Search results for: "Focus"
- Page 107
- Perceptions of Earth & Space… was going wrong. Finally, I had a chance to see him, told him what was going wrong, and in just a few words he said, “Oh. You’re focused on earth. Focus on space instead.” And as soon as he said “space,” the solidity and the stiffness and everything just disappeared. As you think about space, you can think about how space extends not …
- A New Framework… You have to focus on this issue above everything else: what you’re doing, the results that come, and whether they’re as good as you want them to be. This is where the heedfulness comes in again. It keeps forcing you to raise the bar. It’s this combination of qualities—heedful, ardent, alert, resolute—that makes all the difference. This is what …
- Suppressed Emotions… Instead of just sitting here and spinning out over the pain — thinking, “Here I am sitting and hurting myself by letting my knee get all bent up like this” — you can focus instead on, “Okay, what are the mechanics of the pain? How do they relate to the energy flow in the body?” Having a comfortable breath sensation as your basis in some other …
- The Brahmaviharas Are Not Enough… For instance, you focus on the breath—ardent, alert and mindful. You stay focused on the breath in and of itself, and you put aside any greed or distress with reference to the world. The quality of ardency is where the discernment starts coming in, as you try to do this skillfully and really analyze where the suffering is. This active part of meditation …
- The Buddha Defines Wisdom… It’s not suffering, so you focus your attention there. Take that as your foundation. And then from that foundation, you can watch the suffering, watch the stress, watch the clinging. You can begin to sort out where’s the clinging and where’s the craving. You’ve found the pipe. Now you can seal it off. That’s what the Buddha tells us …
- Finding Extra Energy… I’ve got to focus on what needs to be done right now.” Trim things down. Look at whatever unnecessary stories you’re telling yourself about the situation, whatever issues you’re bringing in that are not at all helpful, and learn how to put them aside. They’ll be there when you have more time and more leisure to deal with them. But …
- The Four Noble Truths… There are different things that you might want to focus on and different things you have to do with regard to them. So it’s good to know that you have that range of choices. The Buddha gives you a full set of tools for dealing with whatever comes up. For example, stress and suffering.: This includes pain, despair—i.e. physical pain and …
- Take the Buddha Seriously… As you’ve learned how to say No to certain impulses inside, to train your mind, to focus on your intentions to stick with the precepts, then you’re coming to the meditation with the right frame of mind, and with some very important skills. The concentration allows you to go deeper. After all, as you’re meditating here, you’ve got the breath …
- Solo Practice… And then the focus moves inward so that you become more and more observant of your mind. You see what the mind does, you see it in action. And when you see that it’s creating suffering and that the suffering is unnecessary, that there are other things you can do to react to that particular set of circumstances, then that particular cause of …
- Independent of the World… On the one hand, you’ll look for what they’re doing that’s skillful and you focus on that. For what reason? To make it easier to treat them well. If you find someone who has no good qualities at all, then the Buddha says to think of them as someone you find lying on the side of the road in the desert …
- Let Go Like a Millionaire… You find a few spare moments here and there, and you focus on your breath. It’s like a person who’s addicted to cigarettes: If you find a few spare moments, you light up a cigarette. But here’s an addiction that goes in a good way. The Buddha calls this a devotion to pleasure that’s actually skillful. You remember the statement …
- Good for What Purpose?… That’s the way I’m used to doing things.” So even though we talk about how you shouldn’t be focusing on the goal all the time, how you should focus instead on the path going to the goal, sometimes you do have to remind yourself, “Where is this path going?”—so that you can see clearly the things that come up in …
- Mistakes… But then he would focus on the drawbacks of sensuality. Even heavenly sensual pleasures have their drawbacks, and those drawbacks can hit pretty hard. Once you’ve gotten used to things being really comfortable, you fall from heaven, and it’s not a comfortable fall. Sometimes you fall really hard, really far. It’s not the case that all devas, when they pass away …
- Skillful Fear… Close your eyes, sit with your back straight, place your hands in your lap, and focus on your breathing. Take a couple of good, long, deep in-and-out breaths, and notice where you feel the breathing process in the body. Then you can ask yourself: Is it comfortable? If it’s not, what would you change? Would you make it longer still? Or …
- Guardian Meditations… If you look at your lustful thoughts, you realize that you usually tend to focus on this detail or that detail, so broaden the frame. Look at the body as a whole. First start with your own body, and find which aspects of the body you find particularly unpleasant, disgusting. You might think of the different liquids that ooze from the body. What have …
- Beyond Imagination… Look on the good side of things.” Well, as long as you do that—and the Buddha said things do have their pleasant side; if the aggregates didn’t have their pleasures, we wouldn’t fall for them—if you focus on the pleasures, all you do is get overwhelmed with passion. And then, in passion, you start creating things that will then all …
- Disenchantment… Whereas the pleasure that comes simply from learning how to focus on your breath is not placing a burden on anyone, so it’s a type of food for the mind that’s really worth developing. As you develop a sense of oneness with the food of concentration, you look at the other ways the mind has been feeding on things for its emotional …
- Detail Work… But if you tell yourself, “I’ve got to think about this in detail, try to figure things out,” then it stirs up some energy in the mind so that the mind is ready, when the time comes to focus on the breath, not just to zone out on the sense of ease or pleasure from the breathing. The same way with contemplation of …
- Not Swept Away… You focus on the breath as the breath comes in, the breath goes out. Whatever the breath is going to do, you be aware of it. Keep in mind that this is where you want to be. It’s not that you’re here to get the breath. You’re after the mind, and you’re going to learn a lot of interesting things …
- The Message of Mindfulness… You may remind yourself to breathe comfortably, or to focus on a certain part of the body. This need to remember is one of the reasons why we have to study the texts at least to some extent. A couple of months back I was asked to give a talk on the topic of whether it really is necessary to know anything about what …
- Load next page...
