Search results for: "Feeling"

  1. The Reality of Emotions
     … As he points out, our feelings are fabricated. Although the happiness of nibbana is not a feeling, every other form of happiness is a feeling, and every feeling is fabricated. This means that all feelings have an intentional element. We put them together for a certain purpose. We want a particular feeling if for nothing else than to establish who we are and what … 
  2. Feelings Not of the Flesh
     … You see this particularly in the treatment of feelings. It sounds as if we just watch feelings come and go. But when the Buddha describes how feelings come and go, they don’t just come and go on their own. The mind takes the potential for feeling and fabricates it—in other words, turns it into an actual feeling. So there’s an intentional … 
  3. The Food of Feelings
     … Our feelings are our food: the food for our minds. If you look at the different feelings that go through you in the course of the day, you realize that a lot of them are toxic. If you feed on them, it’ll be toxic for the mind. Feelings of sadness, feelings of depression, feelings of anger, discouragement: All these things can really weaken … 
  4. The Second Frame of Reference
    The Second Frame of Reference September 21, 2009 As you sit here with this bundle of feelings, there are lots of different feelings you could focus on. There are pains in some parts of your body, pleasant feelings in other parts, and nondescript neutral feelings in still other parts. It’s not that you have just one feeling at any one time. It’s … 
  5. Feeling & Intention
     … This is an important distinction, because many of us know that there are people out there we have grudges against, people we don’t like, and we feel guilty because we don’t like them. We feel somehow that we should feel love and warmth for them instead. One of the reasons for this misunderstanding is a mistranslation of the passage in the sutta … 
  6. Friendship
     … You may feel the passage of air into the nose, or you may feel the movement of the body itself as it breathes in, as it breathes out. In fact, that’s a more useful place to focus, because it means you can focus anywhere in the body. Notice how the breathing feels. Try to explore what feels best. Sometimes long breathing feels good … 
  7. Full Attention
    We’ve all had the experience where we’ve had to hide our feelings, cover them up. We come away from that experience with the belief that our feelings are the real us, and the side that said to cover them up is coming from outside, so we tend to identify with our feelings more than almost anything else. We forget the Buddha’s … 
  8. What Makes Concentration Right
     … And that relates to feelings. Try to breathe in a way that gives rise to feelings of rapture, feelings of pleasure—again, so that you can stay here for long periods of time, and you can also gain a sense of how you create your feelings. If you simply watch feelings coming and going, coming and going, you get a sense after a while … 
  9. In Charge of Your Moods
     … Where do you feel the breathing in your body? Especially when the breath is long, you feel it down in the chest, in the torso, in the stomach… but wherever it’s clearest, focus your attention right there. Then ask yourself if long breathing is comfortable. If it feels good, keep it up. If it doesn’t feel good, you can change. You can … 
  10. Stepping Out of Yourself
     … our feelings and our thoughts. Actually, there’s no clear line between feelings and thoughts. A feeling is basically a thought that’s gotten into your body. We’re talking about emotions, not just the feeling tones that they call *vedana *in the technical Buddhist terminology. Your emotions are sankharas, fabrications—thoughts that get into the body. They feel especially real because they have … 
  11. Mindfulness of Breathing: Four in One
     … Take a couple of good long deep in-and-out breaths, and notice where you feel the breathing in the body. If long breathing feels good, keep it up. If it doesn’t, try to breathe in another way that gives rise to a feeling of pleasure, a sense of ease. You don’t have to force the breath into the body. Think of … 
  12. In the Mood to Meditate
     … Here’s your freedom not to be a slave to your feelings. All too often, especially here in the West, we tend to identify with our feelings: “This is what’s really us, what’s really ours.” We may mistrust our thoughts, but somehow our feelings we feel are genuine. Actually, our feelings are just fabricated. They’re habitual. And just because you feel … 
  13. Training Wheels
     … There’s pleasure and pain that can come from these things, but the feeling itself is something different. And then the awareness of the feeling is something separate from the feeling. When these things are still together for a while, you can begin to see them separate out. As you go from one level of concentration to deeper and deeper levels, these things begin … 
  14. An Island in the Flood
    Take a couple of good long deep in-and-out breaths to emphasize the feeling of the breath. Then make up your mind that you’re going to stay with those sensations, the breathing sensations, as long as you can. You want to get established firmly right here, with just the sense of the breath in and of itself. This is part of the … 
  15. Stick with It
     … Just allow the breath to come in and out in a way that feels easy and natural. You can experiment a bit to see what kind of breathing feels best, making it a little longer to see how that feels. If it feels good, try a little longer. Or if long breathing doesn’t feel good, you can try shortening it until you get … 
  16. Breath Energy
     … You’d feel it from within. That feeling from within: That’s breath energy. In some parts of the body there’s a definite feeling that it’s flowing, and in other parts it seems more static. In other parts it seems like there’s nothing there at all. Your thigh could be missing; your shoulder could be missing. It’s because you’ve … 
  17. More than a Sliver of Mindfulness
     … In this, the Buddha talks about the different kinds of feelings. This is relevant to right concentration, because the stages of right concentration center on their feeling tones. When you read the list of feelings under right mindfulness, it seems as if you’re just aware of feelings that are there and feelings that are not there. The same with mind states. You’re … 
  18. Kind & Happy
     … Where do you feel that energy? And where does it feel good? If the breath doesn’t feel particularly good, if you can’t decide what feels good, then try holding your breath for a while and then notice which parts the body feel refreshed when you finally do breathe in again. Okay, focus on those parts. And allow them to stay comfortable. In … 
  19. No Extra Arrows
    The Buddha says that awakened people feel pain, and unawakened people feel pain. So what’s the difference? He gives an analogy. He says that for most people, when you feel a pain, it’s like being shot with one arrow, but then you shoot yourself with a second arrow. You get upset, you get distraught, you beat your breast, he says. As for … 
  20. Don’t Believe Everything You Feel
     … And when you’re feeling weakened by the temperature and tired from your work, your defenses are down, and feelings become very prominent. We talk a lot in the meditation about not believing your thoughts. The same principle applies to your feelings, and they’re even harder not to believe, because feelings have gotten into the body. They are thoughts that have provoked reactions … 
  21. Load next page...