Search results for: "Feelings"

  1. Page 98
  2. Energy & Efficiency
     … In other words when you’re sick, when you’re not feeling well, the practice goes one way. You may spend less time putting physical energy into the practice, and you may not be able to gain the levels of concentration or very precise mindfulness that you want, but do the best you can given the circumstances. When your energy level is high, don … 
  3. Carrying Your Duties Lightly
    Ajaan Suwat often called the monastery here, “a quiet corner,” a place where people can get away from the cares of their lives and just be with the body in and of itself; feelings, mind, mental qualities in and of themselves—to drop the general context of work, family, all the narratives that get built up around work and family and other issues outside … 
  4. Old Kamma & New
     … You want your ability to feel compassion to be all around. You want your ability to feel empathetic joy to be all around. And the same with your equanimity: all around. In other words, you want to be able to tap into these things whenever you need them. In cases where some people are difficult, learn how to have goodwill for them regardless. As … 
  5. Admit Your Stupidity
     … Then you have mental fabrications, which are perceptions and feelings. The perceptions are the images you hold in mind; feelings are feeling tones of pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain. So you can ask yourself what kind of perceptions would be useful to get the mind to settle down. In fact, this is one of the ways in which you can develop tranquility and … 
  6. The Uses of Equanimity
     … Learning how to be with the breath in a way that induces feelings of pleasure, feelings of rapture or refreshment is an important source of strength both for the body and for the mind. This provides you with a general pattern that you can use throughout life. When you run into limitations, you test them first to make sure they really are limitations. If … 
  7. The Fangs of Conceit
     … There are the movements of feelings—when you feel things, when you perceive things, when you fabricate things in the mind for certain purposes. When you fabricate a thought, it doesn’t mean that you’re lying about it. It’s simply that you cobble things together for whatever purpose you have in mind. This is how we get through the day. This is … 
  8. Goodwill as a Guardian
     … If you’re thinking this way, you should feel embarrassed, because here’s someone else who has goodwill for you, who wants to see you put an end to suffering—and you’re going to let someone else have more goodwill for you than you have for yourself? Thinking in these ways shows how goodwill is one of the guardian meditations. It’s one … 
  9. A Slave to the Dhamma
     … So as you’re doing battle with the defilements, you have to be ready to do whatever is required, to make whatever sacrifices are required, whether you feel they’re fair or not, whether at that particular moment you feel up for it or not. If that’s what required, that’s what you do. That’s one of the best attitudes to have … 
  10. Tools of Perception
     … This is how you get the mind into deeper and deeper concentration until the point where you really don’t feel the need to breathe. The energy sources in the different parts of your body nourish everything else. The mind is still enough so that you don’t need a lot of oxygen to nourish the brain. The oxygen you get through the pores … 
  11. Poison Your Fantasies
     … When you feel that the object is good enough, you can just be with the object. Just be with the breath. It gives you something to rest with. When you can have that answer—just, “Nothing new, nothing new. Just stay right where you are”—that’s restful. As the Buddha said, there’s no happiness, there’s no pleasure other than stillness, other … 
  12. Questions of Skill
     … Anything that would pull you off the path—any ideas, any feelings—you have to say No to them. You can’t identify with them. That’s where the perception of not-self comes in handy. Now, the perception of not-self can also be unskillful—as when somebody asks you, “Why did you run through the stoplight?” You say, “There’s nobody here … 
  13. The Middle Way
     … specifically, the suffering that comes from craving, the suffering in clinging to the five aggregates of form, feeling, perception, fabrications, and consciousness. All the different kinds of suffering in world that really weigh on the mind come down to clinging to any one of these five aggregates or any combination of them. So when you see the suffering simply as that—an example of … 
  14. The Power of Perception
     … It can be the feeling of the air coming in and out through the nose; it can be the feeling of the energy coursing through your body. It’s all part of what they call the wind element in Pali. The wind can be still; the wind can move. The same with the breath: The breath can be still; the breath can move. The … 
  15. The World of the Noble Truths
     … We think, “Why is this pain afflicting me?” “Why is this situation in the world outside afflicting me?” But the Buddha is saying that suffering is the act of clinging to form, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, or consciousness. It’s something we do. It’s not something we’re just on the receiving end of. We’re actively doing the suffering. He then defines the … 
  16. Intelligent Respect
     … One is when you have no respect for the author—you feel that he’s dumb or that he hasn’t thought things through or that he’s trying to pull a fast one. He’s got an agenda, and you’re trying to see through the agenda, trying to point out what’s wrong with the text. That’s not hard. But there … 
  17. The Languages of the Mind
     … Here we’re working on a whole vocabulary of concepts to deal with the breath, as a way of anchoring us in the present moment, so that we can watch it, feel at home here, feel comfortable here, and also begin to understand what’s going on, especially in terms of this issue of intention and attention, and the results of your intentions and … 
  18. In Terms of the Four Noble Truths
     … attachment to the body, to feelings, perceptions, ideas, even attachment to sensory consciousness. You want to notice that when you leave concentration, these things get heavier, more burdensome. The stories you build around them, the sense of who you are that you build around them, the sense of the world that you build around them, all of which is called becoming: It becomes a … 
  19. In Accordance with the Dhamma
     … But then he looks back and he sees other people coming along the path, and he feels compassion for them. He also sees other people placing rocks and obstacles on the path, so he wants to clear those obstacles away. The best way to keep the path open for the people who come after us, even if we haven’t reached the end of … 
  20. In Search of What’s Skillful
     … You get a spacey feeling in the mind and say, “This must be it. This is unconditioned. We’ve arrived.” But the question always should be: Is there anything you’re doing to maintain that? What are you doing as you stay in that state? The Buddha says that if you really look carefully, you see that there’s a perception that holds you … 
  21. Intelligence of the Heart
     … It’s something you can feel good about. Now, whether they respond or not is their choice, but at least you’re not proposing that they go in another direction. So when you can work it out that you can feel this type of goodwill for everybody, in the East, in the West, in the North, in the South, above and below, out to … 
  22. Load next page...