Watch the breath in the Cycle, not the Body

Usually the meditation teacher will say: 'No, do not follow the breath around, stay at that one place, the place where it most usually manifests.'. However, what happens when you do that is you don't notice any breath at all the breath has disappeared from there, and that is why this is a cause for the mind wandering off.

So to counter that problem I advise you to experiment with not being concerned where the breath is actually registered on the body. But just to know, just to have your perception concerned with, not where the breath is manifesting, but whether it's going in or going out, and what stage of going in or out it is.

So do not concern the perception with the place in the body, just be concerned with where in the cycle of breathing your breath is right now and you will solve that problem.

Just a practical test. Close your eyes and ask yourself: 'Am I breathing in or am I breathing out?'. The answer to that question will occur to you before you notice where the breath is positioned on the body. You don't need to ask the second question: 'Where is the breath on the body?'. You just need to answer the question: 'Where is the breath in its cycle?'.

- Ajahn Brahm

One of the eight wordly winds

Praise and compliments disturb me, Sapping my revulsion with samsara. I start to covet others’ qualities,

And thus all excellence degenerates.

Those who stay close by me, then,

To ruin my good name and cut me down to size

Are surely protecting me

From falling into ruin in the realms of sorrow (Shantideva 6: 98-99).

Evil is problematic

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

- Epicurus

Buddho

The word 'Buddho' is a word that you can develop in your life as something to fill the mind with rather than with worries and all kinds of unskilful habits. Take the word, look at it, listen to it: 'Buddho'! It means the one who knows, the Buddha, the awakened, that which is awake.

You can visualise it in your mind. Listen to what your mind says - blah, blah, blah, etc. It goes on like this, an endless kind of excrement of repressed fears and aversions. So, now, we are recognising that.

We're not using 'Buddho' as a club to annihilate or repress things, but as a skilful means. We can use the finest tools for killing and for harming others, can't we? You can take the most beautiful Buddha rupa and bash somebody over the head with it if you want! That's not what we call 'Buddhanussati', Reflection on the Buddha, is it? But we might do that with the word 'Buddho' as a way of suppressing those thoughts or feelings. That's an unskilful use of it. Remember we're not here to annihilate but to allow things to fade out. This is a gentle practice of patiently imposing 'Buddho' over the thinking, not out of exasperation, but in a firm and deliberate way.

- Ajahn Sumedho 'Mindfulness: The Path to the Deathless'

Porosity

Can you make your stillness so porous that disturbances can go through without running into anything, without knocking your center off balance?

- Thanissaro Bhikku

Ego Renunciation

...attachment to being right, measuring the success of your life by how many of your wants are met, being the star of your own movie.

- Phillip Moffit "Dancing with Life"

Unsatisfactoriness

On another occasion the Buddha explained his earlier statement that "whatever is felt is included within dukkha" to refer to the impermanent nature of all conditioned phenomena.

The changing nature of feelings, however, need not necessarily be experienced as "suffering", since in the case of a painful experience, for example, change may be experienced as pleasant. Thus all feelings are not "suffering", nor is their impermanence "suffering", but all feelings are "unsatisfactory", since none of them can provide lasting satisfaction.

That is, dukkha as a qualification of all conditioned phenomena is not necessarily experienced as "suffering", since suffering requires someone sufficiently attached in order to suffer.

- Ven. Analayo "Satipatthana: The Direct Path to Realization"