Search results for: "The Breath"

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  2. Alertness: What Are You Doing?
     … You use those mental activities to shape the breath, to shape your experience of the breath. If you shape it well, then there’s going to be a sense of ease and well-being, a sense of rapture. The mind can settle down. You’re doing something good here. Now there are cases where you simply drop your affairs of the day and the … 
  3. The Questions of Suffering
     … You learn how to perceive the breath continually. You direct your thoughts to the breath. You evaluate the breath—that’s fabrication—so that you can create a feeling of well-being. The breath feels smooth, silken, diffuse throughout the body, energizing the body, nourishing the body. The sense of the body from within changes because you’ve changed your intention. You’ve developed … 
  4. Skillful Attachments
     … Explore how the breathing feels in the back, how it feels in your legs, because it does relate to every part of your nervous system. The breath is what keeps the nerves going, keeps them sensitive, and there are many levels and layers of breath in the body. There’s the in-and-out breath. There’s a sense of energy that flows up … 
  5. Hobo Mind
     … This is one of the advantages of having the breath as a meditation topic, because it’s not a thought. It’s a physical sensation. Whatever trains of thought come roaring through our heads, we don’t have to go with them. Hold on to the sensations of simply the body sitting here right now, breathing in and breathing out. You can focus your … 
  6. The Five Hindrances
     … In case you slip off the breath, we’re right here to say, “No, you missed the turnoff. You missed that little turn in the breath. Let’s go back.” Try to make sure that the talk is not a hindrance to your meditation, because the mind has enough hindrances on its own. The traditional list is five. Those are five large categories. As … 
  7. Present-Moment Intelligence
     … So we begin by focusing on the breath, and learning to manipulate the breath. One of the main misunderstandings about breath meditation is that, whereas, in yoga they manipulate the breath, in the Buddhist way of doing things you don’t manipulate the breath. Where that idea came from, I have no idea, because the Buddha’s instructions tell you to breathe in certain … 
  8. The Three Perceptions & Their Opposites
     … You’re taking the breath—your sense of the body as you feel it from within—and as you start out, you notice that it’s inconstant and stressful. As you try to get the mind to settle with the breath, there are a lot of things going on that you don’t control. But you’re going to try to work with the … 
  9. A Meditator is a Good Friend to Have
     … Have the sense that the breath is sweeping through your whole body, from the top of the head down to the tips of your toes. Try to notice where there are any patterns of tension in the body. Allow them to relax and let the breath sweep right through them. Then allow the breath to find a rhythm that feels really comfortable. You can … 
  10. To Delight in the Path
     … So you give the mind something good to focus on, like the breath. You can work with the breath. You can do all kinds of things with the breath. Think of the breath coming in the base of the spine, going up the spine, coming in the soles of the feet, coming in the palms of the hands, coming in through the eyes and … 
  11. Happiness is a Skill
     … the form of the body in the breath; the feeling of pleasure that comes when the breath feels good; the perception—the mental image of the breath being the energy going throughout the body—that holds the breath in mind; fabrication, the conversation you hold with yourself about the breath as you’re evaluating it; and then consciousness, which is aware of all these … 
  12. Recognizing Fools
     … Anything that’s not related to the breath, that’s not related to getting the mind settled down with the breath or whatever your topic is, is— for the time being —the voice of a fool. But the concentration on its own is not enough to guarantee wisdom. There are what they call vipassanupakilesas, the corruptions of insight: either visions you might have or … 
  13. In Harmlessness Is Strength
     … Now, it’s important that you have the right attitude toward it, as you’re focused on the breath. In other words, you should stay focused on the breath and not on the pleasure. You focus on the breath in a way that gives rise to that sense of pleasure, but then you let the pleasure do its work, you don’t have to … 
  14. Disposable Worlds
    Settle in with the breath. Learn to relate to the breath in such a way that you feel at ease. Sometimes this means simply allowing the breath to come in and out as it has been, noticing where it’s already comfortable and then protecting those little comfortable spots. Other times it means actively making the spots more comfortable. We try to do it … 
  15. Developing Discernment
     … There’s the sound of the crickets starting and stopping, there’s the arising of the breath, passing away of the breath, the arising of a feeling, the passing away of a feeling. But the purpose of seeing these things arise and pass away is to see what we’re doing as they arise and pass away, so that we can learn to act … 
  16. The Buddha’s Wisdom
     … The Buddha gives you new things to keep in mind, not just the precepts, but now you’re going to focus on, say, just the breath in and of itself, or feelings or mind states just in and of themselves. But it’s good to start with the breath because everything else revolves around that. You’re ardent, alert, and mindful. Ardent in trying … 
  17. Three Recollections
     … As soon as you focus on the breath, it’s like trying to balance a needle on top of a ball-bearing: It slips off. Or like trying to put two north poles of magnets together: They push each other away. There’s something that repels you from the breath, something that repels you from the present moment. In cases like that, he says … 
  18. Working Hypotheses
     … You may hold a perception of the breath. At first, it’s your anchor that enables you to stay here in the present moment. But after a while you begin to realize that your way of perceiving these things may actually still be a disturbance. To begin with, there’s the need to adjust the breath so that it feels just right. But when … 
  19. Understanding Aggregates
     … Here again, you’ve got form (the breath); feeling (the feeling of dis-ease you might encounter when you first try to settle down, and then the feeling of pleasure you’re trying to develop); the perceptions that you keep in mind about how the breath goes, where you can focus on the breath, your relationship to the breath. Fabrication starts out especially with … 
  20. Feeding on Right Resolve
     … After all, the breath can go through anything—it’s energy. And think of it coming before your other sensations in the body. All too often, we feel the solid parts or the pains in the body are there first, and then the breath has to be pushed through them or work its way around them. But just hold in mind the perception that … 
  21. Discernment Fosters Concentration
     … You don’t feel starved of breath, you don’t feel like you’re suffocating, it’s just that the breath energy in the body is full. Everything is connected inside. If there’s a felt lack of breath energy in one part of the body, the breath energy in another part will move in. And you learn how to maintain that. It’s … 
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