Search results for: "Feelings"

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  2. Dedicating Goodness, Spreading Goodwill
     … when you feel simply that “giving is good,” or you feel that it’s not right when you have something, enough to share, and other people are poor and they don’t have it so you feel compelled to give. And then finally the motivation gets to the level where it’s simply a natural expression of the mind, the mind doesn’t grab … 
  3. Concentration Isn’t Dumb
     … Get in touch with what feels really good right now. Then figure out how to let that good sensation spread in a way so that it still feels good as you spread it. There’s a lot to figure out here. It requires a pragmatic intelligence. You’re not thinking about generalizations or abstractions. You’re thinking about actions and trying to act in … 
  4. Learning from Desire
     … Then there’s feeling—the different feelings of pain there may be in the body—but we’re also trying to develop a feeling of pleasure by the way we breathe and the way we focus on the breath. Perception: the labels we apply to things, the images we hold in mind, the ways we communicate from one part of the mind to another … 
  5. A Leap of the Heart
     … Something happens in the area where it’s not very clear whether it’s in the mind or in the body, a feeling of dis-ease, and immediately there’s an attempt to compensate. And the ways we compensate often have a lot to do with ways we’ve compensated before. These can go back, back, back to times when we were pretty stupid … 
  6. The Governing Principle
     … You might ask yourself—holding the perception in mind that there should be breath energy filling the body—to notice where it’s strongest, where the breath energy feels most healthy. Then notice where it’s weak. Can you think of good breath spreading from the healthier spots into the weaker ones? Is there any blockage? Do the energy channels feel like they’ve … 
  7. A Handful of Leaves
     … We breathe in a way that feels good coming in, feels good going out. That way, you know that when physical suffering or mental anguish get bad, you’ve got a safe place to go. You don’t feel so threatened by them. Once this safe place is solid, then you can start making your forays into, say, the experience of physical pain to … 
  8. Not Getting What You Want
     … When you breathe in, where do you feel it inside? When you breathe out, where do you feel it? Is there a boundary around the breath? Well, no. How far can you gain a sense of how the breath relates to the different organs of the body, the different parts of the body, out through the skin, out beyond the skin? Really immerse yourself … 
  9. How to Leave Concentration
     … You can also dedicate the merit of your meditation to someone who’s passed away, someone for whom you feel gratitude. If they have any way of knowing of the goodness you’ve done through your concentration, through your meditation, you’re happy to give it to them. If they rejoice in that, if they approve of what you’ve done, then that becomes … 
  10. Observant & Ingenious
     … The breath there feels all pretty much the same no matter how you breathe. But when you think of the movement of the energy throughout the body—the muscles moving, the bones moving—you realize that some movements in the body feel good from within, others don’t feel so good. So you work with the ones that feel good. That’s the breath … 
  11. Unhindered at Death
     … Lots of people feel that when death comes, there’s nothing much you can do, so they just give up. From that point on, it’s like going down a slide. They don’t give any thought to making good choices—or making any choices at all. They just feel that events are taking over. You have to remind yourself that you are making … 
  12. Lessons from Generosity & Virtue
     … It feels comfortable coming in, feels good going out. This sense of comfort makes it an attractive place to stay, a good place to stay. That way, when parts of the mind start demanding immediate pleasure, you say, “Well, here it is.” It may not be quite the sort of pleasure they were thinking about, but there is a sense of ease, and learning … 
  13. A Tradition of Ingenuity
     … What if you don’t feel any rapture, you don’t feel any pleasure, what do you do? Where are the potentials for those things, and how do you develop them? We know that when rapture and pleasure do come you’re supposed to spread them through the body. How do you do that? Ajaan Lee gives some answers with his analysis of the … 
  14. Old Movies & New
     … Try deep breathing for a while, then more shallow breathing, and see how your spot feels. See how it feels when the breath is fast, when it’s slow, when it’s heavy, when it’s light. Experiment with it, and you see there’s a lot to study, a lot to notice here. That way, your concentration becomes not just a matter of … 
  15. Goodwill & Heedfulness
     … You say to yourself: “May I be happy.” So, what kind of happiness do you want? There’s a lot that has been written on people who feel they don’t deserve to be happy. In fact, I was reading recently a Dhamma teacher saying that most people don’t have enough time when they’re on weeklong metta retreats to think about anybody … 
  16. Learning from Sensual Desire
    Learning from Sensual Desire March 5, 2021 In Buddhist traditions, they tend not to make a sharp distinction between the heart and the mind—the heart being the part that wills and desires, has feelings, emotions; the mind being the part that thinks, calculates, and tries to reason things through. As they say, “The heart has its reasons.” And the mind has its desires … 
  17. Pleasure from the Body
     … 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 the body it feels most pleasurable. Then you learn how to maintain that pleasure, developing it into a sense of fullness and refreshment. One way of doing this … 
  18. Analysis of Qualities
     … Take a couple of good, deep, long in-and-out breaths, and notice where it feels good. If it doesn’t feel good, there are two ways you can work with it. One is to notice, as you’re breathing in, at what point does tension build up in different parts of the body? Can you keep breathing in without that tension building up … 
  19. Right View & Right Resolve
     … Notice what way of breathing feels really good. Notice where you feel the breathing in the body, and what kind of breathing the body needs right now: energizing if you’re tired, calming if you’re wired. As the mind gets more and more focused, then you can step back from the focus on the breath and watch the mind as it’s focused … 
  20. Unlearning Helplessness
     … What would feel good right now? What way of breathing would actually induce feelings that would feel good? You’ve got a whole hour here to explore and experiment. That’s the essence of developing meditation as a skill: that you explore. You take the basic principles and see what you can do with them. When you read in Method 2, the text says … 
  21. The Power of Attention
     … He talks about bodily fabrication, which is the breath itself, and mental fabrication, your perceptions and feelings. This is where you apply the questions of appropriate attention. For instance, how does the breath feel right now? Could you breathe in a way that makes you feel better? What is your perception of breath? We talk of breath as the energy flow in the body … 
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