Search results for: "The Breath"

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  2. Borrowed Goods
     … How do *you *analyze them? What’s *your *experience of the breath? And when you perceive it in a certain way, what does that do to the breath? What are the best perceptions for when you’re sick? What are the best perceptions for when you’re tired—for when you’re nervous, upset? How do you perceive the breath in a way that … 
  3. The Buddha’s Vipassana
     … In the same way, you can adjust the breath up to a point and then it’s not going to get any better than that. So you might as well settle down with what you’ve got. You can drop all the adjusting and just be with the breath. This is where the sense that you are one thing and the breath is something … 
  4. Work on Your Mind
     … When you breathe in, where do you think the breath is coming in? And what is the breath? Is the breath the air, or is the breath the movement of energy in the body? Which perception is more helpful? Usually, it’s the perception that we’re dealing with energy in the body, because then you can move that energy around. With the air … 
  5. Putting Out the Fires
     … Focus on the breath and allow the breath be comfortable—comfortable coming in, comfortable going out. Try not to put too much pressure on it. Just stay right next to it. Ajaan Fuang’s word for this, prakhawng, is a Thai word meaning that you hover around something and hold it very gently. The classic image in the texts is of holding a baby … 
  6. Appreciating Dispassion
     … When you start out getting focused in the breath, you’ve got to talk to yourself about it to adjust it. There are perceptions of the breath that allow you to visualize the breath going through the different parts of the body to create a sense of the well-being. You can maintain it and you can spread it around. If you find a … 
  7. Intent
     … After all, the breath is always there. It requires that you be very observant and very sensitive to what’s going on and how you’re relating to it, but otherwise, it’s with you all the time. So you want to think about the breath and your relationship to the breath. In the beginning, it’s pretty simple. The only thing you’ve … 
  8. Sensitive to the Mind
     … You’ve got the breath itself: which is bodily fabrication. All the different instructions—“I’ll breathe this way, I’ll breathe that way”: Those are verbal fabrications. Then there are mental fabrications: the perceptions that hold you with the breath, and then the feeling-tones that you give rise to by the way you breathe. These are all very explicit in the instructions … 
  9. Evaluation: The Voice of Heedfulness
    Take some long, deep in-and-out breaths, and get in touch with the feeling of the breath in the body. Here by “breath,” we don’t mean the air coming in and out of the lungs. We mean more the flow of energy in the body. And it’s important that you stay in contact with that direct experience. It’s the part … 
  10. Papañca
    We sit here just with the body and the mind, focused on bringing them both together in the breath. Sometimes it can get frustrating. The body doesn’t do what you want. It’s not always doing what you want. It gets sick without asking permission. Your voice gives out without asking permission. Your mind starts wandering around without asking permission. It can be … 
  11. Perception
     … The way you perceive the breath has a huge impact on what it feels like to breathe and on your ability to settle down with the breath. If you feel that you have to fight for your breath, and that there’s only a little channel by which the breath can come in and out of the body, it’s going to be hard … 
  12. Fear of Missing Out
     … Perceptions are the labels you apply to things, the words or mental pictures you use to identify things—such as whatever mental pictures you have of the breath as it goes through the body, where it starts, how the breath is actually happening in the body, what way you can picture the breath to yourself so that it becomes easy to settle down throughout … 
  13. A Safe Harbor
     … the body or the breath in and of itself, or the feelings that are related to the breath, mind states related to the breath, mental qualities related to the breath. That’s the theme of your concentration. So the practice of right concentration includes right effort and right mindfulness in its definition. It’s an organic whole, which means you’ve got a lot … 
  14. Verbal Fabrication
     … This is where some mental fabrication comes in, as you work with the perceptions you have of how the breath flows. You see which ways of perceiving the breath, which ways of picturing the breath to yourself, gives good results. That’s adjusting the object. Adjusting the mind means asking yourself: What is your attitude toward the meditation right now? What moods are you … 
  15. What Is Skillful?
     … You study your mind as it moves away from the breath, and you learn, okay, that’s how an intention forms. If it all happens in ignorance, it’s going to lead to suffering of one kind or another. If you do it with knowledge, then it becomes part of the path. So here we are with the breath, right next to the place … 
  16. The Train Trestle
     … Notice where you feel the breathing in the body. Some aspects of the breathing will be more obvious than others. Focus on the areas that are most obvious, or the ones that you feel most sensitive to. There’s a spot in the body that you usually use to mark when the breath has come in enough, so that you know, “Now it’s … 
  17. To Comprehend Suffering
     … There those instructions in Keeping the Breath in Mind: That’s one way of thinking of the breath energy in the body. But if you read some of Ajaan Lee’s other writings, you find he had lots of different ways of conceiving the breath energy, picturing the breath energy. Sometimes he’d think of breath energy coming in a solid flow of energy … 
  18. Equanimity in Heart & Mind
     … You can tell yourself to breathe long or short, heavy or light, fast or slow, and the breath will respond right away. At the same time, the quality of the breath energy in the body has a very direct impact on the state of the mind, the state of the heart. So explore this fact. Try different ways of breathing right now, and see … 
  19. Pleasure & Pain
     … just the breathing. Then when you’ve got a spot here that feels good — the breath comes in, it feels good; the breath goes out, it feels good — you can let the sense of boundary around your little spot dissolve away. Think of the sense of ease spreading out from that spot, flowing along whatever channels there are in the body that pleasure can … 
  20. The Riddle Tree
     … Sometimes you find it easy to stay focused on the breath and have a pleasant feeling alongside the breath, and yet not get distracted. Other people have a real problem. As soon as a pleasant feeling comes up, they drop the breath, run to the pleasant feeling, and end up losing their focus. So in that case, it’s going to be important to … 
  21. A Pleasure Without Stories
     … We work with the breath, trying to find a comfortable breath, and then we learn how to use that sense of comfort, that sense of ease, and spread it around the body. We’re working with pleasure here that’s both mental and physical. The breath feels good when you allow it to find a good rhythm and when you allow it to spread … 
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