelings—feelings of pleasure, pain, neither-pleasure-nor-pain. Every mental state is composed of these three things. So when something unskillful comes … 
  3. Don’t Be Afraid of Jhana
    As you sit here trying to find a comfortable way to breathe, don’t be afraid of enjoying the pleasure that comes when you’ve found something that feels really good. After all, one of the factors of right concentration in the first jhana, the second jhana, and the third jhana is pleasure. The first two jhanas have a sense of rapture. In all … 
  4. Merit: Actively Happy
     … He said, “Give where you feel inspired, or you feel the gift would be well used.” In fact, that’s a rule for the monks up to this day. If someone comes and asks, “Where should we give a gift?” you say, “Give where you feel inspired, where you feel your gift would be well used or well taken care of.” That throws the … 
  5. See Yourself as Active Verbs
     … The aggregates are form, feeling, perception, mental fabrications, and consciousness—all of which the Buddha defines with verbs. Form, he says, deforms. In other words, in the form of your body there’s nothing static. Feelings feel: pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain. Perceptions perceive. Thought fabrications fabricate, and consciousness cognizes. These are all verbs, and we cling to them. The act of clinging … 
  6. Four Determinations in One
     … The question now is, what does this consciousness cognize? Well, it knows feelings: pleasant feelings, painful feelings, neutral feelings. You see how they arise, you see how they come from contact, and you see how they end when the contact ends. So you let go of those feelings. The consciousness then is totally equanimous. You realize you could take that equanimity and apply it … 
  7. The Forerunner of All Things
     … And finally there’s mental fabrication, which is composed of feelings and perceptions. Feelings are feelings of pleasure, pain, or neither-pleasure-nor-pain. Perceptions are the images or labels that you apply to things—the messages from your lizard brain, which has images that get you breathing in a certain way, which will create a certain feeling. If it’s a threatening image … 
  8. Staying True
     … Notice where you feel the breath in the body. Any spot where the sensation is very clear that now the breath is coming in, now the breath is going out: Focus on that spot. It doesn’t have to be at the nose. It might be in the chest. You can feel the rising of the chest as you breathe in, you can feel … 
  9. The Desire to End All Desires
     … Ask yourself, within the context of that whole-body awareness, what kind of breathing feels good? When the breathing feels good, can you make that breath or that sense of feeling good spread through the body so that you feel like you’re being bathed in breath energy? Change the image of your relationship to the breath. You’re not in one part of … 
  10. Inconstancy
     … In the beginning, you have to talk to yourself, evaluate the breath to make sure that the breath feels good for the body, feels nourishing, that all the different breath energies are working together, and that they’re just right for the mind. The breath is not laborious, but at the same time not so subtle that you can’t follow it. When it … 
  11. Seeing the Stillness
     … What was your breath like then? What was the visceral feel of that mood? You can try to tune back into that feeling; it’s there. Tune back in to the way the breath felt at that point and allow it to have that same sense of ease. Then notice where the other areas of ease are, here and there in the body, that … 
  12. Appropriate Attention Plus Admirable Friendship
     … When it responds, which way feels best? What can you stay with for a while, with a sense of feeling at home? If you don’t feel at home with the breath, you’re like an animal that’s jumped onto something wobbly and is going to get ready to jump as soon as there’s danger. In other words, the animal can’t … 
  13. Generating Energy
     … Is that healthy breath energy or not? If it were healthy, what would it feel like? Because sometimes you hold in mind the perception that a sensation is solid, and you put up with all kinds of stuff from solidity that you wouldn’t put up with if you thought this was breath. Then conversely, there are times when you feel a need for … 
  14. An Ennobling Pleasure
     … What it requires is a lot of your own plain powers of observation, noticing how the breath feels as you breathe in, how it feels as you breathe out. What are the varieties in the way that it feels? When you decide to change the way you breathe, do you make things worse? If so, how can you make things better? This requires that … 
  15. Protecting Your Space
     … Try to get a rhythm of breath that feels really good. You can experiment with longer breathing. In fact, it’s good to start out with a couple of good, long, deep, in-and-out breaths. If that feels good, you keep it up. If not, you can change. Shorter, deeper, shallower, heavier, lighter, faster, slower: There are lots of different ways of breathing … 
  16. The Mind Set Tall
     … a nasty little kid inside that gets its gratification from being angry, from the feeling of conceit, superiority, the way we treasure the sense of having been wronged, for fear that if we didn’t have that sense of being wronged, we wouldn’t exist, we wouldn’t have any worth. A lot of that is what fuels our anger. Until you see that … 
  17. Brahmaviharas at the Breath
     … You’re sitting here learning how to breathe in a way that feels really good. Have some goodwill for the breath, goodwill for yourself. Be happy when the breath is comfortable. When it’s not comfortable, show some compassion. Try to figure out why it’s not comfortable. Are you putting too much pressure on it? Are you focusing in the right place or … 
  18. The Truth of Desires
     … The mind is already primed to look at things in a certain way—based on the way you think, based on the way you perceive things, based on your desires, based on the feelings you have in the body. Scientists have been starting to show how much your intestinal system actually runs your brain. If the intestinal system feels bad, then you’re going … 
  19. Right Mindfulness
     … Try to keep the body in mind all the time and be alert to how the breath energy feels. As for anything else that may come up—whether it’s a thought, a feeling, or an interaction—try to see how it relates to the body. This is how you strengthen your frame of reference and turn it into an object of concentration. When … 
  20. Confident, Steadfast, Resolute
     … Where do you feel the breath in the body? You may be uncertain about that because in the West we don’t talk much about breath sensations in the body. So you wonder, “I’m feeling something in my arm, I’m feeling something in my leg. Is that breath, is it not?” Well, just assume that it’s breath. Every sensation in the … 
  21. A Path of Skills
     … You can experiment to see what kind of breathing feels good. When you find a rhythm that feels good, stay with it until it doesn’t feel so good anymore—then you can change. Keep being aware of what you’re doing and the results you’re getting. We do this so that we can understand the mind. In the Buddha’s first sermon … 
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