Search results for: "The Breath"

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  2. Free from Buddha Nature
     … The first one is the physical fabrication, which is the breath. If you breathe in ignorance, it’s going to contribute to your suffering. This was one of the reasons why the meditation technique the Buddha taught most frequently was breath meditation, to bring some awareness to the breath and particularly, bring awareness to whether the breath is comfortable or not—whether it’s … 
  3. Skills to Make You Free
     … You work with the breath, you make the breath comfortable, but you have to make sure that you not get distracted by the comfort. The comfort is there, but you maintain your focus on the breath. Work with the breath energies throughout the body. Try to develop a full-body awareness from the top of the head down to the tips of the toes … 
  4. Changing Your Default Settings
     … And then you hold to a perception of the breath: a mental image. It can be either a picture in the mind, or just a word or whatever, of how you conceive the breath, and how you hold the concept of breath in mind. You hold on to that: both to the sensation of the breathing itself and to the perception. And then you … 
  5. Solving Real Problems
     … You get sensitive to how long the breath is, how short the breath is, all the variations of the breath. Then you learn to breathe in and out aware of the whole body, so that you can see the breathing as a whole body process, because you’re going to be trying to develop feelings of rapture, feelings of pleasure, and let them spread … 
  6. At the Door of the Cage
     … Allow yourself to be attached to the breath, get to play with the breath, make the breath a really comfortable, good place to stay. As the breath gets more refined, you find that the mind goes through more refined stages. The two help each other along. The greater the refinement of the mind, the more refined the breath, and vice versa, back and forth … 
  7. Owning Your Actions
     … Are you getting the results you want out of your meditation? If not, what can you change? Do you want to change the breath? How about changing the point where you’re focused? Or if the mind is unwilling to settle down with the breath, ask yourself, “What’s bothering it right now?” Because there are reflections that you can use to get the … 
  8. Conserving Your Strength
     … Stay with the breath. When the breath comes in, know it’s coming in. When it goes out, know it’s going out. There’s only one thing you have to pay attention to right now: how the breath feels in the body. And think of it being comfortable. Just think that thought, “May the breath be comfortable,” and notice what ways you may … 
  9. The Walls of Ignorance
    The Walls of Ignorance January 29, 2004 Try to be alert to the breath: what it’s doing right now and what you’re doing with it right now. Sometimes you may notice that you’re putting too little or too much pressure on it. “Too little” means that the mind keeps slipping off. “Too much” means that the breath feels confined. It’s … 
  10. The Mirror Inside
     … We adjust it to see what potentials there are in the breath. As the Buddha said, when the mind settles down with the breath, there can be a strong sense of pleasure, a strong sense of rapture or refreshment. That potential is there in the breath someplace—in the quality of the breath energy in the body. So, keep that possibility in mind. This … 
  11. The Power of Human Effort
     … the things you say to yourself as you’re watching the breath. You focus on one aspect of the breath and then you evaluate how things are going. Is the breath comfortable? Is it not? Is your focus solid, or is it not? Is it too light? Too heavy? Could you be focusing some place else? Could the breath be doing something else, going … 
  12. Hunker Down
     … The whole point of the talk is to keep directing your attention back to the mind, back to the breath. It acts like a fence. When the mind starts wandering away from the breath, it runs into the fence, which directs you back. After all, that’s where the Dhamma appears: right back at the mind, right back at the breath. The talk is … 
  13. The Purity of Your Intentions
     … When you think about how the breath fabricates feeling, and feeling fabricates the mind, you realize how important it is to get to know the breath. Then you think about all the important things you’re going to learn about the mind as it stays here, the things that’ll be revealed as you set this one intention in place. That way, you’re … 
  14. Peace of Mind
     … You stick with the breath: That requires mindfulness. You watch the breath, you’re sensitive to the breath: That requires alertness. These are the two qualities you really need for any endeavor. In this way, meditation is like exercising your mind in the same way you exercise your body to make it strong. You use the qualities that you need and you find that … 
  15. Right View: Feeding Instructions
     … There are the feelings of ease or dis-ease that come with the breath. Your perceptions of how you think of the breath to yourself: What image do you hold in mind? When you breathe in, where do you feel the breath? What do you think is happening when you breathe in? Some people think of their body as a big bellows. When you … 
  16. Again & Again
     … There has to be that question of, “What am I doing that I’m not seeing?” Start by focusing on the breath. Do what you think is the best way of focusing on the breath, getting the mind to fill the body, getting the breath to fill the body, and having a sense of ease to fill the body. Then try to maintain that … 
  17. Strengthening Concentration
     … We can learn about the steps and all the different techniques in dealing with the breath, getting the mind to settle down with the breath, making the breath comfortable—and that’s one of the important strategies right there: how you conceive of the breath, thinking of the breath as energy throughout the body. That’s one set of skills and strategies that help … 
  18. The Raft of Jhana
     … You’re really giving yourself over to this issue: “How can I get the mind to stay with the breath? How can I get the breath to act as a glue to keep the body with the mind right here in the present moment? How can I learn to question the breath in a way that makes it interesting?” If you have any recurring … 
  19. Full Attention
     … Try to be really, really sensitive to the feeling of the breath right here. That way, you’ve got all four frames of reference in one place. The breath, of course, is the body. The sense of ease and well-being and fullness that you can work with through the breath, that’s feeling. The mind state that stays focused here, that’s the … 
  20. Construction Techniques
     … In the same way, you knead the breath energy through the body. Once you know that the breath is comfortable, you allow it to spread. How do you know it’s comfortable? Well, you’ve tried out various ways of breathing. Again, through directed thought and evaluation, you pose certain questions: How about this way of breathing? How about that way of breathing? Then … 
  21. Heart & Mind
     … If you can get the breath on your side, it’s a lot easier to deal with a difficult emotion, to remind yourself that no matter how bad your anger or your fear may be, you’ve still got the breath and you can still breathe in a way that’s more calming, more nourishing. You practice learning how to deal with patterns of … 
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