Search results for: "Feelings"

  1. Page 72
  2. Commit, Reflect, Discern
     … But we also want to supplement that feeling with pasāda—which is confidence that there is a way out. That’s the path the Buddha provides. So when he has you reflect on death, it’s not just to think, “death, death, death.” He says it’s for the purpose of finding the deathless. In other words, it motivates you to do the practices … 
  3. The Dhamma Eye
     … If it feels too long or too short, too heavy or too light, you can change it so that it feels better: feels good coming in, feels good going out. You’re focused on the breath so you can anchor the mind in the present moment, because if you want to understand your own mind, you have to watch it in the present moment … 
  4. A Warrior’s Strengths
     … He says it starts out with simple contact at the senses and then there’s feeling and then from feeling there’s the person who feels, the person who puts a label on these things. Then from labeling you start thinking about them, and then the thinking turns into obsessive thinking—the Pali term is papañca. It can mean proliferation, complication. He says these … 
  5. Sunrise, Sunset
     … Or do you like pickling in bad moods? You feel insecure when your moods are good, but you feel as if things are settled—they can’t get any worse than they are right now—when you’re in a bad mood/ If you feel secure in a bad mood, you’ll probably want to take that with you, too, and of course that … 
  6. Wise Endurance
     … clinging to form, feeling, perception, thought fabrications, or consciousness. In particular, what are your perceptions, what are your thought fabrications about a particular issue? Remember that even with the aggregates, there’s an element that comes in from the past and an element of fabrication in the present. The way you breathe, the way you talk to yourself, the perceptions and feelings you focus … 
  7. Fear of Others
     … Which part of the mind feels threatened? Again, learn how not to identify with it. That’s the Buddha’s prime tactic in learning how not to suffer: If anything that’s subject to harm leaves you open to danger, leaves you open to suffering, why identify with it? If you can think in this way, you find yourself shedding all kinds of unskillful … 
  8. Safety
     … Mental fabrication – perceptions and feelings. You need the perception of the breath filling the body. You need to work on a feeling of ease and well-being. It’s all right here. Then as you get the mind still, watching yourself do these things right here, you’re learning how to do these things with knowledge. Then you can take that knowledge and you … 
  9. Endurance
     … As Ajaan Maha Boowa likes to say, another person’s words are just the breeze of that other person’s voice—a gentle thing, you hardly feel the breeze coming out of their mouth, you hardly feel the sound waves, but the words can penetrate into your heart. So learn to look at them just as the breeze from someone else’s voice. Other … 
  10. Look at Yourself
     … Instead of immediately focusing on, “Well, what did somebody do to make me hurt or feel bad or feel abandoned or made me feel unwelcome?” Turn around and ask, “Exactly how am I taking that person’s words and turning them into something that’s going to cause me to behave in an unskillful way?” That’s where your real responsibility lies. Your ability … 
  11. Stop & Think
     … And because they’re moving in and cutting off many of our hopes and desires—many of our hopes and desires that we feel are perfectly legitimate—it gives us a sense of frustration. But you always have to ask yourself when you’re frustrated: “Is the problem with a goal? Have you chosen the wrong goal? Or have you chosen the wrong means … 
  12. Proactive with Pain
     … Pain comes in, and you feel pushed out by it. You try to push it away, and it just doesn’t want to budge, so you go escaping to other places. The first thing you have to learn is how not to get pushed out by the pain. Meditating is good practice for this. Sit here for a while, and there’s going to … 
  13. The Karma of Self & Not-Self
     … First there’s the self that feels competent to follow this path and actually makes the effort to develop the skills that are needed. Then there’s the self that’s going to enjoy the results. You want that self to be a real connoisseur of what happiness is, so that you don’t settle for second best, or third best or fourth. And … 
  14. Discernment & Determination
     … If you feel intimidated and daunted by how large the task may be, try to break it down into small steps. In other words, figure out what’s the first thing that needs to be done, and what’s the next thing that needs to be done. Then just do that one thing and then the next thing. Take it one step at a … 
  15. All Fabrications Are Stressful
     … Everything else—even the deva worlds, the Brahmā worlds—has to be filtered through form, feeling, perception, thought constructs, consciousness. And the simple fact that they’re fabricated in this way—whatever the experience is—means that they’re going to be stressful. You can’t take them as a place where you can really rest. That’s one level of stress, one level … 
  16. Good Work
     … What would longer breathing feel like? Does that feel good? If it does, stick with it. If it doesn’t, you can change. You don’t have to commit yourself to any kind of breathing that you don’t want to. In other words, you want to learn how to make use of the potentials you’ve got here and to use them in … 
  17. In Control
     … You feel more and more irritated, and then the body seems to be sending you signals, saying that you really are angry, you really are greedy or lustful, whatever, even when the mind itself has dropped that particular emotion for a while. But the breath has stirred up some hormones in the body, and if it feels constricted in and of itself, it’s … 
  18. A Meritorious Heart
     … You feel compassion for them and then you try to act on that compassion in whatever way you feel inspired to act. If you see someone is already happy, you’re not resentful of their happiness. You’re not jealous. You hope that they continue learning how to maintain their happiness. As for people who are suffering, you hope that they learn how to … 
  19. Survival Tactics
     … the sense of wellbeing you create simply by breathing in in a way that feels good, breathing out in a way that feels good, so your mind doesn’t go off feeding on things outside: what this person said, what that person did. That kind of stuff is junk food. It may be fun to feed on but it doesn’t give the mind … 
  20. The Buddha’s Questions
     … When he touched his stomach, he could feel his spine. Finally, after six years, he asked himself, “Could there be another way?” This way was obviously not working. Then he remembered when he was a child meditating under a tree, and had spontaneously entered the first jhana. “Could that be the way to awakening?” And the consciousness arose to him, yes, it could be … 
  21. Selves with Skills
     … As the Buddha pointed out, we construct our experience of the present moment through the way we breathe, through the way we talk to ourselves, through the feelings we focus on, the perceptions we use—in other words, the mental labels and images we use to identify things. We use these processes, what he calls fabrications, to put together the raw material that comes … 
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