"Ardently alert means that when the mind is staying with the breath, you try to be as sensitive as possible in adjusting it to make it feel good, and in monitoring the results of your efforts. Try long breathing to see how it feels. Try short breathing, heavy breathing, light breathing, deep, shallow. The more refined you can make your awareness, the better the meditation goes because you can make the breath more and more refined, a more and more comfortable place for the mind to stay. Then you can let that sense of comfort spread throughout the body. Think of the breath not simply as the air coming in and out the lungs, but as the flow of energy throughout the whole body. The more refined your awareness, the more sensitive you can be to that flow. The more sensitive you are, the more refined the breath becomes, the more gratifying, the more absorbing it becomes as a place to stay."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Buddhists from the United StatesPeople from New York (state)Translators from the United StatesBuddhist monksTheravada Buddhist monks
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/%E1%B9%ACh%C4%81nissaro_Bhikkhu
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu
11 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu →
Related Quotes
"In our culture ... people who don't submit to their lust are said to be repressed and have all kinds of warped beasts…"
""The Interactive Present" (2002)"
"This is the basic trick in getting the mind to settle down in the present moment — you've got to give it something th…"
"Maybe you can't make the whole body comfortable, but make at least part of the body comfortable and stay with that pa…"
"Society tends to slough off the problems of aging, illness, and death, tends to push them off to the side because oth…"
"our sense of self is an activity, a strategy for avoiding suffering, for maximizing happiness."
"You let go of the grosser forms of happiness, the grosser strategies for happiness, and get used to more and more ref…"
"Sometimes you hear the idea that the ego is so corrupt that anything it tries to do is going to be corrupted as well.…"
"I remember when I first went to Singapore. I marveled at how planned everything was. But the sense of marvel was not …"
"There’s a passage where [the Buddha] contrasts his way of teaching with what he calls training in bombast. Training i…"