Search results for: "Feelings"

  1. Page 87
  2. When the Mind Is Still
     … Even if it’s a thought about something you don’t like, something you’re worried about, there’s part of the mind that feels, “I have to think about this, so I might as well think about it now.” Whatever the appeal, it pulls you in. Then you’re a person in that thought world. And when that happens, as the Buddha said … 
  3. Delight & Beyond Delight
     … But the fact that the way you focus on it will change it, the perceptions you have about it will change how you feel it, and there are different ways of breathing that can get help alleviate different diseases, different pains in the body—that is fascinating. It gives you a sense that the Buddha was right when he said, “All things have the … 
  4. Goodwill First & Last
     … exploring how the breath in the body feels right here in this world of the body right here, without reference to the world outside. Just this world of energy. The more you can get into it, the more you can get yourself immersed in it, the more you begin to notice the subtleties of the energy, the better. The body feels better. The mind … 
  5. Patience & Consistency
     … What kind of breathing would feel good? Or: How would long breathing feel? See how the body responds. How would it respond to shorter breathing? See how the body responds. You don’t have to do the mechanics. The body will take care of that for you. Just pose that question in the mind. If the body refuses to respond, you can test it … 
  6. The Buddha’s Relationship Advice
     … In that way, they become part of us, so when there’s a loss, we feel that a good part of us has been lost as well. Think of all the unskillful things we do out of the concern to maintain a relationship, fear that we’re going to lose someone who’s dear to us. There are cases where people will kill and … 
  7. Equanimity
     … In other words, you use the way you breathe, you use the way you think about things, evaluate things, you use your perceptions and feelings to deal with those problems: to figure out where they’re coming from and what you can do to undercut them so that eventually they don’t come back. So you need to use your discernment together with your … 
  8. The Reality of Your Thoughts
     … through physical fabrication, i.e., the breath; verbal fabrication, the thoughts and evaluations we make of a particular situation; and then mental fabrications, which are feelings and perceptions. The feelings here are feeling-tones: pleasure, pain, and neither-pleasure-nor-pain. As for perceptions, those are the labels we apply to things, the labels we apply to people; and it’s these labels that … 
  9. What You Can’t Change, What You Can
     … You don’t feel that you’re in competition with them. When you do something skillful, you can enjoy it. The Buddha says that that’s an important part of the practice. Sometimes we feel embarrassed about looking at our own goodness. But if you’re embarrassed about your goodness, you’re not likely to do any. We’re not doing it to gloat … 
  10. Overcoming Delusion
     … Then there’s the horse that has to feel the whip in its skin. Then there’s the horse that has to feel the whip digging into its flesh a little bit. And then there’s the horse that won’t do what you want until you dig the whip into the bone. In other words, as they say in AA, some people really … 
  11. Recollection of Hell
    Recollection of Hell February 9, 2010 We’re sitting here fabricating, putting together a sense of the body, putting together feelings, perceptions, more fabrications, even putting together our consciousness of these things. It’s something we do all the time. And the things we put together are not totally mind-made. The raw materials come from our past actions. Sometimes those materials are good … 
  12. Respect as a Sign of Intelligence
     … What do you feel is most worthy of respect inside you? The Buddha would say that it’s your desire for true happiness, with the realization that true happiness can’t harm other beings if it’s going to last. There’s a story in the Canon of a king who was up in his private apartment with his queen. And in a tender … 
  13. Not Just a Witness
     … Pure consciousness can observe feelings from the outside, seeing what’s causing a particular feeling, how that feeling comes, how it goes away. But that’s still a constructed process, a constructed pure consciousness. You have to realize that it’s something you do as well. At some point, you have to take that apart, too. As the Buddha says, when you get that … 
  14. Adjusting the Flame
     … How does the breath around your spinal column feel right now? How does the breath around your ribs feel right now? What about the different bones in your skull? When you give the mind work to do like this, even though it may not be quite as quiet as you’d like to be, still you’ve dropped outside concerns. And that’s what … 
  15. The Tools of the Path
     … You see what kinds of feelings lie behind the thoughts, especially if there’s a strong emotion. You look at the way you breathe to see if you can get out of the cycle when the breathing aggravates the thoughts, and the thoughts aggravate the breathing. Of course, there are perceptions and thought constructs, consciousness of these things—it’s all there. You have … 
  16. Head & Heart
     … your feelings and your perceptions. When you practice breath meditation, you’re learning ways of dealing with perceptions, ways of dealing with feelings, to breathe in a way that gives rise to ease, fullness, rapture. Learn to perceive the breath as a whole-body process. How do you perceive the breath energy in the body in such a way that you can calm down … 
  17. Directing & Not Directing the Mind
     … You can see that by settling down here, it really does feel good. You can see the benefits coming in the body. If you find that you have a tense spot in the body or a place where things feel blocked, you can spend your time working through the blockage, which requires first that you get at least some sense of comfort in the … 
  18. A Much Better Place
     … those who can see the danger coming before it comes; and then there are those who have to be slapped in the face with a danger before they realize, “Yes, this is dangerous here!” Of course, it’s best for us to see ahead of time the danger of identifying, say, with forms, feelings, perceptions, thought-constructs, consciousness, all the things that go into … 
  19. A Home & a Mobile Home
    One of the standard terms for concentration is *vihara-dhamma, *which can be translated as “a home for the mind.” As you focus on the breath, you want to get the mind so that it feels at home here, in a home that’s solidly built and a good place to stay. Otherwise, the mind goes roaming out looking for scraps outside to give … 
  20. Timeless Practice
     … The Buddha replied, “Give where you feel inspired, where you feel it would be well used.” So he encourages voluntary giving, because there’s a goodness of the heart that comes to nourish you and also gets nourished by the voluntary act of giving. When he talks about this, he’s talking about things that people have encountered in their lives. He doesn’t … 
  21. Protest Your Virtue & Right View
     … Mental fabrication has to do with the feelings and perceptions, the images you hold in mind. He uses these technical terms like fabrication, sankhara, even when he’s talking about something simple like breath or feelings and perceptions, because he wants you to see how these go into creating the illusions in the mind. The gears and wheels behind the illusion are the things … 
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