Search results for: "Feelings"
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- Inconstant, Stressful, Not-self… We admire his goodness and feel gratitude that we had the opportunity to know him. Now he’s gone on. We’ll miss having him here. We wish him well where he’s gone, dedicate the merit of our meditation, dedicate the merit of our chanting to his wellbeing wherever he’s taken rebirth. Some people wonder about the practice of dedicating merit. The …
- Proving the Teachings… Notice where you feel the in-breath, where you feel the out-breath. Focus on the process of breathing. It doesn’t have to be the air coming in and out of the nose. Just whatever sensations are there in the body that let you know that now the breath is coming in, now the breath is going out: Focus on those sensations. And …
- Subduing Greed & Distress… Feelings that arise from those things are just inconstant feelings, too. Use thoughts of goodwill to rework the narrative around the world, and then use this contemplation of the world as just events at the six senses as a way of deconstructing it. That makes it easier to get back to your original focus and to stay with that focus. Remember: There’s a …
- Ignorance & Deception… They’re already feeling weak, they’re already feeling exasperated, whatever, and just one more thing becomes the straw that breaks the camel’s back. And it’s the same with the mind. If you’re going to point out some of the mind’s dishonesty, some of it’s foolish habits, it’s best to do it when the mind is in a …
- Intent… your sense of the body as you feel it from within, your sense of your mind as you feel it from within. Nobody else can move in here. They can do things to your body. They can show you things to get your mind upset. But you experience these things from within. The area within is your territory, and you want to arrange it …
- Heedfulness… Sometimes you cling to feelings—feelings of pleasure or pain, neither pleasure nor pain. Sometimes you cling to your perceptions, the images and labels you use to identify things, as when you see a stoplight: One, you know that it’s red; that’s a perception. Two, you know what it means; that’s also a perception. And then three, you notice how important …
- Goodwill as a Strength… There are times when your practicing and saying the right thing may hurt somebody else’s feelings, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re harming them. There was a book I was reading recently where the author was saying, “Well, even the Buddha spoke in harmful ways.” But what the author meant by that was that the Buddha would sometimes hurt people …
- Stubborn Clinging… certain identities you take on in certain situations, especially when you feel you’ve been wronged. The part of you that feels wronged wants to have justice served. You don’t like to hear the idea that maybe you’re the one who caused the problem. Or even if the other person really is wrong, the fact that you’re suffering here can’t …
- Bursting Bubbles… When you’re feeling lightheaded and dizzy, you can think about the earth element. That helps to ground you. When you’re feeling sluggish, you can think of the wind element. That makes the body feel lighter. You make these things more prominent and bring the body into balance. The same principle applies in the mind. There’s a potential for sensual desire, there …
- Settling In… It’s simply a matter of being very sensitive to what feels good, what doesn’t feel good, and heading toward what feels best. That helps you to settle in and get more and more centered. There was a woman one time at a meditation retreat with Ajaan Suwat who complained that her meditation didn’t seem to be going anywhere, and yet she …
- All Eye… We want to be in a position where we feel surrounded by our object, as when you’re with the breath. We talk about watching the breath, and it gives the impression that you have an eye in the mind that’s looking at something outside of the eye—its focal point is outside. Try to imagine instead that the eye is being focused …
- The Limits of Interconnectedness… Nobody else can feel our suffering. No matter how much politicians may claim that they can feel our suffering, they don’t. They can imagine it, but that’s all. Suffering is something very personal, very individual. And the Buddha’s insight was that we can solve this problem from within. In other words, the solution lies in this part of our awareness as …
- Big Things in Little Things… There’s bodily fabrication, which is the in-and-out breath; verbal fabrication, directed thought and evaluation, the way you talk to yourself; and then mental fabrication—feelings and perceptions. These are things you experience directly as you meditate. You’re focused on the breath, you direct your thoughts to the breath, you evaluate the breath, you use perceptions in order to maintain your …
- Fix Your Views… When the Buddha rebukes the first monk for having said that all action leads to stress, the monk listening in says, “Maybe he was thinking of the fact that action leads to feeling, and all feelings are stressful.” The Buddha replies that that’s not the time to use that teaching. When you’re asked about action, you talk about the three kinds of …
- Be Heedful & Think… If they’re portraying someone going through a particular feeling, you don’t experience the feeling of that person. You taste the feeling, which is something different. If someone is being heroic, they’re not thinking about the fact that they’re being heroic. But you taste that. In the same way, the Dhamma’s there for you to take the taste of release …
- Love Me, Love My Defilements… Feelings feel, perceptions perceive, fabrications fabricate the other aggregates into actual aggregates, and consciousness cognizes. These things are defined by their activity. And these activities are the raw materials from which we create our sense of self. In our delusion we tend to think of “self” as a thing we’re stuck with, either for metaphysical reasons or for social reasons. But that’s …
- Strength from the Basics… This may involve going into your hands and your feet, and just being conscious of what it feels like from the inside to have a hand, what it feels like from the inside to have a foot. Just stay with that sensation. Learn where your strengths are and keep your priorities as clear as possible. Soon the time will come when you have to …
- Battling Negativity… With some desires, you act on them but you don’t feel very good about acting on them and so you tend to hide them. And these are often the ones that cause suffering. But some causes of suffering go deeper than that. After all, the Buddha said, suffering comes from the clinging-aggregates. And the clinging-aggregates are also what we create our …
- Inner Refuge Through Inner Strength… As for whether long breathing feels good or short breathing feels better, that’s up to you to decide. You develop not only your mindfulness—i.e., your ability to keep things in mind—but also your powers of judgment as to what’s working, what’s not working, how to compare. The more you meditate, the more you have to depend on your …
- The Flowing Mind… You sit here, focused on the breath, and you can breathe in ways that are comfortable, energizing when you’re feeling tired, soothing when you’re feeling frazzled, relaxing when you’re feeling tense. There’s a lot you can do with the breath energy in the body, both with the in-and-out breath and with the general sense of breath flowing through …
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