Search results for: "The Breath"

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  2. Kill Your Anger
     … This is one of the reasons why we meditate so much on the breath, learning how to deal with tension in the breath, blockages in the breath. It gives us an alternative. All too often we see the only alternatives with anger is either you get it out of your system by saying something or doing something under the force of anger, or you … 
  3. What You’re Choosing to Do Right Now
     … what you’re doing with the breath, what you’re telling yourself about the breath, how you’re evaluating it, and how you want to change it. Even with the feelings in the body: There are some feelings that you focus on and other feelings you ignore. Then there’s the whole idea of breath energy going through the body—one of the properties … 
  4. Filling in the Buddha’s Outline
     … The ajaans often talk about taking a survey of your mind when you sit down and before you focus on the breath. In what direction is the mind headed? Is it sleepy? Is it drowsy? There are ways of counteracting that. If you find that a particular topic puts you to sleep, change the topic. If you’re focused on the breath, try changing … 
  5. When Aging Closes In
     … From the concentration, you learn how to nourish the body with the breath so that you can counteract at least to some extent the effects of aging, the effects of illness. Having the breath as an alternative place to put your awareness also puts the mind in a much better mood. When the mind is in a better mood, it doesn’t make the … 
  6. Treasure Island
     … You explore the breath. What way of breathing is refreshing in the body, strengthening the body? Explore, trying to develop a sense of ease, a sense of coolness. If you’re feeling oppressed by the heat, try to gladden your mind. What things would make you glad right now, things in line with the Dhamma? Could you get fascinated by the breath? You could … 
  7. Rebirth & Not-Self
     … You focus on the breath. There are lots of things in the aggregate of form you could focus on right now, but focus on the breath. Breathe in a way that gives rise to a feeling of pleasure. Now, you’ll be helped by using a perception. Think of the breath not just as air coming in and out through the nose—because after … 
  8. Two Kinds of Middle
     … It’s a pleasure that comes simply from inhabiting the form of your body, being with the breath, the breath energy all around the body, all through the body, experiencing it from the inside. That’s form. It’s also a pleasure that can come as you learn how to direct the energies in the body—finding out where they’re flowing well, where … 
  9. Getting the Most Out of the Present
     … When you’ve meditated on the breath before, how did you get good results? Try to relax around the breath. Don’t make the meditation too much of a chore. Think of it as an opportunity to breathe easy. Each breath is another opportunity to breathe easy. When the mind can rest a bit, then it can look at itself more clearly. So whatever … 
  10. Training Your Cynical Voices
     … Keep coming back to the breath again and again and again. Keep exploring how you can breathe in a way that really feels gratifying. As for the stages of concentration, they’ll come on their own when you’re working with the breath like this. So there’s nothing superhuman about what you’re doing here—simply that you’ve got to learn how … 
  11. Worries & Regrets
     … As you breathe in, think of the breath scattering the thoughts. Or you can think of the breath as a big broom sweeping through the body, sweeping through the mind, sweeping those thoughts away. That way, you can settle down and actually strengthen the mind here in the present moment, so that it’s strong enough to maintain those right views, maintain the right … 
  12. Circumspection
     … Maybe I could try that.” Ajaan Lee’s instructions on the breath are a case in point. When I was in Singapore last year, some people were complaining that Ajaan Lee had introduced brahmanical ideas into Buddhism where they didn’t belong by talking about breath energies in the body. Now, the Buddha never said anything about breath energies in the context of breath … 
  13. Battling Negativity
     … It starts with the breath. As the Buddha says, you learn how to breathe in different ways so that the breath becomes an ally in your battle with negative mind-states. You learn how to breathe aware of the whole body. You learn how to calm the sensations of breathing in the body so that there’s a sense of ease and refreshment every … 
  14. Thoughts About Thinking
     … Sometimes you find that you can spend the whole hour thinking about the breath: different breath energies in the body and how you can coordinate them. If there’s a pain someplace in the body, you can ask yourself: How can you use the breath to help with the pain, so that even though the pain may stay there, you don’t feel so … 
  15. Don’t Stop with Acceptance
     … Retrain the way you breathe around the pain, especially how you deal with the breath energy. Ajaan Lee has a lot to say on this topic: Say there’s a pain in your hip. Do you feel that the breath gets stopped by the pain? Is the pain like a wall? If so, change the perception. Think of that wall as being porous. Think … 
  16. Right View from Right Effort
     … For example, you’re working with the breath right now. What kind of breathing is good? There’s no categorical answer to that question. What feels good right now? You experiment: longer breathing, shorter breathing, deeper/more shallow, heavier/lighter. When you find something that feels good, you stick with it. It may feel good for a while and then not so good. So … 
  17. The Need for Goodwill
     … In our own case, we meditate so that we can develop the skills inside that allow us to find happiness here, simply by the way we breathe, by the way we understand the breath, hold the breath in mind. We also do this as an example to others because the good examples of human behavior are what give us heart as we live in … 
  18. Secluded from Sensuality
     … That mean not only avoiding the pleasures but also avoiding fantasizing about them.s So, again, you have to maintain this sense of well-being that comes from inhabiting the body—staying with the breath, working with the breath energies—if you’re going to have any chance of pulling yourself out of sensuality and finding a noble truth inside the mind. This is … 
  19. Meditate to Win
     … You train in how to breathe calming bodily fabrication, which basically means calming the breath itself. And, as a couple of suttas say, you get to the point where the breath stops. That’s when it’s really calm. Similarly with training in feelings, mind-states, mental qualities. So when you come here, you’re submitting to a training. We often translate those passages … 
  20. A Valuable Gift
     … Try to make your mind one, here with the breath. Whatever way of getting the mind to settle down works for you, that’s what you pursue. There’s no one right way of getting the mind into concentration. Each person’s mind is going to find a different topic to be calming, although some topics can take you only so far, while others … 
  21. Accepting the Way Out
     … This is why we practice with the breath so much, so that it becomes second nature: As soon as something comes up, you check the breath. If the breath doesn’t feel good, you can change it. Then there’s verbal fabrication, the way you talk to yourself about the issue at hand. That’s tied in with mental fabrication, your feelings and your … 
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