… 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 …
… In that way,
you develop a greater solidity. And the solidity is in and of itself a
gift to the people around you.
I recently saw an old New Yorker cartoon: a very chaotic office with
one person in the middle of the office who seemed calm. The boss was
talking to another of the workers, saying, “George over there: He’s a
center …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 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 …
… 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 …
… 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 …
… In the same way, it’s important that you keep your spirits up as you
practice. Realize that if you’re going to make your way to release, it
has to be through doing your duties. So don’t see these duties as
onerous, as a weight bearing you down. They’re an opening, an opening
to freedom: freedom from suffering, freedom from all …
… It’s a good image to hold in mind, because once the way you
breathe does develop a sense of ease, well-being, then you try to work
that sense of ease and well-being through the body, leaving no dry
patches.
In the beginning, the body’s going to resist a little bit, because
there will be patterns of tension here and there …
… That way, we can actually deal with those stupid things in an
intelligent way, in an effective way, in a way in which we find
something that’s more than we expected—that it really is possible to
put an end to suffering and find a happiness that’s totally blameless,
totally changeless.
When the mind finds that, it’ll take on a new …
… 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 …
… 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 …
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 …
Introduction | Good Heart, Good Mind
… 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 …
