Search results for: "The Breath"

  1. Page 92
  2. Concentration Work
     … So focus on the breath first. As you get used to being with the breath, you can’t help but notice that your mind is relating to the breath in different ways. There are times when the mind wants to simply enjoy the breathing; other times when it’s trying to figure out why it can’t enjoy it. What’s going on? Is … 
  3. Mindfulness Aims at Concentration
     … You realize that if you want to find something solid and reassuring, something reliable, you have to get the mind focused on keeping track of, say, the breath in and of itself. So you don’t apply the perception of inconstancy to the breath or whatever your meditation object is. You don’t apply it to the concentration yet. You’re trying to develop … 
  4. The Brightness of Life
     … So, what perception are you bringing to the breath? One of the things that I found especially illuminating in Ajaan Lee’s teachings was his take on what it means to focus on the breath, and what kind of breath you’re focusing on. In the ancient texts, the in-and-out breathing is just one part of the wind element. There’s also … 
  5. The Fourth Frame of Reference
    The Fourth Frame of Reference March 29, 2009 Ajaan Lee often made the point that when you’re focused on the breath, you don’t have just the first frame of reference or the first foundation of mindfulness. You have all four right there. The breath is the body in and of itself. That’s the first frame of reference. The feelings of pleasure … 
  6. Look after Yourself with Ease
     … a sense of the body as it’s felt from within, with the breath energies flowing smoothly through the body. As the Buddha said, this is part of the wind element, the breath that flows throughout the entire body. It’s a very subtle set of sensations, but it’s there. You can take advantage of it to get the mind to settle down … 
  7. The Use of the Present
     … You have an image in the mind of how the breath should be, but sometimes that image may be harmful. It’s going to have an impact on how you actually breathe. If you change the image, it’ll change the way you breathe. You can experiment, say, emphasizing the out-breath. Without paying much attention to the in-breath, be more careful to … 
  8. Body as Path
     … You can use the breath as an example, just paying close attention the breath. Find out which way of breathing can give rise to a sense of ease, a sense of pleasure. Then let that pleasure and ease spread out throughout the whole body. Let it saturate the whole body, suffuse, permeate the whole body. That sense of ease comes when you finally have … 
  9. Three Perceptions
     … You always want to keep your focus here, on the mind’s quest, even when you focus on the breath. When the breath gets more and more refined, with a sense of ease filling the body, you reach a stage where the mind and the breath seem to become unified and one. The mind and its functions become more and more prominent in the … 
  10. Encouragement
    By all rights, the breath should be the thing that we’re most familiar with in our lives. And yet when you start out meditating, it seems alien. Why stay just with the breath? What does it have to offer? This is a thought that’ll occur to you not only at the beginning of your meditative career but also many times throughout it … 
  11. Don’t Be Afraid of Jhana
     … You’re getting hands-on practice with how you can use the rhythm and texture of breathing to have an influence on how you sense the body; how to use the power of verbal fabrication—in other words, directing your thoughts to the breath and evaluating the breath—to give rise to feelings of pleasure; and how to use perceptions of the breath to … 
  12. Visakha Puja
    Stay focused on the breath. When the breath comes in, know it’s coming in; when it goes out, know it’s going out—all the way through the in breath, all the way through the out. On the night of his awakening, the Buddha watched his breath. So this is one way of commemorating his awakening: by focusing on your breath, to see … 
  13. A Tale of Two Kings
     … What you’re doing right now is focusing on the breath. Direct your thoughts to the breath. Evaluate the breath. Hold certain perceptions of the breath in mind so that you can create a feeling of well-being and allow that feeling of well-being to spread through the body. The choices you make as you do that really do change your experience. And … 
  14. The Path is Fabricated
     … being mindful, alert, ardent, and trying to stay with one object—directing our thoughts to the object; evaluating it, as we’re doing with the breath right now. We keep reminding ourselves to stay with the breath. That’s mindfulness. We’re holding the perception of breath in mind. And then we evaluate the breath, to see how comfortable it is, how it feels … 
  15. An Ennobling Pleasure
     … And the breath will just be in, out, in, out, and it’ll offer nothing else to you. So it is an acquired taste, but it’s a naturally acquired taste. In other words, it doesn’t require a lot of money; it doesn’t require a lot of education. What it requires is a lot of your own plain powers of observation, noticing … 
  16. Tuning Your Lute
     … We talk about resting in concentration, as opposed to doing the exploration of insight practice, but even with the resting, you do have to do work, making a survey around and around and around the body to make sure that the breath energies aren’t only opened up—the channels are opened up, and the breath energy can flow—but that they stay opened … 
  17. The Arrows of Emotion
     … One of the purposes of evaluating and playing with the breath is to bring that aspect of verbal fabrication up to the fore, to be clear about what you’re thinking about and how you’re fashioning your thoughts. You deal with the breath right here so that when the breath changes with an emotion, you’re aware of it. You’re on top … 
  18. Negotiating with Death
     … But if you unglom these things, you can hold the perception that the breath energy can go through. The breathing is a different process. And allowing the breath to go through the pain can often work through any unnecessary tension you build up around the pain. But even deeper, you begin to see that the pain is one thing and the breath is something … 
  19. Your Tranquility & Your Insight
     … So the breath comes from within. As the breath gets more gentle, more subtle, you hold in mind the perception that the breath originates from inside, so that you don’t feel so much the need to pull it in from outside. You let it radiate from within. As good breath energy fills the body, the need to breathe in and out gets less … 
  20. Remorse
    When you sit down to meditate and settle down with the breath, the mind becomes very sensitive. Sometimes things you did in the past that you don’t feel right about will come up. And they hurt. At times like that, it’s all too easy to start feeling remorse. Remorse is not an attitude or a feeling that the Buddha recommended. Because, as … 
  21. Generosity & Virtue as Skills
     … How do you get it to settle down? You just keep it with the breath. So keep coming back to the breath. As soon as you find that you’ve wandered off, come back, come back, come back. And any chattering voices in the mind that speak in tones of discouragement or boredom or whatever, you’ve got to learn to put those aside … 
  22. Load next page...