Search results for: "Focus"

  1. Page 101
  2. Change
     … Are they really good? Are they really reliable? All too often, we focus our sights on something and then we blind ourselves to everything else, such as the fact that what we want is going to change. Or we tell ourselves that it doesn’t matter. Or we tell ourselves, “I’ll deal with that when it happens. I’ll go for the pleasure … 
  3. Renunciation Isn’t Deprivation
     … So, when thoughts of sensuality seem attractive, you have to remind yourself that there’s a better way of finding pleasure. And it’s right here, right here with your breath: Focus on the breath, keep your thoughts on the breath, keep your thoughts on nothing but the breath. And evaluate it: “How’s it going right now? What could I do to make … 
  4. Wilderness Wealth
     … Yet there’s even a state of concentration that doesn’t focus on those themes at all. It’s totally independent: No object whatsoever, but awareness is concentrated. But even that, he says, is fabricated. When you realize that—that there is even an element of effort that goes into that, that it’s inconstant, stressful, not-self—you can let go of that … 
  5. A Good Buddhist Ego
     … There’s one where he says you put aside thoughts of the past, thoughts of the future, concerns for the future, and you focus on what’s arising in the present moment. Why do you do that? Because you have to do it today. If you don’t do it now, it’s not going to get done. Tomorrow you may die. In other … 
  6. Accepting the Buddha’s Standards
     … As you learn through observing the precepts to cause less and less harm, your focus moves to more subtle levels of stress in the mind, learning how to drop whatever it is that you’re doing to cause them, until finally you come to the subtlest disturbances, caused by the concentration itself. In each case, you want to accept, one, that the stress is … 
  7. The Sublime Attitudes in Context
     … That way you don’t waste your strength on areas where you can’t make a difference, and you can focus your strength on areas where you can. Another principle that’s useful to understand when you’re developing these attitudes is that, particularly in the context of compassion and empathetic joy, when you see somebody who’s poor and miserable and suffering in … 
  8. Learning from the Precepts
     … That’s when you begin to focus on the Buddha’s teaching about where craving is located, which is basically the same as, “Where is the allure of these things that would pull you away?” What do you like about them? As the texts say, the allure could be anywhere. It could be in a perception, it could be in a thought construct. You … 
  9. A Culture of Self Reliance
     … That way, you’re free to focus more of your attention on developing your inner refuge. The freedom that comes from contentment with external things also gives you perspective on what work to take on to make your living. You just need enough in order to be able to practice. Most of the jobs that go beyond that also take a lot of time … 
  10. Understanding Aggregates
     … Here again, you’ve got form (the breath); feeling (the feeling of dis-ease you might encounter when you first try to settle down, and then the feeling of pleasure you’re trying to develop); the perceptions that you keep in mind about how the breath goes, where you can focus on the breath, your relationship to the breath. Fabrication starts out especially with … 
  11. Encourage Yourself
     … It’s to focus our attention on what’s really important right now, which is the intentions we’re thinking right now, the intentions we’re following through with right now. He has many stories about the cycles of the universe, past lives, future results of present actions. They seem to point far away from the present. But actually they’re pointing right back … 
  12. Discernment Fosters Concentration
     … It gets concentrated—in other words, solidly focused—and you maintain that focus. As the sense of rapture begins to get too strong, you tune in to a more refined level of energy right at the same spot. You don’t have to move. If the rapture’s going to do its thing, it can do its thing. You don’t try to hold … 
  13. Concentration Food
    One of the reasons why we focus on the breath is because it’s so responsive to your thoughts and perceptions. You tell yourself to breathe in long, and it goes long. Tell it to be shorter, it becomes shorter. Deeper, more shallow, heavier, lighter: The breath responds. You can tell it to go to different parts of the body. Here, of course, we … 
  14. To Comprehend Pain
     … To get the mind concentrated, you first have to focus on an area of the body that’s not in pain. That gives you a home base. Then you can work with the breath energy in that part of the body, to make it even more pleasant. It’s one of the steps of breath meditation: breathing in and out, sensitive to pleasure, finding … 
  15. Think Like a Thief
     … You focus on the ones that are good, or at least seem good to you. Give them a try. And it starts with everything. All the things we do around the monastery are opportunities to learn how to be skillful, to learn how to be observant—even simple things like putting things away. Where is the best place to put away plastic so that … 
  16. In the Context of the Path
     … So whenever you read a teaching of the Buddha’s, ask yourself, “Where does it fit in the training? Where does it fit in this course of action?” There is a tendency, sometimes, to focus on the three characteristics as the Buddha’s primary description of reality. And then, into the framework of that description, everything else gets squeezed. But what are you to … 
  17. Producing Discernment
     … When things are not going well, what alternatives do you have? There may be alternative ways of breathing, alternative places to focus, alternative ways of perceiving the breath, imaging the breath to yourself. Or there are times when you need to use another meditation theme altogether. The mind isn’t willing to settle down with the breath. There’s something going on in the … 
  18. Calm
     … Things are very solidly centered right here, and they’re going to be centered well because you’ve created a good place to stay—through the way you breathe, through the feelings you focus on, and the feelings you create, and the perceptions you create. Again, it’s not the case that you have to just put up with whatever you have. You’re … 
  19. The Primacy of the Mind (2)
     … This way, you keep your focus at the right spot. Of course, you’re aware of what other people are doing, aware of what’s going on outside, but you don’t let that awareness obscure your knowledge of what you’re doing inside—because that’s where the real problem is. As long as you allow this inside area to be obscured, you … 
  20. The Opportunity to Be Quiet
     … Ajaan Suwat used to like to focus on the fact that the Buddha said that there are so many things that are not-self, not-self, but then he says we’re the owners of our actions. This is something we are responsible for. This is another reason why you should be focusing on getting the mind really still. Because actions come out of … 
  21. The Rewards of Right View
     … So focus your main protective energies here.
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