Search results for: "The Breath"

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  2. The Path of Mistakes
     … Try to make the breath comfortable. When there’s a sense of tension anywhere in the body, learn how to breathe around it, or breathe through it, to relieve as much of the tension as you can without totally losing focus. You direct your thoughts to the breath. You evaluate the breath: “What kind of breathing feels good right now?” This is an important … 
  3. Not Getting What You Want
     … If you’re breathing in, where do there have to be sensations so that you know that the breath is coming in, where it’s going out? It’s good to explore other possibilities, so that you can gain a sense of refreshment from the breath, a sense of ease from the breath—because the breath is going to be a very useful tool … 
  4. Universal Truths
     … Which ways of focusing on the breath make the mind uncomfortable? Which make the breath uncomfortable? Which ways of focusing, which ways of thinking about the breath, which ways of labeling and understanding the breath help make it more comfortable, easier to stay here so that it does become your home? — so that no matter where you go, you have this home inside, this … 
  5. What Makes Concentration Right
    As you focus on the breath, remember that there’s right concentration and wrong concentration. There’s a passage where the Buddha defines right concentration as “any singleness of mind, endowed with right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness”—in other words, the first seven factors of the path. It sounds like an awful lot. In the … 
  6. The Mind’s Song
     … So you bring it to the breath. It’s a good way to get out of your head and down into the body. Give yourself a good comfortable place to stay and be aware of the breath coming in, aware of the breath going out. Notice how the breathing feels in different parts of the body, because the breathing is a whole-body process … 
  7. Old Kamma & New
     … When you’re working with the breath, remember that it’s your friend. If you find yourself fighting with the breath, that’s not the right attitude to have. You want the breath to be comfortable, because if the mind is going to stay here, having a sense of ease and comfort is really helpful. Even though there may be pains in some parts … 
  8. Staying Still
     … In other words, getting the mind focused with the breath is doing it. Staying focused with the breath is the maintaining. The maintaining is a different skill. The first skill is coming out of the noise and into the stillness. In some cases, that requires nothing more than just reminding yourself that you’d like to be with the breath—and there it is … 
  9. Protection Through Mindfulness Practice
     … What kind of movement of the breath is actually helpful? What kind of movement of the breath makes it more difficult to stay with the body? And learn to play. Take the breath energy in the body as your playground here and be open to new ideas about how the breath energy can move. You’ll notice, in Ajaan Lee’s basic instructions, that … 
  10. Pleasant Practice, Painful Practice
     … It’s the same with the breath and the way you relate to the body. This is what the Buddha calls pleasant practice—getting the mind to settle down with a sense of ease, creating sensations, creating feelings in the body through the breath that draw you into the breath, that make you like staying here. This is one way that we practice, but … 
  11. The Carrot & the Stick
     … As for the carrot, when you work on the breath, work with the body like this, try to find ways of really getting into every little pattern of tension, every little pattern of discomfort and dissolving it away. You’re getting very, very sensitive to the breath, so that the breath can work through these things. Often we carry around a whole armor of … 
  12. Booster Stages
     … It keeps you with the breath, keeps you exploring the breath, learning new things about the breath energy in the body. And it’s is not the case that you have to wait until the end of the path to see the results. When you’re working well with the breath, you find that it is healing. It nourishes all the different organs in … 
  13. Well-armed Efforts
     … For instance, when you’re getting the mind in concentration, you’ve got the breath, which is bodily fabrication; you’ve got directed thought and evaluation devoted to seeing how the breath can be made comfortable and how the mind can be made to stay with the breath; and then you have mental fabrication, the perceptions you have around the breath that help you … 
  14. Lessons from Jhana
     … You can think, “Whoops, I’m going to die.” You’re holding onto the perception that you’ve got to keep pumping the breath in, pumping the breath in. Here again, you have to train yourself: It is possible to be here, once the breath energy fills the body and all the breath channels feel connected, and not have to breathe. How this is … 
  15. Free Sources of Energy
     … That’s also when he learned how to use the breath to pull his body back together. So there you are: bodily fabrication, verbal fabrication. And of course, when you’re focusing on the breath, you have to have certain perceptions in mind and you’re developing certain feelings. That’s mental fabrication. In this case, what kind of breathing would feel energizing? What … 
  16. In & of Themselves
     … I’ve got to drop it.” Try to go back to the raw materials, in this case the breath, your feelings around the breath, and your mind states related to the breath: the mindfulness, alertness, and whatever elements of concentration you can develop. That’s a world that forms part of the path. You turn these things into concentration: the breath, the object of … 
  17. Get Out of the Way
     … The flow of the breath energy through the body doesn’t involve any pushing at all. It’s just a matter of relax, relax, relax, allow, allow, allow, as the breath comes in and the breath goes out. Try to catch and disperse areas in the body where you’re tensing up even the least little bit around the breath. The important principle here … 
  18. Noble Happiness
     … Focus on the breath. Notice when the breath is coming in; notice when it’s coming out. Think about the breath. Keep the breath in mind. That’s mindfulness. And then be alert to how the breath feels. Notice when it’s comfortable, notice when it’s not. When it’s not comfortable, you can change it. This is a very immediate and visceral … 
  19. If at First You Don’t Succeed
     … This is why you’re trying to make the breath comfortable, why you’re trying to use the breath energy to deal with pains in different parts of the body. You learn to observe how your mental image of the breath—or the words you use to describe where the breath is going—can change how you actually experience the breath. That gives you … 
  20. Nobility Through Inner Strength
     … Getting it in position simply means focusing on the breath. Take a couple of good, long, deep in-and-out breaths. Notice where you feel the sensation of the breathing. If long breathing feels good, keep it up. If not, you can change the rhythm: short in-breaths and long out-breaths, or long in and short out; short in, short out; deep or … 
  21. Not Getting What You Want
     … Think of every sensation you have in the body as being related to the breath somehow. Make a survey through the body: When you breathe in, where do you feel it inside? When you breathe out, where do you feel it? Is there a boundary around the breath? Well, no. How far can you gain a sense of how the breath relates to the … 
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