Search results for: "The Breath"

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  2. Investing Your Happiness
     … It doesn’t have to pull you away from the breath. After all, the breath is still here, going in, going out. If thoughts destroyed our breathing, we would have died a long time ago. Thoughts come in, thoughts go out, and the breath is still there. And there’s a part of your awareness in touch with that. We tend to block that … 
  3. Allowing the Breath to Spread
    Allowing the Breath to Spread November 3, 2006 Find a spot in the body where the breath feels comfortable, and allow it to stay comfortable. And notice the word “allow.” We’re not making the breath comfortable. We’re letting it be comfortable. So you don’t have to tense up around it, you don’t have to do a lot to it, just … 
  4. Jhana & Insight
     … You evaluate your breath, you think about the breath, you have a perception of the breath and how it goes in and out the body. And the way you relate to breath—first to the in-and-out-breath and then to the breath energies in the body—should give rise to a feeling of ease and well-being. So you’re getting hands … 
  5. Fighting Attitude
     … Keep the breath as your anchor and as your test of whether you’re able to stay with something or not. If staying with a line of thought pulls you away from the breath, you’d better let it go for the time being. And having the mind with the breath gives these hindrances something to bang up against. In other words, if you … 
  6. Addictive Thinking
     … So work with the breath. Find where the breath feels most comfortable in the body. Find the spots in the body that most need a sense of ease or a sense of healing from the breath, or that need to be soothed or energized. Notice what the breath can do for them. You’re going to have plenty of breaths to work with, plenty … 
  7. Preparing for Death
     … So as you’re focused here on the breath, the pleasure that comes when the breath flows well doesn’t count as a sensual pleasure. It’s a pleasure of form. It’s a higher level of pleasure. It doesn’t have all the drawbacks of sensuality. It has a few drawbacks: It is, after all, something fabricated. But it’s fabricated with skill … 
  8. Shelter
     … That way, your typical habit of wandering off the breath a little bit and then coming back, wandering off a little bit and then coming back, gets smoothed out so that you really are with the breath all the time. That’s when the insights are going to come: both in the process of smoothing things out and in seeing what comes up when … 
  9. Mindfulness, the Gatekeeper
     … You stay with the breath. As you’re with the breath, it’s not just the case that you watch any old breath coming in and any old breath coming out. The Buddha tells you to be sensitive to when the breath is long, when it’s short, and to notice the effects that it has. He says to breathe in and out sensitive … 
  10. Evaluation
     … This requires looking at the way you breathe, and also how you think of the breath energy in the body. Thinking of the breath channels going through the body makes it a lot easier for the sense of ease to flow. So you evaluate the breath, you evaluate your perceptions, and you make adjustments. Then you evaluate the results. This is the work. This … 
  11. Just One Person
     … Leap up at the breath. Leap into the breath. Grow confident in the breath, settled in the breath, absorbed in the breath, resolved in the breath. You want to get the mind really, firmly established here, implanted here, so that you can watch it carefully. If it’s slipping off into the past, slipping off into the future, it’s hard to watch. When … 
  12. Feel-Good Religion
     … The primary example is the breath. Stay with the breath coming in, stay with the breath going out. Try to keep in touch with how the breathing feels, the immediate sensation, and try to stay right there. It’s very easy for that sensation to switch into something else. You’ll notice this when the mind gets very still, and you begin to see … 
  13. A Thread Out of the Maze
     … See how the breathing feels, notice where you can see the breath clearly, and then stay there for a while. It might be the tip of the nose, the rising and falling of the chest, the rising and falling of the abdomen, or, on a more subtle level, the movement of energy through the body as you breathe in, the movement of energy as … 
  14. Common Ground
     … simply the sense of the breath coming in, going out. Which is the same for everybody as you get focused on the breath in and of itself. And as you’re stepping out of the world, you’re also stepping out of yourself in the world. The “you” in here is just your awareness and the thoughts that you use to keep with the … 
  15. A Taste of Freedom
     … When you’re with the sensation of the breathing, you know you’re in the present. And when you’ve made up your mind to stay here, then with anything else that comes up that’s not related to the breath or the mind as it’s related to the breath, you can say, “Okay, that’s past kamma. I don’t need that … 
  16. To Gladden the Mind
     … If there’s something wrong with the breath, you can change the breath: Try deeper breathing, shallower breathing, heavy, light, fast, slow. See what kind of breathing feels good right now. You’re not confined to whatever the body is already doing, because the breath is called the bodily fabrication, which means that it contains an intentional element. You can let the breath go … 
  17. Life Well Lived
     … Any place where it’s easy to notice that now the breath is coming in, now the breath is going out. And allow the breathing to be easy. Don’t struggle with the breath. Don’t force it. You’re not trying to put yourself into a trance. You’re just trying to be very consistent in watching the breath. So you don’t … 
  18. How to Be an Admirable Friend
     … So the mind needs a measure of control, and this is where you exercise that control by developing mindfulness and discernment around the breathing. So you come back to the breath. Try to make the breath as interesting as possible. In other words, notice how the breath energy has an impact on how you experience your body right now. Think of the energy flowing … 
  19. Meaning & Purpose
     … The same with the breath going down the back of the neck, through the shoulders and the arms, or the breath energy coming in and out through the eyes and the ears. You can think of the body as being a large sponge. The breath comes in and out from everywhere, all around. As you play with these perception, you’re creating a state … 
  20. The Craft of the Heart
     … Energy is a movement—that’s the breath. And so we can imagine the breath doing different things in the body, the breath energies going down the spine, going down the legs, going down the arms. The imagining is to help you see it in that way and then you can do something with it. Without the imagination, the body seems just to be … 
  21. Customs of the Noble Ones
     … In the beginning, you’ll notice that you’re with the breath for a while, and then it’ll fade away. Then you notice you’ve wandered off, and you come back to the breath. Next time around, try to stay with the breath a little bit longer. Then, when the mind wanders off the next time and you bring it back, try to … 
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