Search results for: "The Breath"

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  2. Three Levels of Evaluation
     … If you think of it more as breath energy, that widens the range because the breath energy can come in and out at any spot of the body and can permeate every part of the body. Ajaan Fuang once talked about the breath in the bones. Have you ever looked at the breath in your bones? There’s also breath energy surrounding the body … 
  3. Concentration Food
    One of the reasons why we focus on the breath is because it’s so responsive to your thoughts and perceptions. You tell yourself to breathe in long, and it goes long. Tell it to be shorter, it becomes shorter. Deeper, more shallow, heavier, lighter: The breath responds. You can tell it to go to different parts of the body. Here, of course, we … 
  4. Training the Mind
     … Now the breath is coming in; now the breath is going out. It may be the movement of the air in the nose, the rising and falling of the chest, the rising and falling of the abdomen. You can focus anywhere that seems comfortable and where it’s clear to see: Now the breath is coming in; now the breath is going out. That … 
  5. A Good-natured Attitude
     … His meaning is that sometimes you focus most of your attention on the breath and sometimes you focus more of your attention on the mind. For example, when you’re working with the breath, if you find the breath intriguing, if you find it interesting and it’s enjoyable to work with the breath, go ahead and do it. But sometimes you find that … 
  6. Locate Your Craving
     … Then you’ve lost them both—the breath and the pleasure. So, you have to remind yourself the pleasure will be there, and as you keep doing the work of staying with the breath consistently, the pleasure will stay and do its work. As the mind begins to settle down even more with the breath, you can start thinking of the breath spreading through … 
  7. The Energy in the Body
    When Ajaan Lee talks about the breath, he’s talking mainly about sensations of energy in the body. His instructions are meant to give you some ideas about how to understand the energy flow or the levels of energy in the body. He wrote Method One based on his experiences in India. He noticed the yogis over there doing all kinds of extreme practices … 
  8. Reclaiming the Breath
    We focus on the breath while we meditate as a way of reclaiming the breath for ourselves, because all too often it’s taken over by anger or fear, and the breath becomes our enemy. It’s uncomfortable when you’re angry. It’s uncomfortable when you’re afraid. Any unskillful quality coming up in the mind that moves into the body does so … 
  9. Tranquility & Insight with the Breath
     … If the breath is uncomfortable, what image do you have in mind as you breathe? Can you change that image? As I said just now, we think about the breath coming in from outside, but sometimes it’s also good to think about the breath energy originating at some spot in the body, such as the resting spots of the breath that Ajaan Lee … 
  10. Lessons in Happiness
     … In other words, you get to know the breathing process as a totality. Then you allow the breathing to calm down so that it becomes gentler, there’s less intentional fabrication, and the breath can get more and more quiet, more subtle. As you allow the breath to get more subtle, there’s a greater sense of fullness in the body. One way of … 
  11. Messaging Your Mind
    To settle down with the breath involves two activities. One is to focus on the sensation of breathing in and of itself. In other words, you’re not going to think about the breath in relationship to anything else at all, just the breath feels as it comes in, how it feels as it goes out. The second activity is to put aside any … 
  12. Solidly Established
     … In other words, you’re alert to the breath and being alert to whether you’re staying with the breath or not. If you catch yourself wandering off, you bring the mind right back. While you’re with the breath, you try to pay careful attention to how the breathing feels. Think of the breath as coming in and out the whole body, so … 
  13. Mindful, Alert, & Ardent
     … For example, think of the breath and try to keep the breath in mind: That’s mindfulness, the keeping-in-mind part. You have to start out with the intention that you’re going to stay with the breath all the way in with the in-breath, all the way out with the out-breath—and then with the next breath and then the … 
  14. Hedgehog Knowledge
     … But the home base here is the breath. After all, it’s where the Buddha found awakening. The breath is something that’s always there and always immediately relevant to whatever is going on in the mind. If there’s anger in the mind, the breath gets involved. If there’s lust, the breath gets involved. If there’s fear, the breath gets involved … 
  15. Switch the Context
     … Which sections of the body feel good? Can you think of connecting them? Think of the breath as your initial or primary experience of the body. Everything else you experience about the body has to come through the breath. All the other elements, pains, and pleasures: They have to come through the breath. Think of it in that way. That puts the breath up … 
  16. Learning Through Healing
     … We’ll learn a lot about the impact the mind has on the breath, the impact the breath has on the mind; the way the breath can fashion your sense of the body and then the impact that has on your mood. Or the way you talk to yourself—the impact that’s going to have on the breath. The Buddha tells you to … 
  17. A Small, Steady Flame
    A Small, Steady Flame July, 2002 The breath is where the mind and the body meet. We often have a sense that the solid part of our bodies is the part we know best, the part we inhabit, and the breath is something that just comes in and goes out through the solid part we’re inhabiting. But when you close your eyes, what … 
  18. Delight in the Breath
     … As you’re sensitive to the breath, what is there in the breath that’s pleasurable? If you’re not sure, hold your breath for a while until you can’t hold it any longer, and then breathe in. The parts of the body that feel refreshed by the breath tell you that this is what the refreshment of the breath is like. Can … 
  19. Steps in Concentration
     … That means keeping watch over the breath and keeping watch over the mind at the same time. Ajaan Lee makes a comparison with a pulley: You pull the rope back and forth over the pulley. You pay attention to the breath; you look at the mind. Is the mind staying with the breath? Is it happy with the breath? If it’s not, turn … 
  20. Mindful All Day Long
     … You find that you can be quiet with the mind, quiet with the breath. You tell the mind to stay with the breath and it stays, at least for reasonable amounts of time. 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 … 
  21. The Right Place to Look
     … There are people out there who say, “How can you take the breath as your object? When you die, you’re going to have to leave the breath. And then you won’t have anything at all.” When we focus on the breath, it’s not just for the breath. When the Buddha gives instructions on how to deal with the breath, he talks … 
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