Search results for: "Focus"

  1. Page 108
  2. At the Door of the Cage
     … As the texts say, the first stage in insight is to focus on the drawbacks of anything that’s fabricated. The next stage is for the mind to incline to the Deathless. Normally the mind will not incline to the Deathless unless it feels that that’s the only way out. Otherwise it’s always going to find some other place to go, some … 
  3. Right Questions in the Right Order
     … If you really want to totally abandon craving, you focus on the things that you crave, and you see that they’re inconstant. And in their inconstancy, there’s stress. And because they’re inconstant and stressful, the question is, are they worth claiming as you or yours, claiming as self? When you know of the third noble truth—that dispassion for craving is … 
  4. Anybody Home?
     … You realize that you’re suffering and there’s more to be done, so you focus on doing it. It’s in the doing that renunciate grief turns into renunciate joy, renunciate equanimity, something that can’t be contained in any little house. The Buddha said that, while he was alive, he dwelled with unrestricted awareness, an awareness that wasn’t associated with the … 
  5. The Importance of Being Truthful
     … When you focus right here, you find that these habits that seemed to be so hard to kick get a lot more manageable. Especially when you can look at them not as an indication of what kind of person you are, but simply as actions that get bad results, and you have the choice: You don’t have to follow that action, you don … 
  6. A Confident Ego
     … Our problem is that, as a society, we tend to focus on things that can be done instantly. You want to be a good cook, well, all you have to do is pick up a copy of Julia Child, and she’s done all the work for you. All you have to do is follow her instructions and you can come out with something … 
  7. Relating to Results
     … You can change the way you focus, you can change the way you breathe, and see what it does for the body. This gives you a sense of how much you really can change, how much you can learn by being observant. Because it’s by being observant, by developing more and more skill in our actions, that we’ll finally get to that … 
  8. Strength of Mindfulness
     … You remember what’s really important in life and you focus your efforts there. And as for any attachments that would pull you away from what’s important, you’re mindful to let them go. That’s when you see how important it is to keep your mindfulness strong—because in that way, it does become your refuge. Of the various qualities of the … 
  9. The Wisdom of Dualities
     … When is it useful to emphasize the pleasant aspects of something and when is it useful to emphasize the stressful aspects? When is it useful to emphasize the fact that you have some control over your actions, and when is it useful to focus on things being not-self? The whole purpose of these three perceptions—inconstancy, stress, and not-self—is to give … 
  10. Observe Your Concentration
     … It talks about how you can focus on the mind in concentration—and the five brethren were in concentration. It may be one of the topics that the Buddha had talked about in the period of time between the first and the second sermon. After all, in the first sermon, he mentions the five aggregates but doesn’t define them. He names the factors … 
  11. Right View about Right View
     … You can apply perceptions of inconstancy and stressfulness to the distractions that pull you away, but for the concentration, you want to focus on this question: What can you make constant here? What sensations can you develop in the body that are constant even as the breath flows in, the breath flows out? How do you make them easeful, pleasant? How do you get … 
  12. Overcoming Obstacles
     … And that, as the Buddha keeps saying, is anatta, anatta—it’s not-self, not-self*.* So focus on that issue. What you really have is this process of fabrication that’s work, work, work—all the time. And yet the work you do doesn’t produce any results that you can hang on to, unless you master what the Buddha said is that … 
  13. The Kindness of Body Contemplation
    The Kindness of Body Contemplation January 30, 2013 When we focus on the breath, we’re with the body in and of itself. What does that mean, “in and of itself”? The rest of the formula tells us that we’re “ardent, alert, and mindful, putting aside any greed and distress with reference to the world.” In other words, we aren’t looking at … 
  14. Dethinking Thinking
     … Ajaan Lee makes the point that when you’re sitting down here to meditate, you put the first two aside, and you focus totally on, say, the object of your concentration. But as you go through the day, there will have to be times when you have to think. When things are not going well in your meditation, you don’t just sit there … 
  15. Looking After Yourself
     … But try to test to see how little sleep you can get by on and still maintain your focus, still have a sense of ease in the concentration. We’re not here to push you into a neurotic breakthrough by denying you sleep. That doesn’t get you any closer to awakening. But you do want to learn how to use your concentration as … 
  16. Becoming Capable of Happiness
     … If you learn how to focus on your actions right now, instead of on the big results you’re hoping for at the end of the path, you’ll find that, over time, almost insensibly, you begin to change and your level of happiness begins to rise. Dogen, the Zen master, gave a comparison. He said it was like walking through mist. Even though … 
  17. Strengthening Concentration
     … The Buddha talks about times when you’re trying to focus on the breath, and the mind says: “Oh, I’m not willing to settle down.” He calls it having a fever in the body or a fever in the mind, an unwillingness to stay settled. He doesn’t recommend just bulldozing through it. Instead, he says to switch over to something you find … 
  18. True Honesty
     … This is why the Buddha’s teachings focus on the four noble truths, because they’re right there in our actions: what we do that causes suffering, what we could do to stop suffering. Recently I’ve been reading some Dhamma talks where the teacher seems to think that the great part of honesty is to be honest about what a miserable meditator he … 
  19. Customs of the Noble Ones
     … You give just enough so that what you have is enough—and you have a very frugal sense of what’s required by enough—so that you can focus your discontent on what’s wrong with the mind. Those are the customs of the noble ones. This is where they overlap with the second aspect of practicing the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma … 
  20. The Essence of the Dhamma
     … This frees us to focus on that fourth custom of the noble ones. You would think—with the first three covering contentment with food, clothing, and shelter—the fourth one would cover contentment with medicine, but it doesn’t. It covers taking delight in developing and taking delight in abandoning: in other words, taking delight in developing skillful qualities of the mind and delight … 
  21. A Complete Training
     … Then as you get more into developing the meditation—working with the breath, trying to get states of concentration, develop states of tranquility that can allow you to give rise to insight—you want to focus on the positive nature of concentration first, that it’s a restful place for the mind. You can sit around and think thoughts of goodwill all day, and … 
  22. Load next page...