Search results for: "The Breath"

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  2. Questioning Your Way to Certainty
     … You start looking at how the breath affects the mind, what kind of breathing goes along with unskillful mental states and what kind of breathing goes along with skillful ones. Here you look for cause and effect going in both directions. Some mental states will come and bring along a catch or a tightness in the breath, or a blockage in the breath energy … 
  3. Pain
     … You may sense that as you breathe, you’re using the painful parts of the body to do the breathing. They’re the most obvious parts when there’s pain in different sections. So think of the more comfortable parts doing the breathing. The painful parts can get a free ride. Think of the breath permeating them and going out the other side. See … 
  4. Tenacity
     … But if you can experiment with the breath, explore the breath, you find that it is a skill that can be mastered: how to breathe in such way that feels good coming in, it feels good going out, it feels good being in your body. In the different passages in the texts where the Buddha gives analogies for the factors of the path, concentration … 
  5. The Stakes Are High
     … As the breath calms down, the sense of the body seems to get less clearly defined. You can see that having a sense of body depends on the movement of the breath, and as the movement of the breath energy grows still, the body turns into a mist, with no clearly defined boundary. You can focus on the space between the drops of the … 
  6. A Memorial to Your Life
     … You’re sitting here, watching the breath. What does it mean to watch the breath well? You stay continually with it, as best you can. If you wander off, you come back as quickly as possible, firmly, but without any recrimination. When you come back, reward yourself. Breathe in a way that feels especially good. Think of a part of the body that may … 
  7. Grief & Regret
     … There are lots of different ways you can adjust the breathing. That gives you something to be interested in right now. Otherwise, if there’s no reason to be interested in the breath—if it’s just in, out, in, out—the mind’s going to go thinking about something it finds more interesting. But here you’re working with the breath energy in … 
  8. Pleasant Practice, Painful Practice
     … So give it something good right here, something that’s visceral, immediate, and skillful; something that helps anchor you in the present moment and puts you in a position where you really can see what’s going on in the mind—because the breath is the closest thing in the body to the mind. It’s through the breath, or the energy of the … 
  9. Hindrances Based on Delusion
     … Ajaan Lee’s technique for analyzing the breath can actually be used against both sides. On the one hand, if you’ve got all that energy to think, you might as well think in the body. And one good way to think in the body is to try to figure out what’s going on with the breath energy. Keep making a survey, making … 
  10. You Are Not a Textbook
     … Try to get the whole body involved in the breathing process. That way, you can activate the mind, get it running back and forth around your body as you’re checking things out. Then there will come a time when you’ve expanded the breath as much as you can. That’s when you can focus on one of the inner sections of the … 
  11. Organizing Your Inner Committee
    Organizing Your Inner Committee February 6, 2011 As you meditate, you want to bring the whole mind to the breath. Sometimes it’s easy. You’re in the mood, everybody in the mind is in the mood, and they all can settle down. But other times, some members of the committee would rather do something else. They have their other agendas, their other desires … 
  12. Understanding Pain
     … Let the breath flow through that area. Sometimes you find that the problem isn’t right where the pain is—there may be a blockage in the breath someplace else. Sometimes there’s a pain right where the leg joins the body, right there in the hip, but it’s not due to the lack of circulation there. It’s because the circulation isn … 
  13. Curious About the Process
     … Part of the movement of the energy in the body is the breath element, and part of it is the water element, the blood moving around. Sometimes we think we’re moving the breath here, moving the breath there, but we’re actually pushing the blood here, pushing the blood there. That leads to pressure. Remember, breath doesn’t have pressure at all. It … 
  14. Choosing to Believe in Your Choices
    As you sit here focused on the breath, you’ll sometimes find that the mind is not with the breath. It’s someplace else. And when you notice that, you have a choice. You can either stay with that someplace else and follow whatever the thought is or you can come back to the breath. They’re both here: the thought and the breath … 
  15. Blowing Bubbles
    Blowing Bubbles April 11, 2013 One of the first instructions you get in practicing concentration is that if you notice you’ve wandered away from the breath, try to come back as quickly as possible. And just because it’s a basic instruction early on doesn’t mean that it’s something to forget later on in the practice. It really is important because … 
  16. Today Is Better than Yesterday
     … You want to be with the breath all the way in, with the breath all the way out. When the mind wanders off, you want to bring it right back. Try to see through the gaps. Connect your moments of awareness, your moments of attention so that there’s a continuous line. This is why mindfulness and concentration have to go together. Mindfulness is … 
  17. The Bright Tunnel
     … You stay with the breath, get to know the breath, be friends with the breath. This is important. Many times, when we’re working with a meditation object and things don’t seem to be going well, the meditation object seems to become our enemy. If that’s your attitude, you’ll never be able to settle down with it. Realize that the breath … 
  18. Admirable Friendship
     … When you’re watching the breath, it’s up to you to make sure that you’re watching the breath. When you’re evaluating the breath, it’s up to you to be skillful in your evaluation. In other words, figure out what kind of breathing really is comfortable right now. Then figure out how to maintain it or to change it if it … 
  19. Karma-ism
     … So the Buddha’s advice is just to drop the whole issue and focus on what’s doing right now? What are you doing right now? You should be focusing on your breath, reminding yourself to stay with the breath, to be alert to the breath, and to make an effort to be more consistent in those things. Because those qualities – mindfulness, alertness, and … 
  20. Persistence: Lift Your Heart
     … As you read some of his other Dhamma talks from later years, you find that he had other ways of dealing with the breath—sometimes just the opposite. In Method Two, he says to get the breath energy going from the neck down the spine. In other places, he says to start with the breath energy in the soles of your feet and have … 
  21. The Kindness of Body Contemplation
    The Kindness of Body Contemplation January 30, 2013 When we focus on the breath, we’re with the body in and of itself. What does that mean, “in and of itself”? The rest of the formula tells us that we’re “ardent, alert, and mindful, putting aside any greed and distress with reference to the world.” In other words, we aren’t looking at … 
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