Search results for: "Feelings"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. Accepting the Way Things Function
     … If one way of breathing doesn’t feel good, try another one. You also use your perceptions about the breath. When you breathe in, how do you perceive it? What image do you hold in mind? Perception, here, can include not just words, but also mental images, or visualizations. What way of visualizing the breath helps? What way of visualizing your body helps, so … 
  10. Sensitive to Fabrication
     … The parts of the body that you feel right now, you wouldn’t be able to feel. It’s the breath-energy that allows you to sense that you’re sitting here with a body and you know where it is. You know where the various parts are. Now, some of us, as we get to know the body as we feel it from … 
  11. Dissolving Your Thoughts
     … There’s an energetic feeling around it and you can feel it in the body. So if you feel one of these waves coming through you, try to notice where you feel it in the body and see if you can breathe in a way that undoes what the wave did. The wave is like a wave of water washing against the shore. It … 
  12. Skills for Dying Well
     … If you’re feeling that you’re being pushed out of the body, you’ll jump to whatever appears. But if you realize that your perception of the body is something that’s falling apart, then you can remember that you’ve grown used to taking this perception of the body apart so you don’t feel quite so threatened, you don’t feel … 
  13. Gratitude, Goodwill & Generosity
     … And I must admit I’d never thought about the idea of goodwill to snakes and what their feelings might be. I had always been concerned about my own feelings when I saw them. But it was good to think about theirs. As Ajaan Fuang said, they’re operating with a disadvantage: no feet like everyone else. They have to slide on their bellies … 
  14. Even Animals Can Be Trained
     … Try to see what rhythm and texture of the breathing feels good. Some places will tell you that a good rhythm to start out with is about 5-6 seconds in-breath, 5-6 seconds out-breath. Try that for a while and see how it feels. And think of the breathing as a whole body process. When the Buddha talks about the breath … 
  15. Determination
     … In the instructions on breath meditation, when the Buddha talks about feelings, the first two steps are to learn how to breathe in a way that gives rise to feelings of rapture and feelings of ease. You’re going to need these as you deal with pain, remembering that the pain doesn’t consume the whole body. There are parts of the body that … 
  16. Analysis of Qualities
     … So how do you deal with the breath in a way that’s pleasant? How do you deal with your mind so that it feels willing to settle down, finds pleasure in settling down? After all, the mind is a traveler; it’s a wanderer. That’s what samsara is all about. We tend to think of samsara as a place, but actually it … 
  17. Judgmental vs. Judicious
     … What kind of breathing feels good? Here again you can get tied up thinking there must be a perfect breath someplace. Well, no. The question is simply: What’s good enough to settle down with? If something seems okay, try it for a while. If, after a while, it doesn’t feel good, you can change again. If it does feel good, you can … 
  18. The Self-correcting Mind
     … What kind of breathing can the mind stay with? What kind of breathing feels good for the body? What kind of breathing feels good for the mind? What kind of breathing is clear enough so we can focus on it but soothing enough so that it’s actually calming, allows the mind to settle down? Then once the breath feels good, what do you … 
  19. Adbusting the Mind
     … The mind is out of shape? Okay, what can you do to bring it back into shape? If the breath feels distorted, what can you do to normalize it? If your breathing feels constricted, what can you do to expand your rib cage all the way down?—so that the entire area of your lungs gets used, so you feel more and more refreshed … 
  20. The Three Perceptions & Their Opposites
     … In one case, a monk tries to argue from the principle that all feelings are stressful to say that all actions lead to stress. The Buddha reprimands him, saying that when you’re talking about kamma, you’re talking about skillful and unskillful action, so you talk about three kinds of feeling. There are pleasant feelings, painful ones, and feelings that are neither pleasant … 
  21. Use Your Imagination
     … Maybe you think of the pain as a physical thing, but remember it’s a feeling. The feeling is connected with perceptions, and it’s connected with thought constructs. What kind of thoughts are you constructing around the pain? What kind of perceptions are you applying to the pain? What exactly is the feeling? And how does the feeling differ from the body—the … 
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