Search results for: "The Breath"

  1. Breath Meditation
    One of the convenient things about the breath as a meditation topic is that it’s with you wherever you go. It’s always there to tap into. The important thing is that you remember to tap into it. It’s easy to get lost in other worlds—worlds of thought, worlds of emotion, issues of the past and the present—but the breath … 
  2. Analyzing the Breath
    Analyzing the Breath April 18, 2005 When the Buddha teaches mindfulness immersed in the body, the first thing he discusses is being mindful of the breath. It’s good to stop and think for a few moments about why he starts there. One of the reasons is that the breath is your most immediate experience of the body. We have a tendency to identify … 
  3. Imagine Your Breath
    Keep focused on the breath, in and of itself—ardent, alert, mindful—putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. That’s the formula. What it means is that you put aside all your concerns about the world right now. You can think of the world as anything from starting from the skin around your body on out, except for the cocoon … 
  4. Working Through the Breath
    People sometimes ask why we focus on the breath and they often have their opinions as why we shouldn’t be focusing on the breath. One is that you want a place for the mind to stay as it goes through aging, illness, and death. And, of course when you die, the breath won’t be there to focus on after death. So they … 
  5. Set Your Heart on the Breath
    Set your heart on the breath, as that’s essentially what concentration means—to have your mind set on something, to have your heart set on something. In the Buddha’s vocabulary, the word citta means both heart and mind. They don’t draw a clear distinction or a line between the two. This knowing faculty includes both knowing and willing. The two inform … 
  6. Anchored in the Present
     … In fact, when the Buddha talks about the best way to develop all four of them, he says to focus on the breath. He doesn’t say that when you’ve had enough of the breath, then you drop the breath and focus on feelings or mind or whatever. You basically stay with the breath all the way through. It’s part of the … 
  7. Breath Energies
     … So simply imagine that the breath has the right to go right through. Return it to its prior place in your sense of the body so that the pains in the body aren’t directing the breath, or the tightness in the muscles is not directing the breath. Your perceptions of where the breath can flow are directing the breath, so try to give … 
  8. Goodwill for the Breath
     … It’s by adjusting the breath, getting sensitive to how your mind interacts with the breath, and then learning to do it in a more and more friendly way, more sensitive way, so the mind and the breath get along together: That’s how you come to know both the breath and the mind. So, notice how the breathing feels as it comes in … 
  9. A Frame of Reference
    Close your eyes and allow your awareness to settle on the breath. Take a couple of good long, deep in-and-out breaths. Notice: Where in the body do you feel the breathing process? Maybe in the rise and fall of the chest, the air coming in and out of the nose—any spot in the body where it’s obvious that now the … 
  10. The Path Is and Isn’t the Goal
     … It’s going to be right here in the breath. So think about the breath and examine the breath, evaluate the breath. Try to get absorbed in the breathing. This is your ticket. It may not seem like much. That’s when you remind yourself: This is not the goal but it’s all you’ve got. This is your ticket out of here … 
  11. Calming the Breath
     … We often feel that the solid parts of the body are a really direct experience of the body, and then the breath is something that the solid parts have to bring in and push out. If you perceive the breathing process that way, the breathing is going to be harsh. But if you think of the whole body as breath—permeated with breath—the … 
  12. Committed to the Breath
    We’ve all read enough on physiology to know where the breath comes in, where it goes out, but as you’re sitting here right now, where do you feel the breathing? What parts of the body are engaged in the breathing process? Focus your attention on those sensations—your direct experience of the breath energy—and commit yourself to it for the hour … 
  13. Urgency & Contentment
     … All the information you have to learn and understand, all the fabrications you want to master, are right here at the breath. When you’re focused on the breath, thinking about the breath, and evaluating the breath, the thinking and evaluation are called verbal fabrication. The breath itself is bodily fabrication. The perceptions and feelings that you develop working with the breath: Those are … 
  14. A Good Place to Stay
     … That’s the breath. And then there’s the breath itself. Try to bring all those together to begin with. After a while, you find that the thoughts about the breath, you can drop. Just be with the sensation of the breath coming in and going out. Notice where you feel it, and notice how it feels. If it feels comfortable, stick with that … 
  15. Breathaholic
     … We usually translate the word jhana as absorption, and if you’re going to be absorbed in the breath, it really has to be interesting, pleasurable. This is why it’s important that you evaluate the breath. See how it feels. Notice how the breathing process feels in the different parts of the body and the different ways it can* *feel. This is something … 
  16. Meditators at Work
     … And that’s the breath. The first question is, where do you feel the breath? Or even the question before that is, what is the breath? For our purposes, we’re going to focus not so much on the air coming in and out through the nose, but the sense of energy in the body. These energies can be felt on many levels. There … 
  17. Technique & Attitudes
     … When you think about the breath, how do you conceive it? What’s your picture of how the breath comes in, how it goes out? Where does it come in? Where does it go out? Actually, the breath energy can come in and out of the body in any place. So if you find there’s a place of tension, think of the breath … 
  18. Questioning Impermanence
     … You’ve got the body, you’ve got the breath, you’ve got the mind. The breath is what they call bodily fabrication. Thinking about the breath and evaluating the breath: Those are called verbal fabrication. And the feelings and perceptions that go around the breath, those are called mental fabrications. As the Buddha said, these are all the fabrications you need to know … 
  19. Your Secret Foundation
     … You look in the Canon and you see that the most detailed meditation instructions are focused on the breath, the breath as a basis for establishing mindfulness, gaining concentration, discernment, release. Why is this all focused on the breath? For a lot of reasons. When you’re with the breath, you can see a lot of things in the body and the mind. It … 
  20. Exploring the Basics
    Try to stay focused on the breath. In the beginning it sounds pretty simple, and it is. It’s a very simple activity, but our mind is very complex. Often we have to clear away a lot of complex issues before we can actually settle down with the breath and be able to stay focused. First it’s good to understand what the breath … 
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