Search results for: "The Breath"

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  2. The End of Uncertainty
     … When you work with the breath, look for the results. Breath training is an especially good way to learn how to be sensitive to the results of your thinking. There are different ways of focusing on the breath, different ways of conceiving the breath, different ways of dealing with the hindrances. And your job is to learn how to be sensitive to the results … 
  3. Observe Yourself in Action
     … one, to keep you with the breath, so that you don’t get involved in other worlds. Then, ultimately, as you establish this world—you here with the breath—as it gets more comfortable, your sense of the body gets more expansive. The breath calms down. Sometimes you can even go into formless states. You’re right here, but your sense of the body … 
  4. The Dhamma Wheel
     … Like right now, you can focus on the breath. There’s lots you can do with the breath. You can make it short, make it long, deep, shallow, heavy, light, fast or slow. What would feel good right now? When we talk about the breath, it’s not so much the air that makes contact at the nose as it comes in, goes out … 
  5. The Safety of Jhana
     … Think of the breath ventilating the whole body, the energy of the breath flowing through the nerves, down along the blood vessels, energizing every cell, nourishing every cell. Keep doing this as long as it feels good. Then, when long, deep breathing starts feeling laborious, you can let the breath quiet down. Let it find a rhythm that feels good, feels gratifying, feels satisfying … 
  6. People Suffer from Their Thinking
     … Then you have to think about letting the breath be comfortable, trying not to force the breath too much, just noticing what kind of rhythm of breathing feels good right now. This requires some thought, but it’s constructive thought. It’s okay to think and pose questions around this issue, because that kind of thinking and questioning gets you more absorbed in the … 
  7. Right Resolve in Real Life
     … So you constantly have to be on the lookout for when the breath changes. One of the reasons why we practice here—sitting with our eyes closed, focusing on the breath—is to make ourselves more and more sensitive to this aspect of the body and its relationship to events in the mind. Then we can take that sensitivity out into our other activities … 
  8. Take the Buddha Seriously
     … After all, as you’re meditating here, you’ve got the breath, you’ve got yourself talking to yourself about the breath, you’ve got the perceptions that you have around the breath. What is the breath doing right now? Where is it going in the body? Then there are the feelings that arise from your directed thought and evaluation, and your perceptions. You … 
  9. Treasures from the East
     … Make up your mind to stay with the breath. Realize that if you want to stay with the breath, it has to be comfortable. But when the breath is comfortable, there’s the danger of zoning out. So, how do you counteract that? The Buddha gives you some advice: Try being aware of the whole body as you breathe in, the whole body as … 
  10. Allies
     … Then try to find a sense of well-being, a physical sense of ease and pleasure there, using the breath. Sometimes this means allowing the breath to be very subtle, sometimes stronger, but try to find a rhythm and a texture of breathing that sustains a sense of physical comfort right there. Stay there for a while, so that your mental sense of confidence … 
  11. Death Is All Around
     … Focus on the breath, develop feelings of ease, spread them throughout the body. You use your perception of the breath to focus your concentration. You use your directed thought and evaluation, which are thought constructs, to keep your mind on the breath and to evaluate the breath. Then you’re aware of all these things. That’s taking these five aggregates and turning them … 
  12. The Path Converges Right Here
     … So the breath is a good place to be. It helps you explore the body from within; it gives you a tool for dealing with problems in the circulation of blood in the body, problems in the energy flow in the body. As you work with the breath energy in the different parts of the body, it’s good for those parts of the … 
  13. Noble & True
     … You’re saying Yes to the experience of the breath in the body and how you sense the breath energies in the body. They help you settle in so that you can see for yourself some of those states that are described in the texts. When the breath energy is pleasant, allow the sense of pleasure to permeate through the body, so that no … 
  14. Practicing in Solitude
     … If you’ve got a particular pain or disease, use the breath to work with that. If it seems that the breath can’t go through the pain, remind yourself, “Well, what is breath?” You’re trying to push some kind of energy through but maybe it’s not breath energy. Breath energy should be able to go through anything. After all, it’s … 
  15. Taking Responsibility
     … Focus on the breath; allow it to be comfortable. Learn to investigate the breath. Let the breath capture your imagination—realizing that the breath energy in the body has all kinds of dimensions: It’s not just in the body; there are whole energy fields surrounding the body as well. If you’re really sensitive, you can sense those, too. You can look at … 
  16. Facing Pain
     … You can focus on the areas of the body where the breath does feel good. If the pain is more general around the body, you can focus on the space between the atoms or on the breath energy flowing around the body. No matter how much the mind keeps screaming at you that you’ve got to focus on the pain, you say, “No … 
  17. What You Sense Directly
     … Bodily fabrication is the breath. Verbal fabrication is directed thought and evaluation, as you talk to yourself about the breath. Mental fabrication is composed of feelings and perceptions. Feelings are the feeling tones you have right here: pleasant, painful, neither pleasant nor painful. Then perceptions are the images you hold in mind that help you stay with the breath—the markers of the mind … 
  18. Wisdom Through Doing
     … You should focus on the breath. Anything that’s not related to the mind and the breath together, just let it go. Give the mind some time to be by itself. You’re not concerned about anything else but just this awareness in the present moment, anchored in the breath with a sense of well-being. Of all the elements in the body, the … 
  19. Broad, Tall, & Deep
    Broad, Tall, & Deep October 6, 2010 When Ajaan Fuang was teaching people to meditate, they’d get to the point where the breath stopped, with a sense of the breath energy filling the body, all the pores of the skin wide open, and all the breath channels in the body connected. Once you had attained that state, he’d have you stay there for … 
  20. Body Contemplation Is Compassionate
     … As the Buddha says, when you do other meditation topics and unskillful mind states start developing, you go back to the breath. As you sweep the breath through the body, sweep the breath through your mind, those unskillful states get swept away. He makes a comparison with the end of the dry season and the beginning of the rainy season. During the dry season … 
  21. Common Sense
     … You intend to stay with the breath and then you intend to stick with that intention. You keep reinforcing that one intention: You’re going to stay right here with the breath, you’re going to let the breath be comfortable. And then you learn to do whatever is needed to get the mind to stay with the breath consistently with a sense of … 
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