Search results for: "Feelings"

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  2. Smart About Lust
     … And they’re especially smart in making us feel that we’re smart in giving in to them. They’re like websites affiliated with political parties. We all know deep down inside someplace that the political parties don’t care much about most people. All they care about is their wealthy donors. But you go to their websites, and they’ll tell you the … 
  3. Potentials for Awakening
     … The thing is, even though you may like these things and feel justified in thinking them, you begin to see they’re bad for you down the line. Maybe you should look more favorably on their opposites, like renunciation. Now, renunciation isn’t just about denying yourself. It’s saying No to all your fantasies about sensuality: your sexual fantasies, your fantasies about food … 
  4. An Inside Job
     … But for you, you feel the suffering inside, and it does make a big difference. In fact, they can’t tell why you change your mind, or how you experience a perception or an intention. There are lots of things they can’t tell about you from outside. The big difference, of course, is that you’re committed inside. Your actions will lead to … 
  5. Obstacles to Full-body Awareness
     … You do things section by section to acquaint yourself with how the breathing feels in the different parts of the body and to see if you can make adjustments. This is where you sometimes run into the second obstacle: There are the parts of the body that are very tense or in pain, and there seems to be nothing you can do about them … 
  6. Refreshment
     … As you breathe in, what does it feel like? As you breathe out, what does it feel like? Is there any sense of squeezing it at any point in the breath cycle? If there is, stop the in-breath or the out-breath, whichever is doing the squeezing. See if you can keep a sense of being open all through the breathing cycle. This … 
  7. A Mind Like Earth
     … So try to develop this area of the body, it may be small it may be a little larger, where you feel at ease, feel unshaken, and try to find that part of the mind that’s like earth – solid, large, unshakeable. Establish yourself there. That way, even though the problem is not yet solved, you’re not totally sucked up in the suffering … 
  8. What We’re Here to See
     … When you find something that feels good, stick with it, but don’t clamp down on it. Just follow it very consistently, and when it feels solid enough or steady enough, then think of it spreading so that you feel like you’re surrounded by good breath energy. Your awareness fills the body. There will be a strong sense of refreshment, and a sense … 
  9. Alighting on the Dhamma
     … How does the breath feel right now? What kind of breathing would feel best? If you don’t know, try things out. Have something you can compare. Try longer breathing for a while, then try shorter breathing. Compare the two. It’s through comparisons that you see things. I have a book of photography where the photographer has two pictures for every scene: a … 
  10. Anupassana
     … Ask yourself: “I’m deciding when to breathe in, when to breathe out, so how can I do that well? How can I find a sense of ease and well-being through the breath? And then how can I calm the effect of the breath on the mind?” The same pattern applies to feelings. Feelings are a part of what they call mental fabrication … 
  11. The Fourth Noble Truth
     … The breath energy feels full in the body. The body’s oxygen needs are apparently met by the exchange at the skin. Because your mind is so still, the brain is using a lot less oxygen, so you can be very still right here without feeling any need to breathe. There are four jhanas, but when the Buddha talks about noble right concentration, he … 
  12. As Days & Nights Fly Past, Fly Past
     … You think and you mull it over—until you feel inspired to practice. Then you can put the book down. Go sit and meditate, go do walking meditation. Because that’s the whole purpose of the reading: to inspire you to practice and to give you some insight on what you can do as you practice. I found in my own practice that there … 
  13. Training the Mind
     … Experiment with your breathing right now to see what rhythm of breathing feels best. It could be in long and out long, or in short, out short. It’s always good to start out with some long deep breaths to ventilate the body. Then, if long breathing doesn’t feel good, you can change: in short, out short; in short, out long; in long … 
  14. Skills to Take Home
     … Each of us is training his or her own mind, so we don’t feel strange or out of place. The values here point inward, and that set of values is as important as the physical seclusion. The problem when you’re not here is: How do you maintain those values? Because you can’t take the physical atmosphere of the monastery with you … 
  15. The Mind Comes First
     … Then the way you breathe is going to have an impact on the hormones in the body and the way you feel the body. Sometimes you get to the point where you can’t stand the sensation of how the body feels while you’re angry. You’ve just got to get it out of your system. For most of us, the way we … 
  16. Delighting the Mind
     … You’ve got the body—the breath—and feelings, which would be a mixture right now of pleasure and pain. You’re trying to work, though, for pleasure. There’s the mind, and then there are mental qualities. Even though your focus is the breath, the feelings are right there; the mind is right there; mental qualities are right there. Sometimes you’ll notice … 
  17. Respect for Concentration
     … We’re taking the khandhas — these aggregates of body, feeling, perception, thought-fabrications, and consciousness — and instead of identifying with them, we use them as tools. And as part of the process of mastering them as tools, there will have to be a sense of identification. You identify with the state of concentration, whatever sense of the body is present in the concentration, whatever … 
  18. The Buddha’s Conventions
     … What leads to craving? Feeling. The Buddha chases these activities down in dependent co-arising all the way to ignorance. When people would ask him, “Who’s doing the feeling?” He would say, “Don’t ask.” “Who does the feeling belong to?” “Don’t ask.” Just look at the process of feeling, and you see it comes from contact; contact depends on the six … 
  19. Heedfulness All the Way Through
     … This would set you up to feel that you had to get whatever that emotion was out of your system. Whereas if you stepped back and looked at it, you’d see: “All I have to do breathe in a different way. I don’t need to feel compelled to act on the anger or on the greed or whatever.” So take advantage of … 
  20. On Being Non-reactive
     … Where do you feel those things right now? In those days, they believed that these are actually the elements from which the body was made. Now, at the very least, we can look at them as the elementary qualities from which our sensation or our experience of the body is made. The world outside is the same sort of thing. There’s energy, heat … 
  21. A Gift of Strength
     … You feel it in your heart; the people around you will feel in theirs.
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