Search results for: "Feelings"
- Page 90
- Exploring Possibilities… You feel less burdened by different concerns, long-term or short-term. But it’s important in each case to turn around and look: What did you just learn about how the mind can function? How was it functioning in the past? How about the new way of functioning you’ve suddenly discovered? How is it better? Sometimes it may be a general psychological …
- The Raft of Concepts… If you find that you’re having trouble sticking with the meditation, you can call up those concepts again to remind yourself of why you’re here, to induce a feeling of samvega, a dismay over the pointlessness of life as it’s normally lived; and a feeling of pasada, or confidence that if there’s any way out, this has got to be …
- The Need for a Purpose… We have a purpose, which means, of course, that we have some expectations, that by fashioning a sense of form, feelings, perceptions, thought fabrications, and consciousness out of the raw material given to us by our past karma, we’re looking for something. We have a purpose in mind. This is the nature of our mind. It’s purposeful. When it has no purpose …
- Bringing Daily Life into the Practice… Or your feelings, again, in the context of feelings, not in the context of the world. This is why I said you want to make sure the practice forms the context: because, as you maintain this context, you’re in touch with your refuge. You keep yourself safe, because it helps you see things in terms of their true value—what’s really important …
- A Friend to the World, A Friend to Yourself… It feels good; it feels nourishing. There you’ve got bodily fabrication and verbal fabrication. As you hold images of the breath in mind that help the comfort of the breath to spread around through the body, that’s mental fabrication. See this really as a source of strength. Think of that image of the frontier fortress where you have mindfulness as the gatekeeper …
- Mindfulness the Seamstress… There’s concentration with mindfulness, concentration without mindfulness; concentration where you feel so locked in that you can’t even think, other kinds of concentration where you can think; some kinds of concentration where you’re not even aware of the body at all—the outside world disappears. When these things come up, it’s good to know, “Well, what did I do before …
- Constant, Easeful, Self… So do what you can to get the mind interested in the breath, to make the sensation of the breathing in the body really pleasant, really easeful, something that feels gratifying, something that feels interesting, attractive. There are parts of the body that haven’t been getting good breath energy. They would really like it if you gave them some, and you find that …
- Attention with an Agenda… You apply different perceptions and focus on different feelings for the sake of something. Like right now: You’re trying to get the mind into concentration. So you breathe in a way that will give rise to a sense of comfort for the sake of getting the mind into concentration. You use directed thought and evaluation, again for the sake of getting the mind …
- Metta… It’s very easy for us to feel goodwill for some beings and easy to feel ill will for others. To make goodwill something that we hold for all beings is more than human. The Buddha called it a Brahma-dwelling. It’s not a human being dwelling, it’s a Brahma-dwelling. You’re raising the level of your mind up above the …
- Attention & Intention… It feels good to be here. Everything is settled, balanced inside. You just want to stay. And it is good to stay, up to a certain extent, because the mind does need to rest. It’s like being outside on a cold night like this and lying down on an asphalt road warmed by the Sun during the day. It’s certainly better than …
- How to Think about Death… Can you visualize these things without feeling any remorse, any sadness? What kind of perceptions can you use to protect yourself from feeling remorse, sadness, and dismay? So that you realize, “Oh, this is just the normal way things are,” and you’re not knocked off your balance by thinking about the normal way things are. This morning someone was telling me about an …
- Beyond Natural Suffering… form as a clinging aggregate, feeling, perception, fabrication as a clinging aggregate, consciousness as a clinging aggregate. The usefulness of the synopsis is that you realize that clinging to these five things: That’s suffering. The clinging is the problem. So when you have any experience of suffering, you have to look for the clinging. You look for what it is that you’re …
- Unlimited Compassion, Limited Resources… In other words, we feel good about feeling compassionate, but sometimes that leads us to help people in cases where they’re just going to pull us down. Or they get us really entangled. Remember, one of the principles of the practice is that you’re practicing for unentanglement. There are a lot of people out there who are just pleading for help and …
- The Image of the Raft… You’re trying to breathe in a way that gives rise to a feeling of pleasure—that’s feeling. You hold in mind your image of how the breath runs through the body and you try to choose a perception that allows the breath energy to flow freely so that the sense of ease you get from the breathing can flow throughout the whole …
- A Happiness Without Boundaries… What’s the most comfortable way of breathing right now? What breath would feel best? What part of the body feels starved of breath energy? Well, give it some breath. It’s a totally harmless way of finding happiness. And it develops the skills you need to find a happiness that dissolves boundaries, leading to something that’s really free.
- The Story-telling Mind… No matter how much goodwill you feel for other people, no matter how much appreciation and compassion you feel, some things lie totally beyond what you can change. Number one, the past cannot be changed. You have to develop equanimity toward the past. Look at what the Buddha has you think about to develop equanimity: the principle of kamma. Old kamma is old kamma …
- Determined to Practice… lying; divisive speech—in other words, you say things to split people apart from each other, or to prevent friendships from happening, if you think that a friendship among two other people might be threatening to you; harsh speech—in other words, speech that’s simply meant to hurt other people’s feelings; and then idle chatter—speech that doesn’t have any real …
- The Duty to Understand… clinging to form, clinging to feelings, clinging to the perceptions or mental labels, clinging to thought constructs, and clinging to acts of consciousness or cognizance. The clinging is something we have to comprehend. It’s important to keep in mind the duties that go with each of those noble truths, because all too often we get our duties mixed up. We try to let …
- Conviction & Focus… But it is true that when you don’t feel there’s much time left, it’s hard to pursue any activity, for fear that you won’t be around to finish it, or it won’t be worth putting the time in to finish it. I thought of this when someone raised a question a week or two ago. It was during a …
- Mindful of the Buddha’s Shoulds… The body feels still, the mind feels still, which means that any movements in the mind will show themselves more clearly. Then you ask yourself, “Okay, what’s sparking those movements?” So again, there are some questions you ask yourself. And they’re questions you should ask. It all depends on how you frame the questions. Again, in terms of the four noble truths …
- Load next page...
