Search results for: "Focus"

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  2. The Lotus in the Mud
     … We’d rather focus on how good and pure we are. But if we don’t look at the other side, we’re won’t be able to cleanse it away. Like that pipe today, if we had just let it happen, let it stay the way it was, it’d continue to fester, and just get worse and worse and worse. So it … 
  3. The Right Time at the Right Place
     … be heavy; if you take the bricks out of the sack, put them down neatly on the ground, they become your pavement. So try to get the mind into right concentration. Focus on the breath. Don’t worry about concentration or jhana or those other concepts. Just get really snug with the breath—alert, still, with a sense of strong well-being. Let that … 
  4. Clinging to Karmic Diarrhea
     … If it’s the breath, what kind of breathing do you like? Where do you like to focus on the breath? What kind of perception of the breath helps you settle down? This is something you have to evaluate for yourself. If not the breath, then what other topic do you find engaging? It’s important that you find something you like and that … 
  5. Don’t Be Afraid of Mistakes
     … I had a student one time who didn’t like the fact that I couldn’t tell him that he would focus on a particular topic of meditation and that it would take him all the way and he wouldn’t have to think or evaluate his thoughts in the meantime. In other words, there is no foolproof way of gaining wisdom. If there … 
  6. Happily on the Path
     … So the path involves changing a lot of things, with the focus on changing your actions. We look after the monastery, we look after our environment, because that’s a part of contentment—taking good care of what you’ve got. You learn how to get by with little, and one of the best ways of getting by with little is to learn how … 
  7. What You Can’t Change, What You Can
     … So you pull back and ask yourself, “Where can I be of help? What changes can I make?” And you try to focus there. The wisdom lies in seeing where you draw the line. At what point do you have to say, “Okay, on this issue, I’ve got to be equanimous. Things are not going to change—at least they’re not going … 
  8. New Feeding Habits for the Mind
     … to get to know our intentions. One way to do that is to set up an intention in the mind and see what happens as you try to keep it going. Focus your intention on the breath. Say to yourself, “I’m going to stay with the breath for the hour: that’s all I’m going to notice, that’s all I’m … 
  9. Training in Happiness
    Focus on your breath. Know when it’s coming in, know when it’s going out. If you want, you can think of the word buddho along the breath: bud in, dho out. Try to breathe in a way that’s comfortable. You can try long breathing for a while and see how that feels. If it feels good, then stick with it. If … 
  10. Recollection of Hell
     … The rain may be cold, but there’s something about a rainy day or rainy night that tends to focus the mind inside. All around us outside is wet, so instinctively we look inside to see what potentials we have here for security and warmth. And all of this would be okay if it weren’t for the fact that it’s so precarious … 
  11. Goodwill All Around
     … The purpose of that reflection is to remind you to focus on the things where you can make a difference. Sometimes given the situation, all you can do is just work on how you’re reacting to bad circumstances. This is why we have to train the mind. This is how the brahmaviharas lead us into the development of mindfulness and alertness. There is … 
  12. In Accordance with the Dhamma
     … I was reading about a woman general in the Army whose policy every day was to rank the ten most important things that had to be done that day from one to ten, and then she’d cross out everything from three on down, to focus on the top two. That was how she got things done. In this way, instead of letting your … 
  13. To Comprehend Suffering
     … Then, say, if there’s a pain in your leg, focus on the form sensations and allow the pain and pleasure sensations to just come and go. You begin to see that they really are very fleeting: They come and go, come and go, come and go. And just that insight is often enough to help you see that the suffering you so strongly … 
  14. Basic Intro
     … A good way to stay anchored in the present moment is to focus on your breath. As long as you’re with the breath, you know you’re in the present moment. So notice where you feel the breathing. What sensations in the body tell you, “Now the breath is coming in; now the breath is going out”? Notice how the sensations feel. Are … 
  15. Afraid of Pleasure
     … As the Buddha said, after you’ve put aside your obsession with sensual pleasures and other unskillful mental qualities, you focus on one object, direct your thoughts to the object, and then you evaluate the object. Those processes are what give rise to a sense of ease and rapture, pleasure and rapture. For instance, when you’re focusing on your breath, that’s the … 
  16. The Wisdom of Ardency
     … And it may also be because of this misunderstanding that when Ajaan Lee wrote about satipaṭṭhāna, the establishing of mindfulness, he decided to focus on the three qualities of being ardent, alert, and mindful. They form the structure for his treatment, and he carries that theme all the way through to awakening—how ardency, alertness, and mindfulness correspond to different aspects of the knowledge … 
  17. True Happiness Starts with Giving
     … So we’ve got to focus on this tendency and look into our cravings. We don’t really like to look into our cravings. As Ajaan Suwat once said, we get things backward. We think that suffering is our enemy and cravings are our friends. But, actually craving is the enemy because it’s what’s causing the suffering. As a part of the … 
  18. Protest Your Virtue & Right View
     … There are so many areas that you read about in the news outside where you can’t make any change at all, so focus on the areas where you do have the power to make a change for the better. And protect your valuables: these two qualities of virtue and right view. You see them in many lists. There’s the list of the … 
  19. Thinking About Rebirth
     … Which is why the Buddha didn’t focus on achieving justice. He focused on developing wisdom. He said, learn how to live in the world in a wise way. Live going forward. If you’re trying to get justice done, try to do it in a way that will incline people to stop their unskillful behavior. That requires that you get them to see … 
  20. Discernment
    When the Buddha defined the faculty of discernment, he defined it as “knowledge of arising and passing away—noble, penetrative, leading to the right ending of stress.” Some people, hearing that, focus on the “arising and passing away” and draw the conclusion that discernment is all about seeing the principle of inconstancy: Things come and they go; nothing’s permanent. But the adjectives that … 
  21. Undefeatism
     … So this is one reason, when you focus on changing a habit, that you have to keep repeating it to yourself, day after day: “Tomorrow I’m going to stick with my habit.” “Tomorrow I’ll stick with it.” As you keep repeating that to yourself – not all the time, but frequently – you’ll run into a little voice that will say, “Well, not … 
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