Search results for: "Feelings"

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  2. A Better Place to Feed
     … And then three, mental fabrication, your perceptions and feelings. Perceptions are the words and images you hold in mind that identify things. Feelings are feeling tones—pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain. All these factors are things we put together in order to create a state of concentration right here, right now. You want to remember that, because otherwise you go back to your … 
  3. Freedom through Restraint
     … Adjust your breath so that it feels good right here. Adjust your mind so that it feels good with the breath. Anything else that comes up, you’ve just got to let it go. You’ve got to keep your focus right here. You’re learning a skill, which means there are things you have to give up. As with mastering any sport, there … 
  4. A Path Rooted in Desire
     … See what kind of breathing feels best—whether long or short, fast or slow, deep or shallow, heavy or light. Take some time to get to know the breath—how you feel the breath from within. Then do your best to stay here, making the breath interesting, making it comfortable. That helps. But you also have to have the determination that this is what … 
  5. In Cahoots with Your Defilements
     … The horse that has to feel the whip on its skin. The horse that has to feel the whip dig into its flesh. And the horse that has to have the whip go all the way into the bone before it’s going to be willing to run. And it’s up to us to decide which kind of horse we’re going to … 
  6. The Kamma of Self & Not-self
     … You take the potential for form, the potential for feeling, perception, fabrication, and consciousness, all of which come from past actions, and you actualize it. Then you identify with it. But your identity can change from moment to moment. Sometimes you’re focused on feelings, sometimes on perceptions, sometimes on the body, either seeing yourself as identical with these things, or as possessing these … 
  7. The World of the Body
     … Try to become sensitive to what feels best for the body, what feels best for the mind right now. As for other thoughts that may come to the mind, you can let them go. Try to stay in the world of the body right here. The mind is used to living in lots of different worlds. You’ve got the world of family, the … 
  8. Observe Yourself in Action
     … bodily fabrication—which is the in-and-out breath; verbal fabrication—directed thought and evaluation, how you’re talking to yourself; and mental fabrication—feelings and perceptions. Feelings are feeling tones of pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain. Perceptions are the images you hold in mind, the labels you apply to things. You have these things right here as you’re meditating. You’re … 
  9. Games the Mind Plays
     … all those vague feelings and half-formed desires. The reason they’re vague is because if they became clear, you’d see right through them. So it’s not a matter that your feelings are right and your reasons are wrong, or that all the words you’ve learned from other people are bad for you. You’ve got to learn how to use … 
  10. The Water in Your Cup
     … And if long breathing feels good, keep it up. If it feels tiring, then you can choose another rhythm: shorter, more shallow, faster, slower, heavier, lighter. Try to see what your body needs right now. Don’t get tied down by the perception that when you’re meditating, the breath has to be gentle or shallow or whatever for there to be concentration. You … 
  11. Two Roads to the Grand Canyon
     … Feelings of oneness, feelings of light, and feelings of spaciousness: These things all come under the factors of concentration. A sudden opening up can be what’s technically called a neurotic breakthrough. It’s not a good term; it sounds like you’re becoming neurotic, but actually, it’s a breakthrough through a neurosis that you’ve been carrying around. You suddenly realize you … 
  12. No-Tech Meditation
     … They’ve actually found the spot in the brain where you can induce that feeling. But just because you have an intense feeling of Oneness doesn’t mean that the universe is One. And it’s certainly not enlightenment. As the Buddha said, the highest Oneness—the non-duality of consciousness—is a fabricated state. Only when you’ve seen yourself in action, seen … 
  13. Here to Learn
     … As for the question: “How can I deal with people in way that I don’t hurt their feelings?” Remember we’re here not to harm them, but hurt feelings are not harm. Saying things that hurt people’s feelings is not necessarily wrong speech. The Buddha said, there’s a time and place for speech that’s unpleasant as long as you’re … 
  14. Building a Home for the Mind
     … You’re asking very practical questions, “How does it feel?” “Is this a place where you can settle in?” “How is the living room?” “How is the dining room? Is it big enough? Or do you feel cramped or tight?” Okay, you’ve got to expand the house. Think not only of the body but also of the area immediately around the body. Can … 
  15. Don’t Focus on Jhana, Focus on the Breath
     … to try to get everything to fit together in a way that it feels good. The breath feels right for the mind. The mind feels right for the body. The body feels right for the breath. Everything is fitting together nicely. That takes some adjustment. As long as you’re interested in this and paying attention to this, your thoughts of sensuality fall aside … 
  16. Mindful of Death
     … Then allow things to settle down in a way that feels good, feels right. A lot of the meditation lies in finding a way of breathing, a way of thinking about the breath, that you find interesting, find easy to stay with. Ajaan Lee recommends lots of different ways of thinking about the breath. You try them out and you see what works and … 
  17. Mindful All Day Long
     … When you get a sense of what it means to feel the breath energy in the body and to know when it’s blocked and how to unblock it, that’s basically making a scan of the body. If you notice there’s tension or tightness in any part of the body, that’s a sign that the breath is not flowing. So relax … 
  18. The Right Place to Look
     … You’re supposed to get sensitive to those perceptions; get sensitive to the feelings that come from staying with the breath. Those perceptions and feelings are called mental fabrication. Then, when you’re sensitive to them, you notice which ones, when you focus on them, allow the mind to settle down. So even though you’re focused mainly on the breath, ultimately you’ll … 
  19. Use Your Defilements
     … The feelings of pleasure that you’re trying to create and then, as you create them, you maintain them, spread them around: You learn a lot about feeling in the concentration. It doesn’t just come and go on its own. You become more and more conscious of the fact that you play a role in giving rise to feelings. There are potentials in … 
  20. The Use of the Present
    The Use of the Present November 28, 2016 We focus on the body in and of itself, feelings in and of themselves, mind states in and of themselves, but we don’t make them the goal in and of themselves. We’re trying to take them apart to see what they’re made of, because we’ve been putting them together in all kinds … 
  21. Fear of Mistakes
     … They feel unfair; they feel oppressive. The problem is that sometimes we internalize those standards and then we suffer. This is why the Buddha says that starting the path requires finding admirable friends—people with good values—because they’re going to judge you, but they’re going to judge you in a helpful way. They’re going to teach you how to judge … 
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