Search results for: "Feeling"

  1. Page 54
  2. For the Cessation of Dukkha
     … Breathe in ways it feels good so that it feels good simply inhabiting the body. This is called the pleasure of form. It’s different from the pleasure of sensuality. The pleasure of sensuality depends on things outside being a certain way, but they almost never really correspond to our desires. As the Buddha said, it would have to rain gold coins and it … 
  3. Strong-hearted
    When you focus your attention on the breath, you’re focusing on something that only you can know—how you feel the breathing from inside, how you feel your awareness from inside—because this is where the problem is, and this is where the solution will be found. The problem is that we act in unskillful ways. We let greed, aversion, and delusion take … 
  4. When it’s Hard to Settle Down
     … Does it feel really good when you breathe in right down in that area or does it just feel kind of bland? If it feels bland, ask yourself what would be really satisfying there, what would feel really, really good there, and see how the body responds. Sometimes it’ll involve thinking of the breath coming in from another direction than you normally think … 
  5. A Good Foundation
     … We’re here to explore how the body feels from within and how we can make it a pleasant place to stay, a good foundation, so that we feel secure in the present moment. Because, as I said, the insights we’re going to gain can sometimes be pretty painful. Especially if you don’t like seeing your own stupidity. Ajaan Suwat once said … 
  6. Ugly Body, Happy Mind
     … When the ajaans talk about contemplating feelings, especially feelings of pain, the issue comes down to: What’s creating a bridge between the physical pain and the pain that you’re suffering from in the mind? It’s a perception. What kind of perception? Why do you think in those terms? The same with the contemplation of the parts of the body: The Buddha … 
  7. Fabricating against Defilement
     … And because that’s such an unpleasant physical feeling, or series of physical feelings, you’re overwhelmed with the desire to get it out of your system. You think that by expressing the anger, saying something harsh or clever, whatever, will keep the feeling from staying bottled up in the body. But that doesn’t work at all. It just creates new habits: that … 
  8. Making an Effort
     … The kind of happiness that comes through ordinary effort in terms of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, ideas, feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, consciousness: There’s effort in all of these things. The basic building blocks of our experience, the five aggregates, require fabrication. Even before we sense things, there’s an element of fabrication going on in the mind. If the mind weren … 
  9. Breath Energies
     … There are certain issues in life where we feel that we’ve been unjustly treated, and it’s good to remember that karma has been going on for a long, long time. And the back and forth that we’ve had with one another has been so, so long and so complex that there’s really nobody to keep tally. And it wouldn’t … 
  10. The Armored Car
     … You don’t constantly let your feelings be hurt. You have to keep reminding yourself, “If something’s being thrown at me, I threw it at somebody in the past.” That helps to deal with the sense of righteousness that comes when you feel like you’ve been wronged. Actually, you’ve been wrong in the past, too. And whatever the back and forth … 
  11. The Purpose of Empathetic Joy
     … Isn’t it a higher thing to feel compassion for those who are suffering than to be happy for those who are happy? Well, it’s more than just being happy for those who are happy. You think about the fact that they did something in order to gain that happiness. In fact, you’re also happy for those who are creating the causes … 
  12. Persistence
     … But if you’re with the body—your sense of your hands, your feet, your legs, your arms, your torso, your head, all the parts of the body— those parts can be very quiet and yet you can still feel them nevertheless. So move your focus there. Ask yourself what kind of breathing would feel good in those parts of the body. You can … 
  13. Parsing Out Suffering
     … There’s another place where he says that everything converges in feeling, particularly our desire for feelings for pleasure. But then you look at people in the world and you look at yourself: There are a lot of things you do that cause suffering and yet you find pleasure in them. That’s what you’ve got to understand. That’s why the Buddha … 
  14. The Noble Pursuit of Happiness
     … After all, if you resent other people’s happiness, you’re not going to feel right about your own. And if you can’t feel right about your own happiness, it’s going to be hard to see other people happy. The two go together, which is why they’re part of a set. The Buddha taught four brahmaviharas, he didn’t teach just … 
  15. Transparent Becoming
     … Or if you’re feeling discouraged in the practice, think about other people who have had problems in the practice and yet were able to get through them and come out on the other side. If you’re feeling lazy, you can think about death. It could come at any time. Are you ready to go? If not, get to work. If you find … 
  16. Giving & Taking Time
     … As you feel up to it, you feel energized by the talk and ready to give more. But sometimes you have to draw on your own resources. So you’ve got to develop that right attitude that we’re not here to “get” something without first putting something in. The second attitude you neeed is that when you’re sticking with something over a … 
  17. The Current News
     … That’s a feeling you want to be able to maintain even as you’re breathing out. It may give rise to a sense of floating. As long as that feels good, keep it up. When you’re with the breath, you don’t stop there. You ask yourself: What’s going on in the mind? Don’t try to stir things up, just … 
  18. Contentment
     … Then finally there’s mental fabrication, which is feeling and perception. You’ve got the physical feelings that arise with regard to the breath and the mental feelings of happiness or sadness or equanimity that come along with the breathing. Then there’s perception, which labels things. Your main labeling job here right now is labeling the type of breath and labeling the type … 
  19. Fear of Missing Out
     … Then there are feelings: feeling tones of pleasure, pain, or neither pleasure nor pain. Of course, here you’re trying to create feelings of pleasure by the way you breathe, by the way you perceive the breath, by the way you talk to yourself about the breath. Now, there’s a connection between the two levels of fabrication. What you’re seeing right here … 
  20. Seclusion Through Mindfulness
     … The way the four frames of reference are listed, sometimes it sounds as if you can either be focused on the body or feelings or the mind or mental qualities, as separate exercises. But the only time the Buddha talks about keeping watch over feelings, mind states, or mental qualities is in the context of breath meditation. In other words, you try to get … 
  21. Training Your Cynical Voices
     … And it feels good to inhabit the body; it feels good to be with the breath. As for right concentration, if thinking about jhana is causing problems one way or another, put it aside. Nobody gets into jhana by thinking about jhana. You get into right concentration by focusing on your breath, focusing on the body. You don’t have to think about directed … 
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