Search results for: "The Breath"

  1. Page 83
  2. The Duties of Happiness
     … To see it clearly, you may want to take a couple good, long, deep, in-and-out breaths to notice where you feel the breathing process. Wherever it’s most prominent, wherever it’s easiest to focus your attention, settle your mind right there. Now allow the breath to become comfortable. Notice that statement: It is a matter of allowing; but it’s telling … 
  3. Put Your Heart into It
     … In a case like that, you say, “Well, I’m going to stay right here with the breath. As for the thoughts, they can run off on their own if they want, but I’m not going to follow them.” And you’re resolute in sticking with the breath, even though one part of the mind may be flailing around, concerned about this, that … 
  4. Clearing Your Space
     … How’s the breath going? Give yourself something else to get interested in. The thoughts will continue running on automatic pilot for a while. They’ve got their own momentum, especially the really obsessive thoughts. But you just have to say, “No, I’m not going to go there. I’m going to focus on something else.” Think about the breath. If the breath … 
  5. Victory
     … How do you know the body from within? You know it through the breath. And the breath here is not just the air coming in and out of the lungs; it’s also the sense of energy you feel as you inhabit the body from inside—how you feel your arms and legs, your torso, your head, from inside. There’s that old Peanuts … 
  6. Practical Wisdom
     … If anger comes and you feel you just can’t stand it, that you have to get it out of your system, that’s a sign you’ve lost touch with the breath. You haven’t been on good terms with the breath. You’ve forgotten how to use the breath to disperse the physical symptoms of the anger. The same is true with … 
  7. We All Start with an Impure Heart
     … This is why the primary topic of meditation is the breath. You’re right here where the mind and the body meet. The fact that the mind can make the body move has to go through the breath. The fact that things happening in the body can get into the mind has to go through the breath. So you’re right at the crossroads … 
  8. Cut the Currents
     … The good thing when you’re focusing on the breath is that the breath is quite large. It has space for all the movements of your mind because it’s a whole-body process. When you breathe in, the whole nervous system is involved—all the way down to the tips of your fingers, the tips of your toes, out to every pore of … 
  9. Making Yourself Worthy of Trust
     … But remind yourself, the breath can go through anything—it’s an energy. Hold that perception in mind. And remind yourself also that the breath was there first—see what that perception does. You may ask yourself, “Can I trust these perceptions?” As long as they make the breath comfortable, they’re fine. Then give the mind some time to settle in. This will … 
  10. A Room of Your Own
     … Just try to stay with the breath. Think of the breath as filling the whole body. Whatever parts of the body you find are comfortable, stay with them. See if you can begin to spread that sense of comfort into other parts of the body as well. If there’s pain in your stomach, focus on your back. If there’s pain in the … 
  11. What Is One
     … And turn your attention back to the breath, so that you have something even better to feed on. Keep looking for those sensitive spots inside. Try to nourish them with the breath, so that you associate the practice of concentration with a sense of real, visceral well-being. That way, the mind will be more and more inclined to want to go in this … 
  12. Lessons of Distraction
     … You’re sitting here with the breath and suddenly you find yourself off in Albania, and you had no idea of what the steps were in between. It’s as if someone took a big sack and threw it over your head and carried you off, then dumped you out, and there you were. What’s actually happened is that the mind has been … 
  13. Fear & Anger
    Fear & Anger April 3, 2009 One of the reasons we focus on the breath as the foundation of our meditation is to give us a good place to stand. Lots of different emotions, lots of different ideas, can come washing through the mind, and if you don’t have someplace outside of the mind where you can take your stance, you get washed away … 
  14. Renunciation Isn’t Deprivation
     … Focus on the breath, keep your thoughts on the breath, keep your thoughts on nothing but the breath. And evaluate it: “How’s it going right now? What could I do to make it better, more satisfying?” As you get more and more absorbed in the breath—more and more absorbed in the process of getting the mind to settle with the breath—there … 
  15. Fixing the Present
     … How do you know? You test it.” And it’s the same with the mind, the same with the breath. You have to test things so that you can use the breath and use your mind for what you want. After all, we’re trying to create a path here. It goes some place. I was reading today someone saying that as long as … 
  16. A Game of Chess
     … So you’ve got the breath here. Now, sometimes the breath can be a problem, but you learn how to focus on it, stay mindful, stay alert, and that will take you to deeper and deeper states of concentration. Be alert to when the breath is long, when it’s short, see how these types of breathing feel. When it’s deep, when it … 
  17. Friends
     … You make friends with the breath, you make friends with your basic state of awareness. And then you learn to use them. You’re not abusing them. You’re just nudging them in the right direction. You can use feelings of pleasure, feelings of pain, use the breath, use your awareness, so as to gain release. Oftentimes we experience things in the present and … 
  18. Choose Your Cravings Wisely
     … How do you make the most of the breath in the present moment? How do you get to the mind to be willing to settle down? These are things that you remember from what you’ve learned in the past. If you’re feeling cold, what do you do to warm yourself up with the breath? That requires a memory of what you’ve … 
  19. The Desire for Things to Be Different
     … A good way to do that is to say, “I’m going to set up an intention to stay with the breath. Then I’m going to pay attention both to the breath and to the mind to see if it’s going to stay. And try to use a perception that helps me stay.” Think of the breath as a whole-body process … 
  20. Why Mindfulness
     … You stay with the breath because it gets you out of your thought-worlds and into the physical sense of breathing. Not only that, you can work with the breath so that it becomes a good, comfortable place to stay. It gives you a sense of ease, a sense of well-being, so that you don’t have to go for the gratification that … 
  21. Wild Horses
     … As you sit here focused on the breath, you can get the breath really comfortable as you explore how the breathing process feels in the body. That feeling of comfort, even though it can be very intense, is not counted as a sensual pleasure. Even though it’s related to the body, it’s not counted as a sensual pleasure; it’s the pleasure … 
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