Search results for: "Feeling"
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- Food for Endurance… And then in terms of *mental fabrication—*the perceptions and feeling we focus on—we’re totally free to perceive a situation in lots of different ways, all of which are true. Then we can ask ourselves: “Which of these ways is the most conducive to keeping the mind happy, keeping the mind acting in skillful ways?” Choose that perception; choose those feelings. Then …
- Awakening Is in the Details… It feels good being here. It feels right being here. Everything is in its right place. Your body’s not distorted. Sometimes in the beginning, as you’re settling down, there’ll be some distortions in the body. The body will feel very large or very small. One time, I was with Ajaan Fuang in Bangkok, sitting with a group of people, and I …
- Inner Strength, Inner Wealth… There’s feeling: the feeling of hunger that drives you to look for food, and the feeling of fullness that comes when you’ve had enough. That’s a huge motivation right there. Then there’s perception, perceiving the nature of your hunger: Is this thirst? Is this hunger for something salty? Something sweet? You’ve got to learn how to read your own …
- Concentration Teamwork… But the mind is settled down in the sense that you’re with one object, and it feels good. The problem is that when it starts feeling good, we start letting go of the work that gave rise to it. This is why it’s important to have that sense of cause and effect. If you abandon the cause, the results are going to …
- Dharma Warriors… You don’t feel like meditating, you meditate. You feel like meditating, you meditate. You learn how to put your preferences aside. Of course, the wise way of doing that is learning how to put yourself in the right mood, even when you don’t come to the meditation with the right mood. When you sit down, get yourself in the right mood to …
- Equanimity After Victory… After all, the equanimity that comes with concentration comes after you’ve satisfied the mind with feelings of rapture, after you’ve satisfied the mind with feelings of pleasure. It’s not just telling itself to be equanimous. There’s a natural equanimity that comes when you’ve completed the work of getting the mind to settle down. The same with those lists of …
- Wise About Mistakes… One, the unhealthy type, is the opposite of pride, where you feel really bad about yourself and have no self-esteem. The other, the healthy type, is the opposite of shamelessness, not caring what other people think, not caring about what’s right or wrong. The shame he’s recommending is the second one, the opposite of shamelessness. Think about the Buddha’s instructions …
- Start Out Small… Try to sensitize yourself to how the breathing feels. Without this level of sensitivity, the meditation becomes mechanical. When it’s mechanical, it becomes a chore. And when it’s a chore, the mind will rebel. So ask yourself: What really feels good when you’re breathing right now? If you can’t figure out what really feels good, hold your breath for a …
- The Flow of Time… The part of the mind that pushes for greed, aversion, and delusion knows how to squeeze the breath and to make you feel that you’ve got to give in. So you’ve got to learn how to undo the squeeze. Work on breathing in a way that feels spacious, that feels soothing to the body, strengthening to the body, calming you when you …
- At Home in Your Own Skin… Breathe in a way that feels gratifying. Then learn how to share that gratifying feeling with all the different parts of your body. Learn how to fully inhabit this world that you can create around the breath. And keep monitoring it so that it remains a comfortable place to stay, a good place to stay, a solid place to stay. Now, you’ll find …
- All-around Knowing… When you work with the breath, he says you try to find what kind of rhythm feels good right now. There’s not just short or long. There’s also in-short and out-long, or in-long and out-short, fast, slow, heavy, light, deep, shallow. And he recommends that you play with those possibilities, experiment. When you gain a sense of ease …
- Eeeels… Think of them up all opening up, so that the current of breathing energy can go all the way through the nervous system, going down if that feels right, coming up if that feels better. Then learn how to maintain that whole-body awareness. Because it does take a certain amount of effort, more than just the amount of effort that’s enough to …
- Fire… Any parts of the body missing? Any places you feel a sense of space where there should be a sense of the body? Well, see if you can connect things together. Say that your shoulder feels like it’s missing. Okay, trace things down from the neck through the shoulder to the arm. Or notice where you feel the neck and where you feel …
- The Adventure in the Present… Wherever it’s most obvious or feels comfortable to stay focused, and the breath energy feels most comfortable, stay right there. Then see if you can make it more comfortable. When you do, you benefit both ways: The body gets more comfortable, and the mind has a better place to stay. It is possible to focus the mind on pains, and there are stages …
- For Your Good the Good of Others… If it feels blocked or tight, it’s a sign that it’s not good breath energy. You can make a change in it. If you see the body simply as a lump of matter, there’s not much you can do about feelings of blockage. But if you realize it’s energy, energy can be teased out, straightened out. So work with it …
- A Connoisseur of the Breath… And be alert to how the breath feels. Anything else that may come up, whether it’s a thought or 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. In other words, when you’re talking with someone else, notice how your …
- Feelings of Unworthiness… Another influence we can see is that belief that feelings of unworthiness are spiritually a good thing. After all, if a final judge comes and says, “Okay, eternal damnation,” we have to have a strong sense of our own unworthiness to think that that could be possibly just. Many of us have rejected that religion precisely for these reasons, but often it still sloshes …
- Passion for Dispassion… How does it feel? Where would it feel really good to focus on the breath? What parts of the body seem to be especially sensitive to a* *really comfortable breath? Usually it’s down the front of the torso, but some people find it down the back. Other people find it going deep into the brain. There are very sensitive spots inside the head …
- Taming the Elephant… Now, some people don’t like that feeling of fullness. I have a student who, after several years of meditating, came to me and said, “I can’t do this anymore. Every time I focus on the breath, I get this feeling of fullness in the body.” I told her, “That’s what people want.” Well, it turned out she’d almost drowned twice …
- The Basic Medicine… Take the body section by section and notice how each section feels as you breathe in, how it feels as you breathe out. If there’s any tension or tightness, let it dissolve in the flow of the breath energy, so that you breathe in without building up any new tension and breathe out without holding onto any tension that may already be there …
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