Breathe! You Are Alive: Sutra on the Full Awareness of Breathing

You can pass half your life seeking riches and fame without ever holding your little toe between your fingers in awakened awareness.

The intelligent practitioner knows how to regulate and master his or her breath, body, and mind, in order to enhance the power of concentration before proceeding in the work of observation to shed light. Meditation practice is nourishing for body and mind, and can also expand our vision. Expanded vision enables us to go beyond passionate attachment

I want to say something about the expressions “observing the body in the body,” “observing the feelings in the feelings,” “observing the mind in the mind,” and “observing the objects of mind in the objects of mind.” The key to “observation meditation” is that the subject of the observation and the object of the observation not be regarded as two se

Seeing that there is a precious jewel in our pocket, we give up every attitude of craving or coveting like one who is deprived. Seeing that we are lions, we do not long to nurse from a mother deer. Seeing that we are the sun, we give up the candle’s habit of fearing the wind will blow us out. Seeing that life has no boundaries, we give up all impri

The fourteenth method allows us to see that every dharma is already in the process of disintegrating, so that we are no longer possessed by the idea of holding onto any dharma as a separate entity, even the physiological and psychological elements in ourselves. The fifteenth allows us to arrive at the awareness of a great joy, the joy of emancipati

“When the practitioner can abide in meditative stability without being distracted and can investigate every dharma, every object of mind that arises, then the second Factor of Awakening will be born and developed in him, the factor of investigating dharmas. When this factor is developed, it will come to perfection. “When the practitioner can observ

The initial joy of meditation is like leaving the city, with its hyperactivity and all its disturbing encounters, going off to the countryside to sit beneath a tree, alone. We feel totally at ease, peaceful and joyful. What a joy, what a relief, like when you complete a difficult examination and feel that you have laid aside all anxiety forevermore

Everything that exists can be placed into one of the Four Establishments of Mindfulness—namely the body, the feelings, the mind, and the objects of the mind. “All dharmas” is another way of saying “the objects of the mind.” Although all dharmas are divided into four, in reality they are one, because all Four Establishments of Mindfulness are all ob

The ninth method helps us identify the functions of the mind (other than the feelings, which were treated in methods seven and eight), such as perception, thinking, reasoning, discriminating, imagining, and all the activities of the subconscious as well. As soon as one of these psychological phenomena arises, we should identify it while breathing w