Search results for: "Feeling"
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- Dispassion… You realize that you’ve been feeding off of form and feelings and perceptions and fabrications and consciousness: all these things that make up your sense of who you are. Now, though, you’ve found something better, which doesn’t require that you need to feed anymore. And you realize that all of this clinging and holding on is suffering. So you feel dispassion …
- Perceptions of Self & Not-Self… On the one hand, there’s the teaching that, as we chanted just now, form, feeling, perceptions, thought fabrications, and consciousness are all not-self. The six senses are not-self. The eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind are not-self. But then, as he pointed out, there’s the phrase another passage that we chant again and again, “I am the owner …
- Look Around as You Follow the Trail… Experiment with different ways of breathing, and you’ll find what feels best right now. If you’re not sure, just tell yourself, “Well, as long as it feels good enough, stick with it.” Then if you find that it starts getting mechanical or uncomfortable, you can change. What’s important is the quality of the mind you develop—a willingness to commit and …
- A Sense of Space Inside… You don’t want it to feel like it’s imprisoned here in the present but you do want it to stay. So if you can find someplace in the body where the breathing feels really comfortable, focus your main attention on that. Then think of that sense of comfort spreading around, so that as you breathe in, the whole body feels comfortable. There …
- The Six Properties… But the Buddha’s talking more about how you feel the body from within. How do you feel the oxygen from within, hydrogen, carbon, or iron? There’s no way that you can sense them directly. What you do sense directly is the fact that the body has a sense of energy, which is the wind; there’s warmth, which is fire; coolness—water …
- The Inner Saboteur… He didn’t feel he was up for it. In fact, back in those days, the monks in the ecclesiastical hierarchy actually taught that nibbana was no longer attainable, that somehow the door had been closed. His fear was that it’d be a waste to put all that energy and effort into the practice with all the deprivations that the practice would involve …
- Asalha Puja – Completeness… How does it feel right now? Does it feel easy? Does it feel refreshing coming in? If not, see what would be more refreshing. The greater the sense of ease and refreshment you get from the breath, the more you become sensitive to the slightest dis-ease of the breathing—something you tend to take for granted, thinking that this is the way the …
- 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 …
- Maintaining Goodwill… That’s the best use for this concentration, because when you stop creating suffering for yourself, you don’t feel inclined to create suffering for anybody else. The reason we make life miserable for other people is because we feel threatened, along with this attitude: “As long as I’m suffering, let everybody else suffer too.” Or: “If I’m suffering, I don’t …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
- 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 …
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