Search results for: "The Breath"

  1. Page 87
  2. The Dhamma Wheel
     … So if you realize that you’ve left the breath, you drop the thought unfinished, get back to the breath. That’s the quality of ardency. While you’re with the breath, the quality of ardency is to try to be as attentive as possible to what kind of breathing is really good for the body and mind right now. What does the body … 
  3. Practice Without Gaps
     … So do your best to stay with the breath. One way of ensuring that is to make the breath interesting to focus on. You can recall that the way you breathe is going to have an impact on your body and on your mind. So you want to adjust the way you breathe—see what kind of impact it has, learn from your experience … 
  4. Training in Happiness
     … Make the breath your friend. Sometimes when the breath is your enemy, that means, say, when you get angry, your breath starts getting harsh and uncomfortable, and you don’t feel right. You feel you’ve got to say something or do something to get it out of your system. But what you usually end up doing is something you’re later going to … 
  5. At the End of the Day
     … This is when you can consciously adjust the breath until you find a way of breathing that’s engaging. You can also think of the breath energy going into parts of the body that it rarely goes to, or in directions that you ordinarily don’t think about. If the back is feeling tired from the day, think of the breath energy coming from … 
  6. Respect as a Sign of Intelligence
     … When you stay here with the breath and you keep reminding yourself, “Okay, stay with the breath, stay with the breath, don’t forget,” that’s mindfulness. As you develop your mindfulness, other lessons that you’ve learned in life will be easy to keep in mind. When you’re with the breath, sensing the breath as it is right here in the body … 
  7. Can Do
     … How do you breathe in a way that gives rise to a sense of refreshment? Remember, there are lots of different ways you can conceive of the breath, and already you’re beginning to use mental fabrication, i.e., perceptions, as you focus on the breath, because these will be the big issues: your perceptions around the pain. They start with your perceptions of … 
  8. Social Anxiety
     … What this means is learning how to maintain your center with the breath, inside the body, even when you go outside and deal with other people. This is one of the big issues in any meditator’s life. Ajaan Lee has another passage where he compares the meditation to making the mind one and then turning it into zero. Now, when you have zeros … 
  9. The Interactive Present
     … Once you get a sense of the breath going smoothly and comfortably, you let it expand from that spot into other parts of the body, moving through the part where there’s pain and out the feet and out the hands. You begin to realize that those thorns in the present are not just a given. There has to be a part of you … 
  10. Planting a Tree
     … We play with the breath as a way of making it enjoyable, so that it is a game, in Ajaan Fuang’s words. But playing with the breath also has some important lessons to teach, both about the body and about the mind. You begin to see how much even something as simple as the breath can be affected by your perceptions. And if … 
  11. Judicious vs. Judgmental
     … Just bring the mind back to the breath, bring the mind back to the breath. Why? Don’t ask questions right now, just bring the mind back to the breath. But be observant while you do it, because as you catch the mind going off, you can learn some very interesting things. You come to a point where you can see the mind beginning … 
  12. Prepare to Die
     … I once heard someone say that you shouldn’t focus on the breath as your meditation topic, because after all, at death you’re going to leave the breath and then where will you be? Well, we focus on the breath not to get the breath. It’s because the breath leads us into the mind. It’s the closest physical process there is … 
  13. Two Kinds of Seclusion
     … One of the things the breath does is that it gives you a place to stay in the present moment where you’re not pushed around by these voices. You can watch them coming and going. Over time you can begin to separate yourself from them, recognize whose voice is that, what’s the intention behind that voice. Do you really believe that voice … 
  14. Whatever It Takes
     … Try to develop the same level of absorption and interest in the breath, reminding yourself that there’s a lot to learn here, just keeping tabs on the breath all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out-. Years back I happened to visit a music school in Seoul. The year prior to that, a friend of mine who learned … 
  15. Empathetic Joy Is Ennobling
     … This is one of the reasons why Ajaan Lee recommends working with the breath to gain a sense of well-being, and then you can dedicate that well-being to others. You’re happy to share. He says it’s like having a water tank. If there’s no water in the tank, you open up the faucet and nothing but air comes out … 
  16. Breaking the Arrows
     … When you’re focusing on the breath, these are precisely the qualities that get strengthened: the ability to keep the breath in mind, the ability to be alert to what’s going on with the breath right now, and the quality of ardency to do this well. We develop all these qualities as we relate to the present moment because it’s in the … 
  17. Horror Stories
     … As I said earlier, the place where you’re going to find awakening is a place you’ve been many, many times before, just focused in the present moment, noticing how the breath changes, how it has an impact on the body, how it has an impact on the mind, how the mind has an impact on the breath, and how your perceptions have … 
  18. Moving Between Thought Worlds
     … In this case, you take the breath as your focal point, and your desire is to stay there as continually as possible. To help carry out that desire, you want to learn how to evaluate the breath and your concentration, to see how well you’re doing. For some people, this particular part is also difficult because they’re adept at making negative judgments … 
  19. The Grass at the Gate
     … There’s a potential for rapture right here, a potential for ease — all associated with the breath. Many times when we read the descriptions of Right Concentration it seems far away, but everything we need is right here. When Ajaan Lee talks about comfortable breath sensations and uncomfortable ones, we already have comfortable breath sensations in at least some parts of the body. There … 
  20. Look after the Source
     … You focus on the breath and try to be on good terms with the breath. Learn how to read the needs of the body with regard to the breath: Does the body need short breathing right now? Does it need long breathing? Deep, shallow, heavy or light, expansive, or more focused? That’s something you can play with, something you can adjust. You have … 
  21. Not Crushed by the World
     … So focus on the breath or, as the Buddha said, the body in and of itself: in this case, the breath in and of itself. As you breathe in, breathe out, where do you feel it? What way of breathing is comfortable? Focus on that. When you find something comfortable, see if you can maintain that sense of comfort. Then, as you maintain it … 
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