Search results for: "Feelings"
- Page 86
- The Happiness & Suffering of Others… He said, “Are you moping here? Feeling depressed?” The Buddha said, “No. I’m spreading goodwill to all beings.” It’s an interesting strategy. Instead of focusing on his own pain, he thought of the happiness of all beings. It’s a useful strategy to adopt in lots of different situations where your pain is pretty heavy and it’s weighing you down. Try …
- Five Strengths… the ability to stay with one thing consistently, with a sense of ease, with a sense of well- being—learning how to settle down with the breath in a way that really does feels gratifying to the mind, feels easeful to the body. Have a sense of being at home. The state of concentration is what gives you the good solid foundation you need …
- Learning by Doing… You can focus anywhere in the body where there’s a feeling of energy. The energy may be moving, it may be still: That doesn’t matter. Just keep in mind that there’s a kind of energy there. Even in your hands, your feet as you’re sitting here very still: There’s still an energy. The blood is flowing through the veins …
- Solving Real Problems… Then you learn to breathe in and out aware of the whole body, so that you can see the breathing as a whole body process, because you’re going to be trying to develop feelings of rapture, feelings of pleasure, and let them spread throughout the body. They shape your state of mind, and the shape of your mind is going to have an …
- Conserving Your Strength… When it comes, even when illness comes, they feel offended. They feel that something is very wrong here. This is not the way things should be. But as the Buddha reminds you, aging, illness, and death are normal. This is the way of life. So you use that contemplation as a way of reminding yourself of what’s important and what’s not. We …
- The Fourth Frame of Reference… The feelings of pleasure or pain that you’re encountering as you deal with the breath count as feelings in and of themselves. That’s the second. As for the mind state you’re trying to develop, you find that it’s either defiled or not. Or as you get further into this third frame of reference, you start noticing when the mind is …
- Read the Breath… Try longer breathing for a while and see how that feels. Shorter breathing, see how that feels. Deeper, more shallow: Learn how to read the breath. In other words, learn how to read what the body needs. Sometimes you see the effects of the breathing immediately; other times you notice it over time. This ability to read your breath is a very important skill …
- Admirable Friendship… The proper response to those kinds of friends is to feel gratitude and to help them in return. Admirable friends are people who have qualities that are better than yours. In particular, the Buddha pointed out four qualities: conviction, virtue, generosity, and discernment. If you’re wise, you look for people who have these qualities and you try to emulate them. Conviction means conviction …
- Facing Your Responsibilities… If they’re not busying themselves with something, they feel empty, at loose ends. There’s something wrong if you can’t just sit with your mind and be quiet. As we sit here, we’re trying to figure out what that “something wrong” is and also figuring what to do about it. The breath gives you a handle, gives you something to do …
- The Wisdom of Dualities… This is something no one else can give you precise instructions on, because no one else can sense your breath as you’re feeling it right now. Your body as you feel it from the inside: That’s your own exclusive territory, so you’re the one who has to explore it. All a teacher can do is point out possibilities: that there are …
- Experimental Intelligence… Try different kinds of breathing to see which rhythm, which texture of breathing feels best for the body right now, and which is also best for the mind. Some ways of breathing can put you to sleep, other ways of breathing get you irritated, so you want to check and see what kind of breathing is going to make it easiest for the mind …
- Overcoming Obstacles… Just because a feeling comes into the mind doesn’t mean that it has to be your feeling. See it simply as an event that comes, an event that goes. It comes from causes and it has it results. It’s up to you to decide which events you want to encourage and which ones you don’t. When you can look at these …
- Right Now… feels good coming in, feels good going out. You’re pretty well established in it. The act of evaluating the breath then becomes a burden. You see that that’s inconstant, stressful, relatively stressful, too. And you don’t have to hold onto it. You let it go. This allows the mind to get firmly planted in its object, firmly planted in the breath …
- Appropriate Attention… It could be about your body, it could be about your feelings, the images you have in mind, the thoughts with which you talk to yourself, or even just your consciousness. As you cling to these things, that’s suffering. The clinging can be divided into the act of passion and desire, which is craving itself, and the fact that it’s latched on …
- Right View Tells You What to Do… Where do you feel that movement, and does it feel comfortable? If it doesn’t feel comfortable, you can change. You can experiment with different kinds of breathing: longer, shorter, or in long out short, in short out long, deep, shallow, heavy, light—lots of ways you can explore. Then there’s mindfulness, which basically is keeping something in mind. In this case you …
- Becoming Capable of Happiness… This is why, when the Buddha is asked, “Where should a gift be given?” he says, “Give where you feel inspired, or you feel it would be well used.” In other words, he doesn’t place any shoulds on the act of giving. However, if you want to turn generosity into a skill, then you have to start thinking about what you’re going …
- Learning from What You Do… It’s not that they’ll come when you’re ready for them and feel up to fighting them. Sometimes they come when you’re most worn out, feel least like doing battle, yet you’ve got to do it. If you don’t handle them then, they’re just going to take over. So it’s good to have other people to point …
- The Choice Not to Suffer… Because right where there’s feeling there’s also attention and intention, perception—particularly intention. And when these issues are solved, everything important gets solved as well. One of the big issues that really stares you in the face when you think about the Buddha’s teaching on intention and causality—on how your intentions shape the world—is his insistence that events from …
- Meditator, Mediator… When you feel physically at ease, it’s a lot easier to be in a good mood and not feel so desperate, not be so impatient, because it’s our desperation or impatience that makes it difficult for us to talk. It makes it easiest for us to make snap judgments, throw our weight around. What happens, of course, when we throw our weight …
- The Four Biases… As we peel away all the different layers of our involvement in our thoughts, our involvement in things outside, we finally come to this part of the mind and often we’re afraid of it, because we feel that it makes us antisocial or unsocial or unfeeling. But that’s not the case. It puts us in a place of security, a place of …
- Load next page...
