Search results for: "Focusing"

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  2. Worlds to Watch Out For
     … But if you find yourself focused on a desire, or focused on a particular mental world, and there’s no space for the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha there, okay, you’re in trouble. That world is going to close in on you. Other qualities you want to look for in a good mental world include what the Buddha calls shame and compunction … 
  3. Persistence
     … You’ve got to keep this point in mind because it’s so easy to forget that you’re sitting here meditating and focusing on the breath: You’re off someplace else. Or you get distracted by something in the breath itself. Things get nice, things get comfortable, and as Ajaan Fuang would say, your hands and feet let go and you just fall … 
  4. Goodwill & Kamma
     … If there’s pain in your back, pain in your hips, pain in your legs, how can you learn how not to focus on it? If you find that focusing on it actually makes it worse, you’ve got to stay away from it for a while. If you find that focusing on it helps you understand the process of pain, then focus on … 
  5. Pleasing to the Noble Ones
     … One is trying to keep focused on the sensation of an aspect of the body, like the breath. The other is that if anything else comes up to get in the way, you fend it off—or you just drop it. You try to stay with your object as steadily as you can, because it’s when the mind is steadily focused like this … 
  6. It’s up to You
     … a desire that’s properly focused — not too strong, not too weak — focused on the causes. Noticing, realizing, of course, that the results are implicit in the desire. You really want the results. But you realize that to get the results, you’ve got to focus your desire on doing this right. So it’s up to you. There are those cases in the … 
  7. Delusion
     … We’re concerned with our actions—where the actions come from, where they go—and one of the ways that the Buddha’s teaching is really distinctive is that it’s focused on seeing *everything *in terms of cause and effect, action and result. Even our beliefs about things—what we are, what the world is outside: The Buddha recommends that you look at … 
  8. Not Resolved on Self
     … So we resolve the issue of self, not by focusing on self, but by focusing on the question of what’s skillful and what’s not, trying to develop those qualities of being heedful, ardent, resolute in our actions. Let that become the center of your attention, and the issue of self and not-self will get settled on its own. Keep your focus … 
  9. Questioning & Conviction
     … Even though lots of people might say, “What could you possibly learn by just focusing on the breath?” you realize that staying focused here exercises your mindfulness, your concentration, your discernment, all the qualities you’re going to need to solve this problem of suffering. These are the qualities that allow you to test the Buddha’s claim that by solving the problem of … 
  10. Ripples Go Far
     … When you’re focused on your troubles, your suffering, your issues, you suffer a lot because the range is small and the pain is big. So of course it seems overwhelming. When you expand your range, you begin to realize that the pain is a lot smaller. This is one of the basic principles the Buddha uses in contemplating aging, illness, death, separation, and … 
  11. Count Your Blessings
     … If you start focusing on the parts of the body that hurt, that are sore, that feel tired, it gets harder and harder and harder to walk. But if you focus on the areas that are comfortable, that are not feeling tired, the parts that are feeling energetic, then you can walk for longer periods of time. So this is one of the important … 
  12. Exercising the Mind
     … If you want, you can spend the whole hour just focusing on that one issue: How do you know when the breath is comfortable? How do you when you’ve breathed enough in one direction or the other? What we’re doing here as we meditate is not just working on the breath. We’re also developing the mind. And that’s the important … 
  13. When You’ve Played Enough With the Breath
     … In the third tetrad, you’re focusing directly on what kind of states you want the mind to have. The steps are these: In the first one you breathe in and out sensitive to the mind, in the second one you breathe in and out gladdening the mind, in the third you breathe in and out concentrating the mind, and in the fourth you … 
  14. Look at Yourself
     … So you try to be alert, discerning, focused, so that you can be really clear about what intentions are there in the mind and how you’re following them or not following them, and what the results are—because sometimes you can see the results right away. You notice this especially when you work with the breath. Simply focusing on the breath in a … 
  15. Precarious Knowledge
     … When you hold a particular view, what does it do to your mind? When you’re focused on the breath, what does it do to your mind? You can watch these things as they’re happening. You can observe cause and effect to see which ways of thinking, which ways of focusing the mind, are helpful and which ones are not, to see which … 
  16. Bases of Power
     … If your desire is too strong, all you can think about is your desire and you’re not actually focusing on the breath. If there’s no desire at all, then you have to ask yourself what you’re doing here. So you want the desire to be focused on the causes. Of course, the causes have their appeal because you know that they … 
  17. You’ve Got Friends
    The Buddha focused his whole teaching career on dealing with the problem of suffering. As he one time said, that’s all he taught: suffering and the end of suffering. Suffering here is primarily mental suffering, the mental pain we feel. The word dukkha in Pali, in its everyday meaning, is just pain. Here the Buddha’s talking mainly about the mental pain we … 
  18. Constant, Easeful, Self
     … And it seems primarily that what the Buddha was focusing on was that when something comes into the mind to interfere with your focus on the breath, you want to reflect on the fact that it is inconstant and it is not-self, nothing you want to get involved with. As for the breath, Ajaan Lee makes the point that when you’re focusing … 
  19. Painful Thinking
     … That’s why we practice concentration focused on the breath. In fact, that’s why we focus on making the breath really comfortable, so that we have a good foundation. So focus your attention right here, right here at the breath. And notice how it feels. Notice how you can play with it. If you don’t play around, you can’t really understand … 
  20. Go, Do Jhana
     … Is it a comfortable place to stay focused? Are the sensations themselves comfortable sensations? What can you do with the breath to change them if they’re not? If they’re comfortable can you make them even more comfortable? This is all part of evaluation. This is how you get started on jhana practice. Some people classify this as a samatha or tranquility practice … 
  21. Ups & Downs
    Start each meditation session with the determination of what you want to do, focusing on the doing rather than on the results. The results will sometimes come quickly, sometimes slowly, sometimes it seems like they’re not coming at all. But you need to have a certain amount of conviction that, yes, your actions do have results—in the same way as when you … 
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