Search results for: "Focus"

  1. Page 109
  2. Breath Meditation, Step by Step
     … If you breathe in a certain way, how does it affect the mind? When you breathe in another way, how does it affect the mind? How does it affect the body? When you focus on the breath in a certain way, what does that do to the breath? How does the mind affect the body? How does the body affect the mind? Or to … 
  3. Faith in the Buddha’s Awakening
    Focus on your breath. Know when it’s coming in, know when it’s going out. And allow it to be comfortable going in and going out. Experiment to see what rhythm feels best right now. As you stay with the breath, you’re staying in the same place where the Buddha was staying when he gained awakening on the full moon night in … 
  4. Doubts
     … If any thoughts do come up as you’re trying to focus on the breath, if they’re not related to the breath, you try to put them aside. If you find yourself wandering off, the Buddha has five major methods for not thinking about those things. One is simply to notice that you’ve wandered off. You’ve moved to another topic that … 
  5. Basic Wisdom
     … That’s when your discernment has to focus on working on your motivation and on figuring out what’s going to work in your case—because this is something that varies from person to person: the reasons that will induce you to want to do the skillful thing. This is where discernment comes together with right effort. Sometimes, to get you motivated, the Buddha … 
  6. Learning Through Healing
     … We focus on some things and ignore other things. We direct our thoughts and evaluate things in a particular way. And when we do this out of ignorance, there’s going to be suffering. We hold certain images in mind. When you deal with some people, you’re not really dealing with that person, you’re dealing with an image you’ve carried over … 
  7. Sober Up
     … If it can focus on one object, it’s like a flock of birds that finally settle down on one spot, all gathered together. In Thai, though, they have another idiom: They talk about lifting the mind up above its ordinary preoccupations. So you can think of the mind either going up or down, whichever seems to describe how it feels to you as … 
  8. Attached to the Body
     … This is why we’ve got to focus a lot of energy on this issue. Otherwise, the mind will never be free. It’ll always be a slave to its passions. And it’ll blame the body; it’ll blame just anything it can think of. But the real danger lies within. Sensuality is one of the asavas, one of these effluents that comes … 
  9. Switzerland Inside
    The Buddha’s basic teachings on mindfulness focus on two activities. The first is keeping focused on the body, or feelings, or mind, or mental qualities, in and of themselves; the second is putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world. You need both activities to get the mind into concentration. The first is the actual concentration. For instance, at the moment … 
  10. The Power of Perception
     … You can focus on a point someplace around the middle of the chest and find a quality of feeling there that feels nice. You try to maintain that niceness, that pleasant feeling, so that nothing in the in- breath and nothing in the out-breath touches it or disturbs it. This is where the Buddha’s image of holding a baby chick in your … 
  11. The Graduated Discourse
     … The main message of the four noble truths is if you focus on this second kind of suffering—the suffering that your mind is creating for itself—then when you solve this problem, then the other kind of suffering is not going to weigh on the mind at all. So it really is within your power not to suffer. That’s the good news … 
  12. Precarious Knowledge
     … Even while you’re eating and working, you can meditate, you can focus on the breath. Try to maintain your inner center, choose a spot in the body that feels comfortable and try to maintain that sense of comfort no matter what you’re doing. An image in the Canon is of a person carrying a bowl full of oil on top of his … 
  13. Verified Confidence
     … And, as we all know, once you start thinking in terms of fabrication—that’s the way you breathe, that’s the way you think, talk to yourself, the perceptions you hold in mind, the feelings you hold, focus on; these things fabricate your sense of the body, they fabricate your words, they fabricate the mind: When you begin to see what you’re … 
  14. In Charge of Your Moods
     … Where do you feel the breathing in your body? Especially when the breath is long, you feel it down in the chest, in the torso, in the stomach… but wherever it’s clearest, focus your attention right there. Then ask yourself if long breathing is comfortable. If it feels good, keep it up. If it doesn’t feel good, you can change. You can … 
  15. The Need for a Purpose
     … Now, there are times when the Buddha would say to just focus on the present moment, but he also tells you why you’re focusing on the present moment: It leads to something beyond the present moment. First it leads to results that you’ll see now and on into the future: long-term welfare and happiness, and then to something even beyond that … 
  16. A Mind Like Earth
     … You change the way you breathe, you change the way you focus on the breath, you change the way you conceive the breath energy in the body, and there will be changes in how you experience the body here in the present moment. If there are pains in different parts of the body or there’s an old injury, think of the breath energy … 
  17. Refuge
     … It keeps looking for pleasure wherever it can, so you block off the unskillful avenues and say, okay, focus inside here because this is skillful. It’s going to require developing a skill. It’s going to take time, but after all, what are you being asked to do? Breathe. Breathe comfortably. Breathe in a way that feels nourishing. If your heart feels heavy … 
  18. Yes & No
     … So you focus on one corner of the orchard. Plant your trees there. And then, if they’re mangoes, you get the seeds from the mangoes, and then you can plant those seeds. Eat the mangoes and plant the seeds. Eat the mangoes. Plant the seeds. In other words, figure out what you’re capable of and then stick with that. Things will grow … 
  19. Discernment & Determination
     … now. You don’t have to be responsible for the rest of the hour. Take responsibility for what you’re doing right now. The step that can be done right now: Focus on that. When that’s done, you find that you’ve picked up a little bit of momentum. You can move on to the next step, and then the next. This is … 
  20. Mastering Pleasure & Pain
     … But it is important that you learn how to keep your focus, even in the midst of the pleasure. Otherwise, your concentration turns into drowsiness, or what Ajaan Lee calls delusion concentration. The mind is still, you’re not asleep, but you’re not very clear about where you are: concentration lacking in mindfulness and alertness. That’s what you’ve got to watch … 
  21. Good Work
     … It may not be absolutely there at the deathless yet, but at least it’s in better and better shape, and you’re depending on something that doesn’t have require you to focus outside. It’s right in here—in this skill you’re working on. So remember, we’re here in the present moment, but the present moment keeps moving. You want … 
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