Search results for: "Feeling"

  1. Page 92
  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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.
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. Pleasant Practice, Painful Practice
     … So we bring the other factors that shape our experience—our ways of directing our thoughts to a topic and evaluating it—and we apply them to the breath in a way that also gives rise to the way we shape the mind through feelings and perceptions. In other words, we have labels we place on the breath, and we have perceptions that tell … 
  11. Heedful of Small Dangers
     … If you feel that these qualities have an influence on your mind, it’s hard to withstand the same influences from outside. But if you can learn to be skeptical about your own thoughts and opinions, it’s a lot easier to be skeptical about other people’s—skeptical in a healthy way. In other words, you have to examine things that come into … 
  12. Safety in an Uncertain World
     … Mental is perceptions and feelings: the labels you put on things and the feeling tones you focus on. Your emotions are composed of these things, and you want to learn how to see them that way. They may be old habits. We may say that something we’ve done since childhood is really going to be hard to dig out, but it’s not … 
  13. The Open Committee
     … If you allow it to seep through the body, let the breath work through the body, around all the knots of tension, it feels really good to be right here. At the same time, you’ve got a place where you can observe things as they come, watch them as they go. You come to realize that there really is a committee in here … 
  14. W.W.B.R.
     … If the mind is feeling obstreperous and entangled with things, Ajaan Maha Boowa’s image is of a tree in the middle of a forest, which is unlike a tree out in a meadow. If a tree’s in a meadow and you want to cut it down, you don’t have to think too much about which direction you’re going to fell … 
  15. Patterns to Happiness
     … Try to see what rhythm feels best for the body right now. You can focus in different spots in the body. Then you can explore the way the breath energy feels in the body. How does it feel when you breathe in? What kind of posture do you have? What happens if you change your posture? Try to sit with good posture and notice … 
  16. Heedful of Death
     … It’s good not to be surprised by death when it comes, because if you’re too surprised, there’s also going to be the feeling of: “Why so soon? It’s not right! I have so much more life to live.” Well, you don’t at that point. “But I should have more life!” Well, what kind of should is that? You have … 
  17. Possessed by Emotions
     … perceptions on the one hand and feelings on the other. You know these things all have their causes. Some of the causes are in the present moment; some of the causes are in the past. You can’t do much about the past, but you can do a lot about the present. Say an unskillful emotion moves in: First you’ve got to ask … 
  18. Goodwill for the Real World
     … Who is there in the world for whom you feel ill will? Start out with people who are easy to feel goodwill for, and then go to those who are harder and harder until you get to the ones where you find it really hard. Then ask yourself: What would you gain, what would anybody gain, by seeing that person suffer? You think it … 
  19. Treating the Diseases of the Mind
     … An important part of concentration is that you feel comfortable with the object. You find it interesting—something that engages you. If it puts you to sleep, it’s the wrong object. Fortunately, with the breath, you can work with it in lots of different ways. Of the various objects, it has the most variety, in the sense that you can use it to … 
  20. Directing the Flow
     … If you simply feel bottled up by the precepts, there will come a point where you’ll explode. You have to use wisdom, you have to use discernment in sticking with the precepts. When there’s a desire inside that comes up against a precept, that wants to say something that the precepts don’t allow, look in your mind for the desire that … 
  21. Top Priorities
     … If they get pushed back, then how are you going to deal properly with all the affairs of the world, all the affairs of daily life? What strength do you have to offer? You may feel that you owe it to the people around you to attend to their concerns first, but they can see when you’re beginning to get frazzled, when you … 
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