Search results for: "The Breath"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. Judging Your Meditation
     … Does the breath feel good? Does it not feel good? What would feel better? When you choose a point to focus on, which spot is going to be most congenial? You’ve got to learn how to judge these things. So it’s good to keep in mind some important principles about judging as it applies to the meditation. The first one is that … 
  9. In the Light of Karma
     … When you have that attitude, then, as you focus on the breath, you focus on the breath with a light mind, with a sense of having come to a place that does offer safety. Concentration may be something fabricated but it takes you to a good place. You can start engaging in your verbal fabrications—all the thoughts and conversations of the mind—in … 
  10. Feeding on Feeding
     … the form of the body, which is the breath; the feelings of pleasure and pain that you find in the breath; the perception of breath, with which you find that as you manipulate it, you experience the breath in different ways. Then, of course, there’s the fabrication: If the breath doesn’t feel good, what are you going to do to make it … 
  11. Right Resolve & Right Speech
     … Watch the breath. If the mind is settling down with the breath, fine. Keep it going. Try to breathe in a way that’s comfortable. But if the mind is not settling down, you have to look into why. This is where you want to hear more truthful speech inside. What’s the mind focused on? There will be times when it’ll be … 
  12. Relationships
     … The breath comes in, the breath goes out, you stay with the breath, the mind relates well with the breath: There’s a sense of well-being that comes from being with the present moment like this. Then it’s easier to deal with some of the more difficult issues that come up in the mind: things where ordinarily you tend to lie to … 
  13. Kindfulness
    Kindfulness May 1, 2010 As you train the mind, focusing on the breath, allowing the breath to be comfortable, trying to become friends with the breath, it’s a very direct way of showing goodwill to yourself and to the people around you. Goodwill for yourself in the sense that you learn how to develop a source of happiness that comes from within. Your … 
  14. The Meaning of the Body
     … And one way of doing that is to stay with the breath coming in, going out, being with the sensation of the breath. Or you can analyze the 32 parts of the body. Or the elements of the body: the warmth, which is the fire element; the motion in the body, which is the wind element; the cool and liquid sensations, the water element … 
  15. The Path of Giving
     … You direct your thoughts to the breath and evaluate the breath. Then there’s the consciousness of all these things. So you’re taking those raw materials that you use to make into a self and now you turn them into the path. That’s how you give yourself to the Dhamma. You disassemble your own sense of who you are and you reassemble … 
  16. Respect
     … Just try to focus, pay careful attention because we’re trying to get ourselves grounded in the body, grounded in the present moment right now, staying with the breath. Think of the breath not so much as the air coming in and out through the nose, but as the flow of energy in the body. Where do you feel that? Which direction does it … 
  17. Equanimity & Exertion
     … Like we’re doing right now here with the breath: You work with the breath. If it’s not comfortable, you can work with it and make it longer, shorter, faster, slower, deeper, more shallow. See what does feel comfortable right now. The breath itself is a fabrication. Your directed thought and evaluation—that’s a fabrication, too. And they have, as the Buddha … 
  18. Self View & Conceit
     … When you’re with the breath, you don’t leave the breath. It’s a matter of learning how to be with pleasure, sometimes very intense pleasure, and yet not focus on the pleasure itself. Keep your eye on the breath. Stay with the breath. It’s like that image the Buddha gives of the man walking through a crowd. He’s got a … 
  19. Of Past & Future
     … Focus your attention on the breath. The talk is here to be a fence to direct you back to the present moment, direct you back to the breath in case you wander off.” The reason I say that is because that’s how the Dhamma functions as a whole. It’s meant to point you back to your mind in the present moment, to … 
  20. Just Events
     … We work with the breath, but there will come times when the breath is not cooperative. Your heartbeat gets strange, and you try to breathe in a way that’s calming, but it doesn’t seem to have that much of an effect. This is when you have to reflect back on your awareness as being something separate from all this, and it can … 
  21. A Sense of Direction
     … You focus on the breath, allow the breath to be comfortable, think of that comfortable breath sensation then seeping throughout the whole body. And you work with it. If you find any areas that seem to be blocked, you do what you can to allow that sense of ease and well-being to seep through or seep around until it permeates everything in the … 
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