Search results for: "Focus"

  1. Page 105
  2. Determined Goodwill
     … You have to reflect on how the principles of kamma work, which means you have to focus on the causes: For them to be happy, they’ll have to act skillfully. They’ll have to develop goodwill for others. At the same time, you have to reflect on how to maintain a good state of goodwill in your own mind. This is where you … 
  3. The Flowing Mind
     … Then there are the images you hold in mind, the perceptions and the feelings you focus on, and you play a role in shaping them. Again, all too often, they seem to just come out of nowhere. A pain is just a pain—it’s already made. A perception is an image—it’s already made. That’s what it looks like. But actually … 
  4. Countercultural Conditioning
     … Talk to yourself about the breath in a way that helps the mind to settle down, so that the mind and the breath fit together nicely, where the breath is calm enough so that it has a calming effect on the mind, but not so subtle that you lose focus. The subtlety of the breath will develop as your powers of your concentration get … 
  5. Refuge
    Try to focus your attention right here at the breath. Wherever there are sensations in the body that tell you, “Now the breath is coming in; now the breath is going out,” try to stay with those sensations. Try to be as consistent as you can in staying here because it’s only when you stick with the breath consistently that you’re going … 
  6. For a Routine That Isn’t Routine
     … Try to focus on the things you find especially inspiring, to induce an attitude of respect. That way, when the time comes to meditate, you have some respect for the meditation, respect for your breath, respect for your desire for true happiness, respect for what can be learned by watching the present moment. That’s where the Buddha gained his awakening: He was watching … 
  7. Right Action & Right Livelihood
     … At the same time, you’re learning how to focus on your intentions, because this is what makes the difference between following a precept and breaking it. If you kill something inadvertently, it doesn’t break the precept. If you take something, not knowing that it’s not yours, it doesn’t break the precept. If someone forces you to have sex against your … 
  8. A Valuable Gift
     … Because that’s what we’re working on here as we focus on meditation, getting into concentration. The Thai translation for samadhi or concentration is firm intention: tang cai man. You’re really right here. Your intention is to stay right here, and that intention doesn’t waver. Whatever wavering you may have, you try to figure out some way to get past it … 
  9. In Training
     … So that’s what we should focus on—getting trained. Now, the word training implies discipline. In fact, that’s what the monks’ rules are called—*Vinaya. *It means a disciplining. There’s a part of the mind that rebels against the idea of discipline and says, “I’d like to have some freedom.” Well, what kind of freedom are you looking for? The … 
  10. To Comprehend Craving
     … That seems to be the Buddha’s main focus for wanting to understand craving. After all, as a young prince, that was the main reason he went off into the wilds to begin with: seeing that he was subject to aging, illness, and death. He didn’t know if there was something that was not subject to aging, illness, and death, but if there … 
  11. A Sense of Space Inside
     … So if you can find someplace in the body where the breathing feels really comfortable, focus your main attention on that. Then think of that sense of comfort spreading around, so that as you breathe in, the whole body feels comfortable. There may be pains here and there, or patterns of tension here and there, but try to breathe around them. We’re trying … 
  12. Dhamma Is a Quality of the Heart
     … So focus your attention here, at the heart. That’s where all the work is going to be done, and where the solution to the problem will be found.
  13. The Right Medicine
     … How you perceive the breath, how you perceive your focus of the mind in relation to the breath, can really determine what level of concentration you hit. For example, if you see the breath as something you’ve got to pull in and push out through the nose, it’s hard to achieve a really deep level of concentration going with that perception. But … 
  14. Questioning Your Way to Certainty
     … Instead, you come to the meditation armed with the right questions, questions that focus your attention on what you can actually see happening right here and now in terms of cause and effect. That’s how you overcome your uncertainty. You know from experience that this works, that that doesn’t work. You learn to evaluate things on your own. In this way, the … 
  15. Immersed in the Body
     … So as you focus on the breath, try to get past the idea that you’re in one part of the head watching the breath in other parts of the body. You want to occupy the whole body, bathed in the whole breath. The breath and the body should be surrounding your sense of where you are. And then you want to maintain that … 
  16. Empathetic Joy
     … All of this helps make for an easy break with all the issues of the day so that you can focus on the work at hand, which is your awareness right here, keeping your awareness focused on the breath. If you can’t be generous in practicing the brahmaviharas, it’s really hard to settle down. There’s a passage where the Buddha actually … 
  17. Equanimity on the Path
     … He had something he wanted to focus on. So that’s one of the functions. For instance, when you’re getting the mind into concentration, anything that comes up that’s not related to the concentration, you’re just going to have equanimity for. Now, this may be temporary. It may be an issue that you have to deal with when you leave concentration … 
  18. Asalha Puja – Completeness
     … So focus right here. This is an important place to look. This is why we meditate, focusing on the breath here in the present moment, because the breath is about as close to the mind as you’re going to get until you can look at the mind directly. It’s a good place to bring your attention, because the breath is very sensitive … 
  19. Pleasant Practice, Painful Practice
     … When you focus on a particular body part, ask yourself, “Where in my sense of the body sitting right here is that part right now?” This is to drive home the fact that the body part is not just something in an anatomy chart or a photo. It’s something right here in your body. You’ve been living with your liver, you’ve … 
  20. A Safe Space Inside
     … So you focus on what is in your control: what you’re doing right now. In this way, your right view helps your concentration; your concentration helps your right view. Virtue helps both of them; both of them help virtue. You’re grounded in what’s called the Triple Training: training in heightened virtue, heightened mind or concentration, and heightened discernment. And even though … 
  21. Freedom, Conditioned & Not
     … your choice to focus on one perception rather than another. There comes a point, though, where it’s not getting into deeper concentration, and you begin to realize that the fact that you’re making a choice and that, no matter what the choice is going to be, it’s going to involve stress of some kind, more or less refined. And if everything … 
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