Search results for: "Feelings"

  1. Page 52
  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. The Origination of Suffering
     … It puts you in a good place, where you’re not compelled to feel that you go off after those other becomings. So sometimes as you’re meditating you may feel it frustrating that, as you’re trying to stay with the breath, this comes up, that comes up, this thought about this, this thought about that. You have to fend these things off … 
  16. Imagine Your Breath
     … what an in-breath should feel like, what an out-breath should feel like. You begin to realize that what Ajaan Lee had to say about evaluation, the adjusting of the breath, is really true: It’s the discernment faculty in your concentration. You begin to see fabrication. You begin to see how it can be used to energize the body, to calm the … 
  17. Things as They Function
     … There’s the body, feelings, mind, mental qualities. He says you can watch all four of them by staying with the breath. The breath itself, of course, is an aspect of the body. There will be feelings of pleasure or discomfort associated with the breath: That’s feelings. There’s mindfulness and alertness: That’s your mind state. And then there are mental qualities … 
  18. Right Effort
     … That requires that you understand the process of breathing, you understand how you relate to feelings, what can actually done with a feeling of pleasure, how it can be allowed to spread, what ways of trying to make it spread don’t work, what ways do work. This requires effort. But when you have the right attitude toward the effort, you enjoy it, and … 
  19. Things as They’ve Come to Be
     … Where do you feel that? The person was saying all she could feel was the air coming in from the outside, along with the need to pull that air in. I said, “Well, what is it that pulls it in?” The air doesn’t come in on its own. It’s the energy in the body. That’s the breath the Buddha’s talking … 
  20. Meditation Prep
     … Empathetic joy is the antidote for any feelings of resentment you may feel for somebody else’s good fortune. You realize that resentment doesn’t do you any good at all. People who are enjoying good fortune must’ve done something sometime that leads to happiness, so why resent it? Do you want people to resent good fortune when it comes your way? Of … 
  21. Staying Grounded
     … not too hot, not too cold, not too heavy, not too light—a place where it feels really good to stay, where it feels natural to stay, where you feel like you’ve really come back home. When you’re grounded like this, you get a better sense of when is an appropriate time to think, and when is an appropriate time not to … 
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