Search results for: "The Breath"

  1. Page 56
  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. Allowing the Breath to Spread
     … Basic Instructions 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. Watch Your Mind Whenever You Can
     … The best way to watch the mind is to give it something to be focused on, like the breath—something where the act of focusing actually makes a difference. If you’re quick and observant, you’ll notice that when you focus on the breath, it changes right away. The question is how to make that change good, healthy for the body. So you … 
  22. Load next page...