Search results for: "Focusing"

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  2. The Brahmavihāras Aren’t Enough
     … There’s one passage that seems to indicate that focusing on unlimited goodwill would correspond to the first jhāna in terms of which Brahmā world it takes you to. Focusing on compassion would correspond to the second. Focusing on unlimited empathetic joy would correspond to the third. Focusing on equanimity would correspond to the fourth. But there’s another passage where the Buddha talks … 
  3. A Concentration Checklist
     … Whether you’re focusing on the breath, focusing on a part of the body, focusing on the brahmaviharas, when you lose your focus, you can ask yourself why, and think of the eight different things that the Buddha mentioned. Two of them correspond to the traditional list of five hindrances: There’s doubt, and there’s sloth and torpor. In the case of doubt … 
  4. Strength from the Basics
     … How many thousands and thousands of people have been focusing on the breath? Millions of people have been focusing on the breath over the past centuries, and you’re willing to follow their example. This is where the Sangha comes in as another example. This is for people who are willing to say, “Maybe we don’t have to forge a new path. We … 
  5. Verbal Fabrication
     … Verbal fabrication—directed thought and evaluation; how you talk to yourself, focusing on a topic, making comments, asking questions. And then mental fabrication—your perceptions and feelings. As Ajaan Lee would point out, the verbal fabrications are real troublemakers. The way we talk to ourselves can create a lot of problems in the present moment, depending on the kind of commentary we’re making … 
  6. Balanced Breathing
     … That kind of concentration can get the mind focused, but it’s hard to keep it going. It doesn’t last. When you can stay focused with a sense of ease, though, that can last for a long time. It can become your basic default mode. So be careful. That’s one of the ways you can translate the Buddha’s last words. He … 
  7. The Quality of Your Awareness
     … Pose the question, when you’re focusing on the breath, “Which parts of the body get blocked out?” The mind does have this tendency, when it’s focusing on one thing, to block out other things. It creates blind spots. Where are your blind spots right now? How do you notice your blind spots? Ajaan Suwat once made the comment that if you want … 
  8. The Unity of the Path
     … We’re trying to engage in skillful judging, which is focusing on actions and their results, rather than focusing on what kind of person you are. We’re focusing on what the action is and whether it’s getting the results you want. If it’s not getting the results you want, you go back and you try to figure something else out: What … 
  9. Working Through the Breath
    People sometimes ask why we focus on the breath and they often have their opinions as why we shouldn’t be focusing on the breath. One is that you want a place for the mind to stay as it goes through aging, illness, and death. And, of course when you die, the breath won’t be there to focus on after death. So they … 
  10. How Right Mindfulness Leads to Right Concentration
     … You’re thinking about the breath, you’re evaluating the breath, and you’re focused exclusively on the breath, making it one sensation that permeates the body. It’s the one thing you’re focused on, and also it’s the one sensation filling the body, filling your awareness. You’ve got body, feeling, mind all together right here: the breath filling the body … 
  11. On Human Nature
     … It may seem like a small step, but remember it’s part of a large leap of taking your desire for happiness—which seems to be frustrated and thwarted right now—and focusing it on the real problem. When you’re focusing on the real problem, there’s hope for a solution. This particular solution takes the desire for happiness and doesn’t fritter … 
  12. Your Secret Foundation
     … You look in the Canon and you see that the most detailed meditation instructions are focused on the breath, the breath as a basis for establishing mindfulness, gaining concentration, discernment, release. Why is this all focused on the breath? For a lot of reasons. When you’re with the breath, you can see a lot of things in the body and the mind. It … 
  13. Being Somebody, Going Somewhere
     … We need them in order to practice the precepts, to develop the mind in concentration, to develop our discernment, because we have to be conscious that everything we do—even just being in the present moment, keeping our thoughts focused on the present moment—is going to take us someplace. Thoughts don’t just sit there. They move, they have an arrow, they have … 
  14. A Unified Committee
     … In other words, you don’t want to be focused on just one spot in the body. You want to be aware of the entire body—as Ajaan Lee says, out to every pore. There’s a nerve that leads out to every pore, there’s a blood vessel that goes out there, so all the nerve endings that are sending messages are supposed … 
  15. Long-Term Welfare
     … If you’re feeling stressed out, there are other ways of focusing on the breath, adjusting the breath, so that it’s more relaxing. When things feel dry and disappointing in life, there are certain ways of focusing on the breath so that it’s really fulfilling. It feels really, really good deep down inside. Learning how to adjust your concentration enables you to … 
  16. The Mind in Good Shape
     … Where are you focusing your attention? Is this the best place to focus? What would happen if you focused it in different places? Some standard ones are around the navel, at the solar plexus, the middle the chest, the base of the throat, the middle of the head, the tip of the nose, the middle of the forehead, the top of the head. But … 
  17. Safety in Awareness
     … In every case, there’s a potential there, and it’s your focusing on the potential in a particular way that heightens the experience of that particular element. So it’s important to understand that when you’re not focusing on those elements in a way to provoke them, as they say, then you’re not experiencing them. That understanding is needed for the … 
  18. Breath Meditation – The Four Tetrads
    Ajaan Lee often made the point that when you’re sitting here focused on the breath, you’ve got all four frames of reference for the establishing of mindfulness. The breath is the body. The feelings of ease or disease associated with the breath are feelings. The quality of your mind, of course, relates to mind. And the good and bad qualities that are … 
  19. Focused on the Breath
     … Here you are focusing on your breath, and if I’m talking about other things, it can often get in the way. So, tonight’s talk is about breath. Let’s start with a couple of good long, deep, in-and-out breaths, and see if you can make long, deep breathing comfortable. This doesn’t mean that you’re sucking a lot of … 
  20. Where You Set Your Heart
     … the establishings of mindfulness. **Here, again, there’s a very definite image of being focused in the right place, and what it means not to be focused in the right place. As you stay with your frame of reference, it’s like being on an island in the midst of a flood. If you leave the frame of reference, you’re washed away by … 
  21. For Your Benefit Here & Now
     … Where are you focused in the body? Is your focus the right place to be focused right now? There are lots of places where you could be focused in the body—the tip of the nose, the middle of the forehead, in your palate, in the middle of the head, in your throat, your chest, your abdomen. If you find that focusing up in … 
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