Search results for: "The Breath"
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- Generosity of Spirit… You’ve got the breath, that’s your bodily fabrication; you’ve got directed thought and evaluation, verbal fabrication, and your feelings and perceptions are mental fabrication. For the most part, as we go through life—especially if we have little training in meditation—we wound ourselves by the way we fabricate the present moment. We breathe in ways that are uncomfortable. We talk …
- The Strength of Heedfulness… So the mind does need to rest, and it requires some thinking to get it to settle down, as you learn how to play with the breath, play with your meditation object. See what works, what doesn’t work. Use your imagination. I read a passage one time in which I was accused of having an “imaginative” way of teaching concentration. It was presented …
- The Buddha’s Universal Solvent… When you’re really with the breath, there’s no story there. You migt make a little story about how, “Last night, I meditated really well. I stayed with the breath.” But if you were to give a really detailed story of your meditation, well, the breath came in. Then the breath came out. Then the breath came in again. Then went out again …
- If These Walls Could Talk… So if you find yourself wandering off, away from the breath, you try to bring yourself back. And as you stay here, you try to strengthen your focus. This is one of the reasons why we work with getting the breath comfortable, trying to be aware of the whole body as you breathe in and breathe out. Notice where the breath is flowing well …
- Your Inner Teacher… If your mind wanders off the breath, if it wanders away from your body, here’s the sound of the talk to send you back, to remind you of why you’re meditating, and sometimes to point out things that you might not have thought of otherwise. But still, the talk is meant to be here in the background. If there’s anything in …
- The Wisdom of Incongruity… In the beginning, we actually have to use that ability to think around things from various angles to help get the mind settled in on the breath in a comfortable way. If the mind has a tendency to think, well, try to have it think about the breath. Think about evaluating how comfortable it is, where you feel it, where it feels good, where …
- Perfection in an Imperfect World… the ability to keep something in mind, as we’re doing with the breath right now—keeping the breath in mind, and keeping in mind all the tricks we’ve learned about how to deal with the breath. You don’t have to run them through your mind all the time, but have them at your fingertips so that when you recognize a certain …
- Intelligence of the Heart… It’s the same as when you work with the breath. In the beginning, it’s difficult trying to find ways of getting good breath energy to flow through the body. But as you get more and more used to how the breath channels are arranged in your body, and how you can allow the breath to spread, then you get more and more …
- Selfing & Not-selfing… You’ve got the feeling of pleasure that you’re trying to maintain; the perception of the breath that holds you with the breath; fabrication of directed thought and evaluation as you keep thinking about the breath and evaluating how good it is, and adjustments so that it feels good breathing in, good breathing out, all the way in, all the way out. You …
- Renunciation… Ultimately, as you focus on the breath, the breath gets more and more refined, to the point where you don’t even have a sense of the in-and-out breath, and the shape of the body begins to dissolve away. The body begins to feel just like a mist of little dots. If you focus in on the space between the dots, that …
- Unparadoxical Happiness… No matter what happens, no matter how loud the noises around you are, how insistent outside stimuli maybe, they don’t destroy the breath. They don’t destroy your ability to stay with the breath. This is a kind of happiness that comes with practice. So it’s worth working on. It’s a happiness that does withstand scrutiny. Yet even this is not …
- Advice for a New Monk… Notice where you feel the breath. Whichever part of the body that’s easiest to stay focused on and to know, now the breath is coming in; now the breath is going out: Try to stay focused right there. If thoughts come into your head, remind yourself that they’re not destroying your breath. The sensations of breathing are still there. Try to maintain …
- Mindfulness of Death… There’s one passage where the Buddha says that if you really want to be heedful, you remind yourself each time you breathe in, each time you breathe out, “May I live for this one more breath, I could accomplish a lot.” In other words, mindfulness of death focuses you on the breath and what you can do with the breath. If you simply …
- When Attacked by Distractions… This is what’s holding me there.” Now, if you find that applying this kind of thinking helps, and you really are understanding things, okay, drop the breath for a bit and focus on this. Although you can also find that using the breath to deal with whatever has got you distracted can be helpful. In other words, there’s probably some dis-ease …
- Visakha Puja – Shaking the Earth… You focus on the breath. That’s called directed thought. And then you see if you can stay with the breath for long periods of time, because you’re trying to develop concentration. As the Buddha once said, that’s the heart of the path. All the other elements he awakened to in the path serve as its requisites, serve as its supports. The …
- Meaning & Becoming… Direct your thoughts to the breath. Evaluate the breath. Use perceptions of the breath and body to help you settle down. Make the breath comfortable, and develop feelings of well-being. That’s right concentration—part of the path. In terms of the qualities called the perfections, that list I gave you just now, this comes under renunciation: looking for happiness in a way …
- Cherish Your Friends… Focus it on the breath. Try to cut down on all the chatter. If you want to talk to yourself, talk about one thing. Talk about the breath. Ask yourself: Is the breath coming in? Is it going out? When it comes in, how does it feel? Where do you notice it? When it goes out, how does it feel? Where do you notice …
- The Context for No Context… There’s simply you and the breath, you and the body. As you focus on the breath and on the body, that sense of “you” sitting there is going to get pared away, too, as you begin to recognize more and more the factors of mind that keep you with the breath, keep you with the body, and the factors of the mind that …
- The Pain of Conviction… You sit down to meditate and the breath just doesn’t seem to get comfortable, doesn’t want to. Well, it’s not the breath. The problem is with the mind, those other agendas. So you need something to pull you through when things get tough. This is where conviction comes in. There’s a passage where the Buddha’s discussing the causes that …
- Not-self, Not No Self… You focus on the breath and then you try to breathe in a way that feels good. That makes it easier to stay focused. If the breath is uncomfortable, you’re going to find a lot of other things to do pretty quickly. Think of the breath as the whole body of energy. When you breathe, the whole body’s breathing in, the whole …
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