Search results for: "The Breath"

  1. Page 74
  2. A Path Rooted in Desire
    Make up your mind you’re going to stay with the breath—all the way in, all the way out, each breath as it comes in, as it goes out. Notice when you breathe in: Where do you feel it in the body? When the Buddha talks about breath, he’s not talking about the tactile sensation of the air at the nose. He … 
  3. Truth in Action
     … Make up your mind you’re going to stay right here with the breath and then you have to keep watch over yourself. Which means that alertness, the quality that we bring to the present moment, has to cover two things: One, you’re alert to the breath; and two, you’re alert to the mind. Mindfulness is what reminds you to stay here … 
  4. Do, Maintain, Use
     … But focus your primary attention on the comfort of the breath and keep the perception of breath in mind. Otherwise, you go slipping off into just the comfort, and things begin to blur out. When you’ve got your awareness filling the body, you’ve got the breath filling the body, and it feels good, then you can stop evaluating the breath and just … 
  5. A Path of Aggregates
     … When you’re sitting here with the breath, the breath, of course, is form, and your sense of the body as you’re sitting here is form as well. Then there are the feelings you feel in the body: You want to get them to be feelings of pleasure. This is one of the skills of meditation, learning how to relate to the body … 
  6. The Water in Your Cup
     … So we’ve got to learn to pour it out and just stay with the sensation of the breath and simple sensations in the present moment. See how much you can pare down your conversation around that. As the breath gets more and more comfortable, it’s easier to pare things down. So focus on that. Make that your purpose in being here right … 
  7. Physical Pains & Painful Words
    When you’re sitting here focused on the breath, even when you’re well concentrated on the breath, you don’t have just the breath. You’ve also got feelings, you’ve got the mind, and you’ve got mental qualities. All four frames of reference are right here. The question as to which one you’re going to pay attention to most depends … 
  8. Equanimity & Karma
     … You have to learn, instead, to let the ease do its work, whereas you continue doing your work with the breath, i.e., you focus on the breath; stay steadily with the breath, and then let the ease do its soothing in the body. You focus on the causes; the effects will take care of themselves. In this way, you learn how not to … 
  9. Skillful Effort
     … So as you’re working with the breath, you’ve got all those forms of fabrication working together. You’ve got the breath, you’ve got directed thought, evaluation, perception, and feeling. As you develop your concentration based on the breath, you’re working on developing the skills you need to learn how to use these things in a knowledgeable and helpful way rather … 
  10. Keep the Mind from Wandering
     … Then, once you get sensitive to the breathing, the next step is to be aware of the whole body as you breathe in, breathe out, and then to calm the breathing process. In other words, try to make it comfortable. Make this enlarged sense of the mind your home, filling the sense of the body, with the breath easy coming in, easy going out … 
  11. Equanimity Isn’t Nibbana
     … You don’t just sit here and watch whatever breath comes up willy-nilly, or pretend that you’re not playing any intentional role in shaping the breath. Instead, you’re explicitly told to explore that intentional role, first by being aware of the whole body as you breathe in and breathe out, then by calming the breath, calming the effect that the breathing … 
  12. Like an Athlete in Training
     … It’s not the case that you’re trying to pump the breath energy into a solid body. It’s more like allowing the breath to flow freely into the energy already there without any clear dividing line between the two. When you hold that perception in mind, it gives rise to a floating feeling in the body. See if you can maintain the … 
  13. Thinking Your Way to Stillness
     … One method that Ajaan Lee recommends is to think about the breath, and think about how you think about the breath. He talks about the breath energy throughout the whole body, and how the breath can be good or bad for you. He also talks about how to explore the different manifestations of breath energy in the body, how to experiment with different ways … 
  14. Overcoming Complacency
     … In the meantime, just try to be one with the breath. There’s the breath and there’s the knower: Let those things come together. Don’t try to take them apart yet. Try to get absorbed into the breath, in the same way that a melting pad of butter gets absorbed into a slice of bread, seeping down into the holes and saturating … 
  15. The Buddha Respects Your Potential
     … It’s the same with the breath. There’s a lot to learn here. Have some respect for the potential of a mind focused on the breath with a sense of the breath filling the whole body, the pleasure of breathing filling the whole body, your awareness filling the whole body, and learning how to maintain this state. There will be a lot of … 
  16. Recollection of the Buddha
     … You can get right to the breath. As Ajaan Lee says, the breath is our home base in meditation. But there are other meditation themes that are, as he said, places where the mind goes foraging. These are mainly for motivation, for the times when the mind doesn’t want to settle down with the breath. You don’t feel up to it. You … 
  17. Centered
     … It’s not like you’re sitting in one spot of the body watching the breath in another spot of the body. You’re sitting in the middle of the breath, and the breath is bathing you on all sides. And think of it, as it comes in, as being totally unobstructed: It can come in, go out, with a sense of ease. You … 
  18. Training Your Inner Teacher
     … In other words, when the breath is comfortable and the mind starts wandering around, you have to remind yourself you’re not here to wander around, you’re here to stay with the breath. So you have to ride hard on it for a while. Then there are times when you have to step back and evaluate and think about it. One of the … 
  19. Playing by the Buddha’s Rules
     … So you take the breath as your refuge, as a way of reminding yourself to be alert here in the present moment. Because this is where skillful and unskillful qualities arise: right in the mind, right next to the breath. As for influences coming in from outside, think of the breath as your shield. Get good at filling the body with your good breath … 
  20. Stay
     … The whole nervous system is nourished by the breath. All the blood vessels are nourished by the breath. These things are all around you. Then it’s largely a matter of just staying here. There are times when you settle in and you wonder, “Why would you ever want to leave?” It feels so good being right here; you’re able to relax all … 
  21. Forest Bathing
     … This is why we focus on the breath, bodily fabrication. You direct your thoughts to the breath; you evaluate the breath. You use certain perceptions of the body: about how the breath enters the body, where the breath originates in the body, what levels of breathing there are in the body. Sometimes you’ll find that as you’re beginning to breathe in, and … 
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