Search results for: "Feelings"
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- Virtue Contains the Practice… If you don’t have any mindfulness—i.e., if you can’t remember what you did—you’re not going to be able to figure out how this feeling of pain or this feeling of pleasure is related to actions you did a while back and have forgotten about. So you try to keep in mind what you’ve been doing. If you …
- Common Sense… simply noticing that thoughts and feelings have an effect on the mind, and that some thoughts and some feelings have a better effect than others. That’s the whole principle of the path. You try to develop thoughts and feelings that lead to an end of suffering. As for the ones that lead to more suffering, you learn to let them go. It’s …
- At Home in Jhana… It’s simply a matter of sticking with it and developing a sensitivity to what kind of breathing really does feel good right now. In other words, you’ve got all the raw materials for happiness right here. You don’t have to go traveling around anywhere else. Just pay attention to what you’ve got. The mind has a habit of fabricating things …
- The Buddha’s Rules of Order… Could it be better? What kind of breathing would feel better right now? That’s the beginning of evaluation. Then you can evaluate further: Explore the sensations of breathing in all the different parts of the body. Try to be systematic about it. You can start at the back of the neck, you can start at the navel, any place where you find it …
- Love is Conditional, Goodwill Is Not… Compassion is basically what goodwill feels when it sees other beings suffering. You’d like to see that suffering end: again, regardless of whether you like the person or not. If you see someone who is enjoying good fortune or is doing things that would lead to good fortune, you want to be happy for them. That’s empathetic joy. Again, that’s the …
- Near to the Buddha… See what long breathing feels like, what short breathing feels like. Deep/shallow, heavy/light. In some cases, this friendship may take time, but you’ve got to learn patience. Often, the biggest mistakes that people make in the world are because they’re impatient. They want something right away, right away, and they don’t think about the long-term consequences. That’s …
- A Message for the Universe… Our problem is that we tend to sit with our unskillful thoughts—they’re “okay.” They’re creating a lot of trouble for ourselves and for the people around us, and yet for some reason we feel that “This is simply the way I am, so this is the way I have to be.” That attitude, the Buddha said, blocks the path, because you …
- Questioning Your Unconscious Actions… Some of it, though, has more to do with how it feels—what kind of breathing feels satisfying right now. But because our attention is diverted elsewhere, we don’t really notice what’s going on. We don’t notice the extent to which we’re shaping this. This is one of the reasons why the Buddha has you focus on this as bodily …
- Thoughts About Thinking… It’s usually around what are called, “the three characteristics,” as in the case where one of the monks said, “Well, given that all feelings are stressful, and all your actions creates feelings, that means all actions create stress and pain.” The Buddha says, “When you’re talking about kamma, you have to talk about the three kinds of feelings: pleasure, pain, neither pleasure …
- Hope… The potentials for feeling come and you turn them into feelings. The same with perceptions, thought-constructs, even consciousness: All of these things have an element of fabrication. There’s an element of doing, an element of intention in all of these things. And we tend to miss that, which is why we miss the point where we can make a difference. So always …
- Empathetic Joy Is Ennobling… Which means you have to develop thoughts of goodwill at times when you’re not feeling happy, too. If the breath is uncomfortable, the body’s uncomfortable, that’s no time to have ill will or thoughts of being put upon. Think of the Buddha’s image of the person being sawn into pieces by a group of bandits. He said that if, when …
- A Mind Without Inertia… We value food because we feel hungry. We value passion because it helps us to overcome our inertia. But when the mind no longer needs to feed on things, it’s totally weightless. It looks at food and feels no inclination, for it doesn’t need it anymore. It looks at passion and sees it as the Buddha did: simply as a fever, from …
- Large-hearted Equanimity… After all, what is depression? It’s a sense of not wanting things to be the way they are and feeling helpless in the face of that. So the Buddha has you realize: There are other areas of your experience where you can** make a difference. This is where you focus inside. Try to get the mind into a state where it really is …
- Grasping the Snake… To what extent do you allow anger to come in and take charge? To what extent do you allow greed to come in, or feelings of being slighted, or of not being respected? Those feelings, the Buddha said, come under restlessness and anxiety, which are hindrances. So as you go through the day, watch out for them. If they’re allowed to take root …
- Defilements… When you start changing it, it feels out of whack, like something’s wrong, unfamiliar. It’s like somebody who’s been leaning to the left for years and years and suddenly you straighten him out. It feels weird to be straight. He’ll feel more inclined to lean back to the left again, which is what he’s familiar with. So this is …
- Choose Your Battles… You should learn how to endure painful feelings. And you learn to endure those by thinking in the right way. With the painful feelings, you know how to use the breath to work with pain. You know how to use your understanding of pain to help so that the pain doesn’t overcome you. The same principle applies with hurtful words. Learn to depersonalize …
- The Grass at the Gate… Where are they right now? How do they feel? Tense? If they feel tense, relax them. Go through them finger by finger, toe by toe, through the palms of the hands, the backs of the hands, the soles of the feet, the tops of the feet, relaxing all the little spots of tension you find. You might begin to notice that sometimes, as you …
- Conditions for Concentration… In fact, the Buddha talks about how once there is a feeling of joy, it grows into rapture. The rapture grows into calm. The calm grows into concentration, right in line with the lineup in the factors for awakening. So what comes before joy and rapture? Right effort. The Buddha talks about some of the conditions that can give rise to that kind of …
- Focal Points… Whether or not you feel the breath there isn’t the issue. Just remind yourself that there is breath there, so whatever you feel there qualifies as breath. You don’t have to make it move or do anything special. Just notice it. Aside from that, breathe in a comfortable way. Or if you like, you can focus on two spots. There was an …
- Against the Grain… There’s the feeling of hunger that drives us to feed, and the feeling of satisfaction that comes after we’ve fed; the perception of what kind of hunger we have and our perception of what kind of food would feed that hunger. Then there are all the fabrications, mental fabrications and intentions that go into trying to find food and figuring out how …
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