Search results for: "Feelings"
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- Self-hatred… passion for form, the form of the body as you feel it from within as you’re practicing concentration; passion for formlessness, the formless states—the dimensions of infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness; restlessness, wanting to make progress; and conceit, the sense of “I am,” that “I’m responsible for doing this. I can do this. I will benefit from doing this. I can …
- Feeding your Attack Dogs… Thinking about things that you feel righteously angry about, you are throwing some scraps to irritation and to views. And you do the same with ignorance and conceit: comparing yourself with somebody else to feel that “I’m okay as a person.” It’s amazing how in the course of the day, how often we compare ourselves to this person and that person, always …
- The True Dhamma Has Disappeared… One blind man feels the elephant’s trunk and says that the elephant’s like a hose. Another one feels the tail and says, ah, the elephant’s like a broom. Then they fight over whether the elephant’s like a hose or a broom. Well, in the Chinese version of this story, the blind men represent, not sectarians of other religions, but Buddhist …
- Marshalling the Emotions… When you’ve finally figured out how to be with the breath consciously and intentionally, and yet can allow the breath energy to feel full in every little cell in the body, rapture arises. You can maintain that rapture by learning how to maintain the right amount of pressure so that you’re not squeezing the breath, pushing it or pulling it — and some …
- At Play… He’d simply have them note, “What were you doing? What did it feel like as a result?” Then he would let them out to play. So, as you’re sitting here meditating, think of yourself being at play—at play with the four elements of the body; at play with feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, consciousness, your awareness—on those basic, building-block terms …
- Deconstructing Suffering… Focused on the breath—which is a bodily fabrication—you’re dealing with perceptions and feelings, which are mental fabrications. What you’re doing is taking this process of fabrication and turning it from a cause of suffering into a path to the end of suffering. How is that? To begin with, you create a state of mind that’s as clear and as …
- Kill Your Anger… the object you’re angry about, the state of anger in the mind, and then the physical manifestation—the way it feels in the body when you’re angry, and how you feel you have to get it out of your system. This is one of the reasons why we meditate so much on the breath, learning how to deal with tension in the …
- To Comprehend Suffering… These are the activities of form, feelings, perceptions, thought-fabrications, and consciousness. But theimportant word there is the clinging, because there are places where he says that the aggregates on their own are experienced by arahants. Arahants have form, feelings, perceptions, thought-fabrications, consciousness, but they don’t suffer, because they don’t have the clinging. So, the first noble truth: To comprehend dukkha …
- Circular Practice… So as we practice, remember that we’re depending on one another and we also want to be dependable for one another, to try to be a good example to others so they feel inspired to work on their minds. In this way, everybody benefits from living together. Now, for some of us, there will be the opportunity in the next several months to …
- Growing Up Inside… The sense of ease and well-being that you can create with the breath, the sense of feeling balanced and stable, means that the fact that you’re giving up certain old ways of thinking and acting and speaking, doesn’t make you feel deprived. You’re gaining something better: an opportunity to get the mind really to settle down. And the fact that …
- Sophisticated Dhamma… We’re sitting here meditating, thinking that with right concentration, there’s got to be rapture, there’s got to be pleasure, so where is the rapture and pleasure? Sometimes we feel there has to be a sensation of light, or that you have to have visions. Where is the light? Where are the visions? You decide that you’ve got isn’t good …
- Appreciating Goodness… Try to find a breath that feels comfortable so that the mind will be happy to stay here, because you want to get the mind under your control. We live in a world with lots of dangers, and you don’t want your own mind to be a danger to you. But if your mind is not under your control, what can you depend …
- Happy for People You Don’t Like … It’s going to be very difficult not to feel resentment in cases like that. So you have to analyze why. You come back to the underlying sense of self that you built around the kind of happiness you want, the image you have of yourself in comparison to other people. And it’s very small-minded not to be happy for other people …
- Verbal Fabrication… And then mental fabrication—your perceptions and feelings. As Ajaan Lee would point out, the verbal fabrications are real troublemakers. The way we talk to ourselves can create a lot of problems in the present moment, depending on the kind of commentary we’re making. So an important part of meditation is learning to talk to yourself in a new way. This, of course …
- Close to the Heart… Get to know how it feels in the different parts of the body, how different rhythms of breathing feel. It’s not so much that you want to become a breath mechanic, although that’s one of the side benefits. It’s more that you try to develop your sensitivity to the present moment, your sensitivity to the least little bit of stress, the …
- The Buddha Aimed High… As the king says, “Sometimes I’m lying there in bed in pain, and my courtiers are standing around saying, ‘Maybe he’ll die now, maybe he’ll die now.’” Ratthapala says, “Can you ask them to share out the pain so you don’t have to feel so much of it yourself?” The king says, “No, I’ve got to feel it myself …
- Right View from Right Effort… What feels good right now? You experiment: longer breathing, shorter breathing, deeper/more shallow, heavier/lighter. When you find something that feels good, you stick with it. It may feel good for a while and then not so good. So you’ve got to change. Then once you’ve got the breath going well, what do you do with it? Some people want to …
- Countercultural Conditioning… And then mental fabrication—perceptions, which are the labels you hold in mind, and then feelings: feeling tones of pleasure, pain, or neither pleasure nor pain. These are the things we use to shape our experience. In fact, even before we have sensory experience, we’re already started shaping experience in these ways, so that when something comes in by way of the eyes …
- For a Routine That Isn’t Routine… When you breathe in, where do you feel the breath? Where do you *not *feel the breath? Look at the areas where you don’t feel it, and see if you can detect something. Sometimes there’s a blockage that makes it difficult for there to be any sensation there. So work through the blockage. Other times, you begin to realize that the breath …
- Right Action & Right Livelihood… It’s because the way we earn our livelihood—where we look for happiness—is an area where we tend to be blind to whatever harm we’re doing, because we feel that our life depends on it. We don’t want to hear about ways in which our livelihood is harmful. This is why, when the Buddha was asked about different occupations—a …
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