Search results for: "Focus"

  1. Page 102
  2. The Wisdom of Incongruity
     … The ability to step out of your thought worlds is what saves you from getting pulled into all the defilements that created those thought worlds to begin with—that picked and chose and decided that this detail you’re going to focus on and that other detail you’re going to ignore. You have to remember that all of our defilements are based on … 
  3. Metta & Merit
     … You can spread goodwill to all beings everywhere, or you can focus it on particular people you know are suffering or are going through a difficult period. They don’t have to know, and you do it both for them and for you. There are stories in the Canon of the Buddha spreading goodwill to people and its changing them. There was a Mallan … 
  4. Overcoming Complacency
     … After all, the mind is going to focus on where it is and what it has to do. Even up through the state of non-returning, there’s going to be a vague sense of “I” around those actions. At that point, it’s not identified with the khandhas, but there’s still that sense of “I” that somehow lingers around them. So if … 
  5. The Buddha Respects Your Potential
    Try to focus on your breath, and bring the attitude that something good will come of it. In other words, it’s not just a game. It’s not just a pastime. The ability to get the mind concentrated can do an awful lot for the mind, for your life, and for the people around you, so bring an attitude of respect to what … 
  6. Hold on to Right View
     … So, to work in that direction, what do you do? You focus right here, on your choices. Try to make them as skillful as you can. Choose to bring the mind to a state of concentration, realize how things are fabricated, and then calm the processes of fabrication—like the Buddha explains in his instructions on breath meditation. That’s how things begin to … 
  7. When Ill Will Is in Fashion
     … The Buddha basically says there are eight topics you can focus on. You’ve got the four establishings of mindfulness: the body in and of itself, feelings, mind states, mental qualities in and of themselves—ardent, alert, and mindful, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. Here’s where he says, “you develop this concentration.” Mindfulness here is a concentration practice … 
  8. The Basic Pattern
     … So it’s good to keep reflecting on those instructions to Rahula, because they focus on the basic principle that underlies everything in the practice: Your actions are important, so be very careful. At the end of the Buddha’s teaching career, he closed with the words, “Bring your practice to completion through heedfulness.” What does it mean to be heedful? It means that … 
  9. True Protection for the World
     … That way you can focus your time and energy on areas where you can make a difference. This is one of the reasons why we have that chant on the four brahmaviharas every evening before meditation, to remind us of our motivation in the practice. We need those attitudes, both to help immediately in the course of the meditation, and to carry into our … 
  10. Training Your Inner Teacher
     … Today it likes to explore the breath sensations in the different parts of the body, other days it wants to focus in really strongly just on one spot. You’ve got to learn how to read it, and in that way, the mind gets to rest as it likes. You can maintain that sense of desire to practice. There are other times when you … 
  11. Make the Most of Right Now
     … Either you take it as an object of contemplation, or you focus on the breath: contemplating the thirty-two parts of the body or focusing on the breath to develop a sense of relative well-being. You know that you’re going to have to give it up anyway, but it’s better to give it up understanding why you took it up to … 
  12. Don’t Just Fatten Your Mind
     … Then focus on the pleasures and pains that are skillful, i.e., that lead you to act in skillful ways. That’s how you stay on the path and keep yourself from sliding back.
  13. Universal Truths
     … So as you focus on the breath, try to do it in a virtuous way. In other words, do it with restraint. Remind yourself, you can’t go wandering off, dabbling in this, dabbling in that. You’ve really got to be true to the theme of your concentration. And your concentration should be discerning: Which ways of focusing on the breath make the … 
  14. A Conglomeration of Germs
     … Now it’s the raw material with which you create new kamma, which is something you want to focus on because kamma is what really belongs to you. That’s what goes with you when you go, and that’s what shapes your mind as you stay here. As the Buddha said, the things you do again and again and again bend the mind … 
  15. Admirable Friendship
     … If you focus only on the things you don’t like, or if you get too distracted with extraneous issues, they get in the way. So we’re here to look, as the Buddha said, at the craving in our minds. The craving and the ignorance: Those are the main causes. We try to develop qualities of mind that can develop a sense of … 
  16. Strategic Wisdom
     … You can focus on the feeling of the breath anywhere at all in the body, any spot where it’s convenient, where the sensation of the breath is clear, that lets you know that now the breath is coming in, now the breath is going out. Try to stay there. Keep it up. This is the difficult part in the meditation: the maintaining. That … 
  17. Cherish Your Friends
     … hear something very subtle you have to sit very quietly, if you want to hear the subtle things going on in your mind you have to make the mind quiet, too. Focus it on the breath. Try to cut down on all the chatter. If you want to talk to yourself, talk about one thing. Talk about the breath. Ask yourself: Is the breath … 
  18. The Mind’s Song
     … neck, the middle of the head — any place where all the different pressures of the breath coming in and going out and the pressures of your blood circulation feel right together. Focus right there and allow the breath to find whatever rhythm feels good, feels gratifying. If the mind wanders off, bring it right back. If it wanders off again, bring it back again … 
  19. Patience
     … You focus on those. And then you gradually try to expand the range. If there’s no spot in the body that’s obviously pleasant, you say, “I’ll content myself with what’s okay.” Or you can try a perception of the breath energy around the body. That doesn’t have anything in the way, doesn’t have anything forcing it to be … 
  20. Fangs in the Static
     … The final perception he has you focus on is the mastery of perception that comes from breath meditation. When you do breath meditation, you get more sensitive to how the mind creates its perceptions, where the allure of those perceptions is, what the drawbacks of the perceptions are. In other words, you get a better sense of what’s actually happening in the mind … 
  21. Goodwill in Action
     … That’s your primary focus. Your ability to influence other people depends on a lot on other factors beyond your control. But there will be times when you can have a good influence, so let that thought keep you going. Make sure that your metta in terms of seeing yourself as an agent with free choice, and seeing other people as agents with free … 
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