… For instance, when a feeling of pain appears in fabrication, it’s
accompanied by the way you breathe and by your perceptions. So, you
can ask yourself, “To what extent is the way I’m breathing aggravating
this pain? Can I breathe in another way? And to what extent is the way
I’m talking to myself about the pain getting in the way …
… It’s your kamma in the present experimenting with different ways of dealing with pleasure, different ways of dealing with pain, to see what approaches give the best results. Over time, as a meditator, your powers of judgment should get more and more precise in this way.
This is one of the reasons why the Buddha included evaluation as part of right concentration. You …
… He discerns, as it is has come to be, that ‘This is stress… This is the origination of stress… This is the cessation of stress… This is the way leading to the cessation of stress… These are effluents… This is the origination of effluents… This is the cessation of effluents… This is the way leading to the cessation of effluents.’ His heart, thus knowing …
… One of the ways of taking pleasure in doing this, even before you can
find a sense of well-being with the breath, is to talk to yourself
about what a good thing it is that you’re on this path. The Buddha
lists six different ways of taking delight that he says can lead to
the end of the effluents. It’s interesting …
… You might want to check, to make a survey of the body, to make sure that all those channels are open, down the back, out the legs, in the front of the body, right down the middle, past the shoulders, down the arms, all around the head, down the legs, all the way to the feet. Any patterns of tension or tightness, allow them …
… It’s a sensation of energy that flows through the whole body, and you’re sitting in the middle of this vast breathing process that affects every nerve, every muscle. The whole experience of your body is related to the breath. The more you can perceive the breath in that way, the easier it is to settle down. And the easier it is to …
… After all, the fact that there’s
pain in the body is problem enough, but you don’t want to be adding to
it by the way you breathe. And you want to see if the way you breathe
can actually help.
When I had malaria, I found that simply breathing became laborious. I
realized that because I was using certain muscles in the …
… Or if the mind is feeling really irritable, you can think of relaxing everything going down to the legs, down to the toes, think of yourself sitting in the middle of the breath, putting the breath all around you, with relaxation spreading out from the center in every direction.
So: lots of ways of playing with the breath. Lots of ways of playing with …
… Either the life force was identical with the body, thus allowing no way for rebirth to occur after the body dies; or else there was a soul or life force separate from the body, which either died along with the body or else survived death. Yet when the Buddha’s contemporaries pressed him to take sides on this question and related questions, he consistently …
… Then bring your attention to the middle of the chest. Try to be especially sensitive to how the breath energy feels around the heart, and breathe in a way that feels soothing there.
Now bring your attention to the right, to the place where the chest and the shoulder meet.
And then to the same spot on the left.
Now bring your attention to …
… Even good qualities of the mind are inconstant, but the more you invest in them, the longer their impact, the longer their ability to support you, all the way through the process of aging, all the way through the process of illness, all the way through the process of death. These things stay there. And they can help you. The body is something you …
… It can be the tip of the nose, the middle of the head, the
base of the throat, the chest, the abdomen.
When you find a spot that you like, then allow the breath at that spot
to feel comfortable: comfortable coming in, comfortable going out,
with no tension building up with the in-breath and no holding on to
tension or pushing out …
… All the qualities you develop are good qualities of mind, noble qualities of mind, which is why they say that the Dhamma is good in the beginning, good in the middle, good in the end.
The quality of ardency is especially important. It’s what helps the other good qualities of the mind grow. It’s part of right effort. Right effort involves three …
… When Ajaan Lee is
talking about the different ways of meditating in his book, Frames of
Reference, he starts out with different ways of thinking. Think about
the 32 parts of the body, think about the body in terms of the
elements, think about how inconstant things are, to develop a sense of
*samvega. *It’s the samvega that helps pull you away from …
… You talk to yourself about which ways of breathing are
skillful, which ways of breathing are not, and how you might change
things. Once the breath is comfortable, how do you maintain that sense
of comfort? And when you can maintain it, how do you let it spread?
All that talking to yourself is fabrication. Then there’s
consciousness, which is aware of all …
… May the jhana factors be balanced.” But
it doesn’t happen that way. You can’t just wish your way into these
things. You have to learn your skills. And saying Yes to the breath is
one skill. Learning how to say No to everything else is another skill.
All too often, when we say No to a thought, we clamp down on the …
… You’ve strayed from the Middle Way, which is a mistake. Or you may see yourself as something you wouldn’t care to be: a pig or a dog, a bird or a rat, crippled or deformed. If you let yourself get upset or depressed, that’s indulgence in self-affliction—and again, you’ve strayed from the path and have fallen out of …
… If you can’t get your food in good ways, you’re going to
start getting it in bad ways. You can’t really trust yourself.”
But the Buddha isn’t telling you to just run away. If you’re going to
leave the world, he says, you’ve first got to develop all the good
qualities of the mind: your generosity, your virtue …
… way of approaching the step of gladdening the mind is to think
of the six kinds of delight that the Buddha talks about as being
conducive to the practice. The first is delight in the Dhamma. It’s
similar to recollection of the Dhamma. You think about what a great
Dhamma this is; how it’s admirable in the beginning, admirable in the
middle …
… Then King Pasenadi Kosala went to the Blessed One in the middle of the day and, on arrival, having bowed down to him, sat to one side. As he was sitting there, the Blessed One said to him: “Well now, great king, where are you coming from in the middle of the day?”
“Just now, lord, I was engaged in the sort of royal …
DN 12 Lohicca Sutta | To Lohicca
… He discerns, as it is has come to be, that ‘This is stress… This is the origination of stress… This is the cessation of stress… This is the way leading to the cessation of stress… These are effluents… This is the origination of effluents… This is the cessation of effluents… This is the way leading to the cessation of effluents.’ His heart, thus knowing …
5 : An Appropriate Frame | The Truth of Rebirth
… Either the life force was identical with the body, thus allowing no way for rebirth to occur after the body dies; or else there was a soul or life force separate from the body, which either died along with the body or else survived death. Yet when the Buddha’s contemporaries pressed him to take sides on this question and related questions, he consistently …
