Search results for: "The Breath"

  1. Page 68
  2. The Six Properties
     … That’s element meditation or property meditation as a preliminary for getting the mind to settle down with the breath. Ajaan Fuang would have you also use this kind of meditation as a method for solidifying your concentration. I just mentioned states where the breath stops in the body, not because you’ve suppressed it, but simply because you feel no need to breathe … 
  3. Doing Nothing
     … Or you can move around the body, trying to calm the breath energy in the different parts of the body, relax the breath energy in the different parts of the body. Let the excess energy flow naturally out the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet. The mind that seems to be jumping around will have less and less reason to … 
  4. Two Hands Washing
     … Then once you’re with the breath, you can ask questions on a different level: “Exactly what sensations are breath? How does the body relate to the breath? Where does the in-breath begin? How do you tell if the breath is comfortable or not? What are your standards for comfort?” Again, you ask these questions when the mind is still having a little … 
  5. Skills Needed at Death
     … As you’re dealing with the breath, one way of obliterating those signals is to try to make the breath as comfortable as possible, as gratifying a sensation of the body as you can imagine. Which means you have to ask yourself: “Which parts of the body are not particularly enjoying the breath right now? In what ways is the breath getting mechanical?” Give … 
  6. Broaden Your Range of Choices
    Some of the first steps of breath meditation deal with being aware of that energy of the breath through the whole body and then calming that energy, calming the effect of the breath on the body. In other words, they deal with sensitizing yourself to the energy flows and channels—just the general sense of different energies in the body and how they’re … 
  7. Rooted in Desire
    When you listen to a Dhamma talk, give only one percent of your attention to the talk, ninety-nine percent to the mind with the breath, right here, right now. Think about the time of the Buddha: People were listening to the talks he gave and they gained awakening. Not simply by listening to the talk—they were looking at their minds. When the … 
  8. Feelings Not of the Flesh
     … You do it through focusing, say, on the breath, and then talking to yourself about the breath. How does the breath feel? Is it too long? Too short? Too fast? Too slow? What would feel good right now? As the Buddha says, you try to give rise to feelings of pleasure, give rise to a sense of refreshment or even rapture, and then you … 
  9. Interconnectedness
     … Adjust the breath. You do have this freedom right here, this element of choice with regard to the breath. The breath is one of the few bodily processes that can be automatic but also can be shaped by your choices. So work with it, explore it. Try to become more sensitive to this aspect of your awareness. As you become more sensitive to the … 
  10. True Friends & False
    Take a few deep, long in-and-out breaths, and notice where you feel the breathing. You may feel it in the chest, down in your abdomen, anywhere you feel the motion of the body that brings the air into the lungs. Allow your attention to settle there. It’s easy to get there, but not necessarily easy to stay. It’s the staying … 
  11. Understanding Happiness
    Focus your mind on the breath. Try and be on good terms with the breath. After all, it’s the energy of life. And if the energy feels healthy and nourishing, it’s going to nourish both the body and the mind. It’s probably the most important thing in life, and yet we very rarely look at it. We’re always concerned about … 
  12. Freedom
    We’ve got a whole hour now to focus totally on the breath. There’s nothing else you have to think about, there are no other responsibilities, just be with the breath. Notice how it feels when it comes in, notice how it feels when it goes out. Notice which parts the body are involved in the breathing process, and which ones aren’t … 
  13. An Equanimity You Can Feed On
     … For instance, while we’re working with the breath, in the beginning you want to get the breath so that it’s pleasurable, with a sense of real refreshment that comes with staying with the breath. Otherwise, if you try to develop equanimity right away, the equanimity gets very dry and it’s hungry. When the mind is hungry, it’ll stay with equanimity … 
  14. Karma & Not-self
     … When you focus on the breath, what happens? When you have a particular idea about the breath, what happens? When you change that idea about the breath, what happens? When you have a sense of the observer inside the body, what happens if you move it around? Instead of being in the back of your head looking out your eyes, suppose you’re down … 
  15. The Five Aggregates
     … Use the breath to create feelings of ease, feelings of comfort. Think about the breath, picture it to yourself: That’s sañña, or perception. Direct your thoughts and your evaluation to the breath: Directed thought and evaluation are *sankharas, *fabrications. And be conscious of what you’re doing. In other words, you take these five khandhas, these five aggregates that you’ve got sitting … 
  16. The Swinging Balance
     … If you look inside at the very beginning, you look at your mind, and your mind is a mess; you try to focus on the breath, and the breath and the body seem to be a mess. You don’t know where to go. This is where you have to take it on the Buddha’s word, and the word of all the people … 
  17. Meditation as a Skill
     … Focus them on the steps of mastering this practice, like working with the breath. The Buddha lays it out in steps. Be aware of short breathing, he says, be aware of long breathing. Train yourself to be aware of the whole body as you breathe in and out. Allow the breath to grow calm. Be aware of any sensations of pleasure or rapture or … 
  18. Sensual Passion
     … You can breathe easily and have pleasure right there in the breathing. Try to breathe into all the little muscles that do a lot of work: say, the muscles of your hands, the muscles around your eyes, the muscles right at the breastbone. Let them do the breathing and let them get nourished by the breathing, with a sense of fullness as you breathe … 
  19. Breath Energies
     … You also notice that the more subtle your attention, the more subtle your awareness, the more the sense of well-being that comes from the breath and the pleasure that comes from the breath seeping into areas that used to be hardened inside. The fact that we’ve ignored this part of our awareness for so long allows us to treat it pretty poorly … 
  20. Working with Fabrication
     … So what we’re doing as we’re working with the breath here is working with all the different forms of fabrication. The breath itself is the bodily fabrication; you can adjust that any way you want. Then as you do the adjusting, you’re engaged in directed thought and evaluation, asking yourself if the breath is comfortable. If it’s not, what can … 
  21. Conviction & Persistence
     … But we focus on the breath. It’s by focusing the mind on the breath and keeping it there that we’re developing some really good qualities in the mind: qualities of persistence, ardency, mindfulness, alertness. It’s by staying consistently with the breath in all the ups and downs of our lives that we learn some important things about the mind at the … 
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