Search results for: "Feelings"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. Delight
     … And some days you just don’t feel up to that effort. So it’s good to stop and think about what’s good about what you’re doing here, why you want to be here sitting here with your eyes closed. The reasons are going to be different for different people, but they basically come down to the fact that the mind is … 
  11. Three Parts of Right View
     … There are the feelings of hunger, and the feelings of fullness that come after we’ve eaten. There’s the perception of what kind of hunger we’re suffering from. Is it the kind of hunger that needs something liquid? Does it need something solid? Does it need something salty or sweet? And then there’s the perception of what out there would satisfy … 
  12. Choices
    The Buddha’s teachings are all about making choices between the things you feel like doing and the things that would be for your long-term welfare and happiness. It starts with generosity. You have something. You could either keep it and use it yourself, or you could give it away. Your immediate impulse is to keep it. But when you try giving it … 
  13. What Are You Taking into the Future?
     … It’s a strange expression, it’s hard to say why the Buddha says it’s for the sake of “formness” or “feelingness” or “perceptionhood.” The Commentary tries to explain this way of phrasing the issue away, saying simply that we fabricate form as form, feelings as feelings, perceptions as perceptions, and so on. But that misses something which is very clear in the … 
  14. Comprehending Clinging
     … In the meantime, you’ve got to learn to look carefully at the different senses of what you want, the way you feel the world works, and how you feel you should act in the world, and this “you” who’s invested in all these things. It’s the investment that makes us cling. That’s why the Buddha said, of all the forms … 
  15. In Alignment
     … Experiment a bit to see what feels just right. Just like a balance trying to find its point of an even keel, it’ll lean a little bit to the left, a little bit to the right, but just enough so that you eventually know what’s straight up and down. Then try to keep it there. This is our point of normalcy: the … 
  16. Learning from Determination
     … It’s simply that the breath energy feels so full in the body. You’ve learned how to breathe in and breathe out without squeezing the breath out, without squeezing it between the in-breath and the out-breath to make a little marker. The in-breath flows into the out-breath, the out-breath flows into the in-breath, and you breathe out … 
  17. The Walls of Ignorance
     … Sometimes you may notice that you’re putting too little or too much pressure on it. “Too little” means that the mind keeps slipping off. “Too much” means that the breath feels confined. It’s constricted, placed in a box, and can’t get out. Ajaan Lee once compared alertness to a rope over a pulley that you can pull in two directions. You … 
  18. Training Heart & Mind
     … This is why you develop a good sense of who you are and what you’re capable of, so that you feel worthy of a happiness that doesn’t change, a happiness that’s better than ordinary because you’re not harming anyone. This sense of self-worth comes from looking at yourself as you practice acts of generosity, *as *you practice acts of … 
  19. Counter-cultural Values
     … perception and feeling, which are the raw materials from which you might talk about things—feelings of pleasure pain, neither pleasure nor pain, and the images that the mind creates to communicate with itself. When a really strong emotion comes into the mind, it’s made of these three same things. But while you’re meditating, you’re learning to gain some control over … 
  20. A Mind Like Earth
     … You learn how to breathe in a way that feels refreshing, feels nourishing—energizing when you need energy, relaxing when you need to be relaxed, soothing when you’re feeling wounded. This practice is meant to be done in a world that’s not perfect. That doesn’t mean we don’t try to adjust things and improve things when it’s possible, but … 
  21. Adjusting the Flame
     … Ajaan Suwat would often talk about giving rise to a sense of conviction, a sense of feeling inspired that this is something you really want to do, this is a good use of your time, and it’s a privilege to be able to meditate. Then, with that motivation in mind, you look at what’s going on in the mind. Thoughts will come … 
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