Search results for: "Attention"

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  2. A Memorial to Your Life
     … You have to give your full attention to your breath. That’s what the intentness is all about: You want to do this really well. Don’t let your range of attention get divided up. Give it all to the breath and the mind together. Then reflect on what you’re doing: That’s what circumspection is all about. You commit yourself to getting … 
  3. Curious About the Process
     … For instance, you can sense after a while that there may be a little bit of chatter around the fringes of your mind, but you don’t have to pay attention to it. If you pay attention to it, you feed it, and it takes over. Or as Ajaan Lee says, it’s like having a shadow, and you spend all your time trying … 
  4. Refreshment
     … This is one of the reasons why there’s such a strong emphasis in the forest tradition on paying careful attention to what you’re doing as you go through the day: all of your tasks in the monastery. Even simple things like sweeping—there’s a right way and a wrong way to sweep. You want to make sure that when you sweep … 
  5. Dhamma Medicine for Free
     … If you spend your time chasing down your thoughts, or trying to push them away, you’re not giving your full attention to the breath. Remind yourself that the mind is like a committee. There are lots of different voices in there, and you don’t have to pay attention to every voice in the committee. Just listen to the voice that says: “Stay … 
  6. Cooking with Kamma
     … how to pay attention to things that we want to pay attention to, how to look at them from the right angle, what the Buddha calls appropriate attention, so that when something comes up, we’re not just complaining about the bad things that are coming up, but we figure, “Well, what can be done with this? How can this be turned into good … 
  7. Getting into the Body
    One of the Buddha’s terms for concentration is adhicitta, which can be translated as “heightened awareness” or “the heightened mind.” It can also be translated as “heightened intentness.” In other words, you really do pay careful attention to what you’ve got here, the object you’re focused on—in this case, the body, the breath. Give all your attention to how the … 
  8. Prevention
     … Then you have to pay careful attention to what you’re doing. That’s what it means to uphold your intent. It’s like practicing the piano. If you just put in time but don’t pay attention to what you’re doing, you get something out of it but not as much as you could. The whole purpose of practicing, doing something over … 
  9. Factors for Awakening
     … You apply appropriate attention to what you’re doing in body, speech, and mind, but especially mind, to see how skillful your actions are. We often describe appropriate attention as looking at things in terms of the four noble truths, but that level of appropriate attention builds on another level of appropriate attention, which is simply seeing what’s skillful and unskillful in your … 
  10. Sweat the Small Stuff
    In the course of our training, there are a lot of little things that we have to pay attention to—because if you don’t pay attention to the little things, you miss the big things. Ajaan Mun once made a comment that it’s very rare for a person to be blinded by a log. It’s a lot more common for people … 
  11. Bad Friends Inside
     … Focus your attention wherever it seems easiest to keep track of the fact that now the breath is coming in, now the breath is going out. As for anything else that might be distracting, just let it go. Try to keep your attention focused right here in the present moment. Because all the important things in life are happening in the present moment. And … 
  12. Responsibilities
     … Otherwise, if your attention goes totally out, your sense of the body gets shriveled and your inner sense dies. It reminds me of an animal I dissected in high school biology class. We were given these enormous grasshoppers. There was a large chart at the front of the room, showing the different organs in the last half of the grasshopper’s body. Well, it … 
  13. Imperturbable
     … So the chants are there to clean out a lot of unskillful attitudes in the mind and to get you ready to settle down as you bring your attention into the body. This is where you have to clean things out in the body a bit, because when you start focusing in on the body, the power of your focus tends to push the … 
  14. One Thing at a Time
     … To judge if something is done well, you have to watch it from the very beginning to the very end with your undivided attention. So, as we’re sitting here right now, let this talk be in the background. It’s here to serve as a fence, so that when your attention leaves the breath, you run into the talk. The talk is there … 
  15. Gaining the Dhamma Eye
     … Once you’ve listened to it, then the Buddha says, you apply appropriate attention. That’s the third quality. In other words, you take the Dhamma you’ve listened to and ask yourself how you should put it into practice to see exactly where you’re still causing stress and suffering, where you are not. This is where the teachings in the four noble … 
  16. An End to Suffering
     … And there’s the element of attention: what you pay attention to, what you decide is important to notice. There are so many things happening in the present moment—lots of sensory input coming in through lots of senses—and the mind is in a position where it can choose what to focus on and what not to. That’s the element of intention … 
  17. Fence Me In
     … So try to pay careful attention to what’s going on. Don’t overlook the little things. I was talking to someone earlier this morning who said probably the problem with her meditation was that she was sitting there waiting for the big dramatic events to happen, so as a result she was missing all the little things. And it’s the little things … 
  18. Tranquility, Insight, & Concentration
     … As for any thoughts that come into the mind, you don’t have to pay them any attention. Just pay attention to the thoughts about the breath, because you *will *have to think about the breath as you’re investigating how it feels, and how it might feel better. Then, when you have a rhythm of breathing that feels good, maintain it as long … 
  19. Pitching Your Tent in the Present
     … Lay claim to it and focus all your attention on developing it. It’s only when you’re content to stay here and focus here that you’ll find that the Buddha is right, these potentials are right here. And the results are not quite for the asking, but if you put in enough work and attention, they’re all your own.
  20. Listening to the True Dhamma
     … Are they the best pictures for getting the mind to settle down? The Dhamma points you to things you’re doing all the time but haven’t been paying attention to. So now you pay attention and you see, Yes, the Dhamma is pointing to something in your mind, something you can comprehend. And it’s giving you advice on what to do. You … 
  21. Doubts
     … If that method doesn’t work, the Buddha says to learn how not to pay any attention to those thoughts. Think of yourself as working on a task, and a crazy person comes along and tries to engage you in conversation. You know that if you pay any attention to the crazy person, even enough to try to drive the crazy person away, he … 
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