Search results for: "Focus"

  1. Page 108
  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
  22. Load next page...