Search results for: "Focus"

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  2. Committed to the Breath
    We’ve all read enough on physiology to know where the breath comes in, where it goes out, but as you’re sitting here right now, where do you feel the breathing? What parts of the body are engaged in the breathing process? Focus your attention on those sensations—your direct experience of the breath energy—and commit yourself to it for the hour … 
  3. No Happiness without Restraint
     … So focus your attention on one spot and try to make that spot as comfortable as you can, as you breathe in, as you breathe out. Then from that spot you can spread both the breath and your attention. Sometimes the attention goes first. Your sense of awareness begins to expand, and then the breath and pleasure follow afterwards. Sometimes the breath itself seems … 
  4. Reading Your Meditation
     … In other words, you focus on the object and you turn around to check to see if the mind is solidly with the object, how it’s doing, what results you’re getting. Then you go back to the object again. This way, you can monitor your progress and also learn how to read your meditation. When things are going well, you don’t … 
  5. Subduing Greed & Distress
     … That makes it easier to get back to your original focus and to stay with that focus. Remember: There’s a lot more nourishment here than there would be in going out and feeding off the scraps of your memories or your plans. The real nourishment is right here in the pleasure of a concentrated mind. So when we engage in these two activities … 
  6. Questioning & Conviction
     … But to see them we have to change our focus. To change our focus requires a change of heart, telling ourselves that this really is important, much more important than things outside. That’s what conviction is all about. Appropriate attention is the change of focus; conviction, the change of heart. You make up your mind—and your heart—that this is an important … 
  7. Getting Connected Inside
     … That’s where you focus your attention and things get clearer, more articulate. In the background awareness, things are pretty vague. What you focus on is what you see clearly, what you can actually articulate to yourself and talk to yourself about. As we’re meditating, we’re trying to bring those two aspects of awareness together. We’re trying to have a whole … 
  8. Withstanding Pleasure & Pain
     … As you’re working at keeping your awareness full-body, full-body, the breath can start settling down, get more and more subtle, and you don’t lose your focus. One of the problems with this comfortable breath is that, as it gets very subtle, if you’re only in one spot, you’ve lost your focus. Sometimes you have the feeling of falling … 
  9. The Swinging Balance
    The Swinging Balance March 10, 2011 When you focus on the present moment, you’re trying to become friends with it. Tell yourself that you’re going to focus on the breath and find a spot in the body where it’s comfortable to stay, where it feels easeful. This can be anywhere in the body—deep in the body, on the surface of … 
  10. A Concentration Checklist
     … So look at the strength of your focus. If you find that getting the mind to settle down with the breath makes things feel tight and constricted in the body, okay, you’re putting too much pressure on. Back off a bit. If you find the mind wandering in and out—coming into focus, going out of focus—put some more pressure on. The … 
  11. Interested in the Breath
     … Anywhere in the body where you notice the breath most clearly, focus there. As you focus, don’t clamp down on things. Allow the breath to have its freedom. If deep breathing doesn’t feel comfortable, you can change. Either pose the question in your mind, “What kind of breathing would feel best right now?” and see how the body responds, or you can … 
  12. Look at Yourself
     … If you focus with too much force, the breath feels uncomfortable. It feels like it’s been trapped. If your focus is too vague, you find yourself wandering off. So you really want to stay focused right here in a way that’s just right to see what’s going on. This is what you really have control over. We were talking today about … 
  13. So Little Time
     … Then she would strike out the last eight and focus on the first two. The Buddha would have you focus on one: What’s the cause of your suffering right now? Where is your suffering? This is not a selfish issue to focus on, because if you can’t handle your own suffering, it tends to spill out onto other people. So we owe … 
  14. Fighting off Ignorance
     … You can also experiment with where to focus. Are you going to focus at the tip of the nose, middle of the chest, the abdomen, the middle of the head, the base of the throat? There are lots of places you can focus your attention. Each of them will have a different effect. So check to see for yourself which is the best place … 
  15. Maintaining Goodwill
     … All too often, when we try to focus on one part of the body, we tense up around it. Try to maintain your focus even as you relax around that spot. Try to maintain both that spot and the sense of relaxation around it. That’s all you have to do. It’s not much, it’s simply that the mind is not simple … 
  16. Potentials for Rapture
     … We start with the breath, because that’s one of the easiest things to focus on. It’s also one of the parts of the body that’s most malleable. In other words, you can do the most with it. You can make your breath longer or shorter, faster or slower, heavier or lighter. You can play with it in all kinds of ways … 
  17. Guardian Meditations
     … If you can’t work with the breath right at the beginning, focus on those other two types of fabrication first. Then you can focus those fabrications on these topics, or any of the other meditation topics the Buddha gives you, until you’re ready to come back to the breath. These are called guardian meditations because they protect you from your own defilements … 
  18. The Best Use of Your Time
    The mind is used to having a long list of things that it has to think about or prepare for, so it’s a special luxury to have some time where you can put the list aside and focus on one thing: the training of the mind itself. So try to make the most of this opportunity. Focus on your breath and be aware … 
  19. Learning by Doing
     … Which places to focus in the body are easy to stay with and which ones are not. If there’s an imbalance in the body—too much pressure, say, in the head—how do you bring your attention down so that you’re not making the pressure in the head worse? Don’t think that you have to focus only at the nose. You … 
  20. A Good Mood to Meditate
     … So don’t focus on the whole body at a time like that. Focus on one little spot. There must be some spot in the body where you can gain some measure of comfort, so focus right there. As for the rest of the body, give it over to the hormones for the time being, but you’re not going to feed on the … 
  21. Adjust the Flame
     … Those are the things you focus on. Those are the things you emphasize. There may be pains and aches in different parts of the body, but you don’t focus on them. Focus on the parts of the body that you can make comfortable, so that the mind gains a sense of wanting to be here in this world, rather than traveling around to … 
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