Search results for: "The Breath"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. The Wisdom of Equanimity
     … So you’re creating a pleasure for the mind, cleaning away the things that would push you away from the present moment, from being with the breath. This includes uncomfortable ways of breathing. It also includes complaints that the mind makes about the breath. Here it’s important to make a distinction. You will be evaluating things and figuring out: “This breath is not … 
  16. The Wisdom of Ardency
     … Like right now, you’re keeping the breath in mind—and keeping in mind the fact that you want to stay with the breath. Mindfulness also means remembering to recognize what’s coming up in the mind. In Thai, they use the same word for “to remember” and “to recognize”: cam. When sensual desire comes up, you recognize it: “This is sensual desire.” You … 
  17. Technique & Attitude
     … How you focus on the breath. How you keep the breath in mind. And how you’re alert to the breath. There are specific steps, specific techniques that you want to master, because it is a skill. And having a specific technique like this gives you a way of measuring the currents of the mind against each other. It gives you a firm point … 
  18. Acceptance Without Suffering
     … Use the comfort of the breath as food when you’re dealing with things you have to accept, things you can’t change. And use the breath as part of a skillful approach in taking apart unskillful mind states that you can change. So, pay careful attention to the breath. It has a lot to offer in this skill of learning what to accept … 
  19. Patience
     … We start with the breath. Of all the properties in the body, of all the functions in the body, it’s the one most directly influenced by the mind. So you’ve got a double duty here: working with the breath and then being patient about it. Because if you get impatient, that’s going to have an impact on the breath, and the … 
  20. Rightly Directed
     … As you get used to being with the breath and developing good qualities around the breath, those good qualities will continue to surround your breath. Each time you return to the breath, there they’ll be. So imbue your breath with conviction. Imbue it with persistence, mindfulness, concentration, discernment, all the qualities that are developed in those sixteen steps, and then just keep the … 
  21. The Saints Don’t Grieve
    The Saints Don’t Grieve January 28, 2005 One of the most difficult but important principles in the practice is what the Buddha called, “Learning to see renunciation as freedom.” For most of us renunciation seems to be a restriction — as when you’re getting the mind to focus on the breath. Before you make up your mind to do that, the mind doesn … 
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