Search results for: "The Breath"

  1. Page 78
  2. Equanimity & More
     … You got the breath coming in and going out. You can change the breathing so that it’s comfortable. That’s bodily fabrication. As for verbal fabrication, you can direct your thoughts to the breath and evaluate the breath to make it more comfortable. Then, once it’s comfortable, you can use that sense of comfort. Spread it around the body. Spread your awareness … 
  3. Focus on Your Intention
     … the breath that you’re focusing on; the feeling of pleasure you’re trying to create by the way you focus; the perception of the breath as a whole-body process that helps you stay with the breath and helps that feeling of pleasure to spread through the body; the fabrication, the directed thought and evaluation by which you adjust the breath, adjust the … 
  4. When the Mind Is Still
     … Sometimes it takes a while, takes some strategizing: “What can you do to get the mind to be willing to settle down, stay with one thing, the breath, with a sense of ease?” Ajaan Lee gives some advice. You can notice where there are patterns of tension, where there are pains in the body, and you ask yourself, “How are they related to the … 
  5. Sitting & Walking
     … Get the breath comfortable and think of it spreading, but in this case, you’re spreading through a moving body. So the grace of your movement is going to be important—to whatever extent you can make it graceful. If you have physical difficulties, do the best you can to make the breath help in the movement of the body. And, of course, you … 
  6. Path & Goal
     … We’re here because we want to.” So what would make you want to stay in the present moment? What kind of breathing? What kind of sense of pleasure in the body would make you want to stay? Steer the breath in that direction. Dogen, the Zen master, made the comment one time that the development of the path is no different from the … 
  7. Preparing to Die Well
     … You work with the breath to make the breath comfortable so that it’s easier to stay here, and you work with your perception of the breath so you can calm things down and make things more and more quiet inside, both in terms of what’s called the physical fabrication of the breathing, and the mental fabrications that are the feelings and perceptions … 
  8. Questions of Skill
     … You’ve got the perceptions, the images you hold in mind of what the breath does as it comes in, where it goes in, where it goes when it goes out, how it moves through the body. You’re talking to yourself about the breath, evaluating it—that’s fabrication. And then there’s consciousness, aware of all these things. So if you want … 
  9. Heightened Skillfulness
     … how you picture the breath to yourself, the way it either originates outside and comes into the body, or the breath that originates in the body itself. Sometimes it seems as if it originates at certain centers in the body; other times it seems like every cell is a spot where the breath originates. You hold on to whichever perception of the breath calms … 
  10. Nurturing Patient Endurance
     … The more you can get interested in the breath, the less you’ll be worried about the things that are weighing down the mind in other areas. So talk to yourself about the breath. Some people find that that spot where they’re very sensitive to the breath is right around the area of the heart, the area of the sternum. How do you … 
  11. What You Can’t Change, What You Can
     … So as you’re focusing on the breath, try to see what lessons you can learn about change and not-change; the stress you can’t do anything about and stress you can do something about. When you’re sitting here breathing, how much awareness do you actually bring to the breathing process? Is it clear? And when you breathe in and breathe out … 
  12. On Your Own Two Feet
     … Because as you get better with dealing with the breath, the mind will be able to settle down and be even more solid. And the more solid you are, the more you’ll be able to observe the subtleties of the breath. So it’s not a Catch-22, it’s simply that these two faculties of the mind—the ability to watch things … 
  13. New Feeding Habits for the Mind
     … a sense of well-being inside, the sense of well-being that comes as you learn to adjust the breath, settle down into the breath, make friends with the breath, learn to savor the breath the same way you would good food or good music. What does this flow of energy feel like as it comes through the body? What kind of flow would … 
  14. Insights
     … In other words, as you’re staying with the breath, you can see a thought beginning to move out, and you want to be able not to go with it. In other words, there goes the thought, but you’re still right here with the breath. You’ll see that the thought only goes a certain distance and then it disappears, because you’re … 
  15. The Tools of the Path
     … Because with the concentration, what do you have? You’ve got the breath, which is form; you’ve got the feeling of pleasure you’ve created here by the way you breathe; you’ve got perceptions—the images you hold in mind about the breath; thought fabrications—your intention to stay with the breath; and consciousness, which is aware of all these things. As … 
  16. Delight in Persistence
     … You’re focusing your attention on the breath. You’re maintaining an intention to stay with the breath. You’re holding a perception in mind: how you picture the breath to yourself. You’re trying to develop feelings of pleasure. Well, all those mental acts come under the factor what the Buddha called “name” in name and form. If you bring knowledge to these … 
  17. Determination
     … The description of right concentration starts out by saying that you’re “secluded from sensuality, secluded from unskillful mind states.” You focus the mind in on one topic, like the breath. Stay with the breath. As for other thoughts that would come in right now, just let them go. Stay apart from them. Try to find a sense of well-being with the breath … 
  18. The Wall of Discernment
     … This is how you can train the mind to go into deeper and deeper levels of concentration, until you get to the point where even the breath seems to stop. There’s no need to breathe, probably because the brain is using so little oxygen. The breath energy fills the body. If there were a need to breathe, you would, but there’s no … 
  19. A Refuge Inside
     … Then notice how the breathing sensation feels. Does it feel comfortable? Does it feel comfortable all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out-? Does it feel too long, or does it feel too short? You can adjust it. Try to find some place in the body where the breathing process feels good, feels nourishing coming in and relaxing going … 
  20. Food for the Mind
     … So you protect this little spot that you’ve chosen, wherever it is that the breath is most obvious, where it’s easiest to stay focused on the breath. You focus just on that one spot there and try to make it as steady as possible. Protect it from outside winds and breezes and drafts that come along. In other words, whatever thoughts that … 
  21. Pleasure from the Body
     … This is why we work with the breath until we learn how to take advantage of the potentials that this, the body experienced as form, has to offer. These pleasures start simply with learning how to breathe in and breathe out in a way that feels good, asking yourself what rhythm or texture of the breath feels most gratifying right now and where in … 
  22. Load next page...