Search results for: "Focus"

  1. Page 110
  2. How to Change
     … They liked to focus on the tendency for a lot of people to say, “I don’t have the vasana, I don’t have the character traits, I don’t have the parami, I don’t have the perfections from the past in order to practice.” We here in the West don’t tend to think in those terms, but we think the same … 
  3. Housecleaning
     … When you really focus on what it feels like to be here, there’s tension here, tightness there, and pain in this and that spot. So you have to think of the meditation, especially when you’re just beginning to settle down, as housecleaning. Your first reaction may be, when you see the mess in the house, to want to run away again. But … 
  4. What Are You Doing in the Present?
     … We focus on the breath not for the sake of the breath, but for the for purpose of figuring out our own mind. The best place to observe the mind is in the present moment, and the breath is in the present moment. There’s no future breath that you can examine, no past breath, just the breath in the present. So as long … 
  5. Things as They’ve Come to Be
     … When you focus on breathing, it’s not just the air coming in and out of the lungs. It’s a sensation of energy that flows through the whole body, and you’re sitting in the middle of this vast breathing process that affects every nerve, every muscle. The whole experience of your body is related to the breath. The more you can perceive … 
  6. Abandoning Craving
     … about you or the object you want, or the state of being you want, or a particular narrative? If that’s where you’re going, you’re going the wrong place. Focus your desires on qualities of mind that will get you out: mindfulness, alertness, ardency, concentration, discernment. These are all good things to desire. That kind of desire for change is actually part … 
  7. Helping Others Is a Battle
     … easily knocked over by unskillful thoughts that come through the mind. Then you can deal with them. This is why we put so much emphasis on getting the mind into concentration: Focus on your breath. Breathe in a way that feels good, nourishing for the body. Soothing when you’re feeling frazzled. Energizing when you’re feeling tired. Relaxing when you’re feeling tense … 
  8. The Image of the Raft
    When we meditate, we choose one object to focus on—in this case, the breath. If we’re going to think, we think about the breath. What we’re going to watch is the breath. We gather all these different mental activities around the breath. This is how the mind can become one. Once you’ve chosen the breath as your object, you try … 
  9. Artillery All Around
     … Another cure for sleepiness that I’ve found is that if focusing on one spot in the body gets you really blurry, make up your mind to focus on one spot for three breaths, and then another spot for three breaths, and then another spot, and another, and another, and just keep chasing these spots around the body. That could wake you up. Or … 
  10. Directing Yourself Rightly
     … We try to develop the qualities that allow us to focus on that problem within so that we’re not getting into fights with anything at all. This involves contentment in an unusual way. On the one hand, you learn how to content yourself with whatever the situation is outside. At the same time, though, you don’t let yourself rest content with the … 
  11. The Regularity of the Dhamma
     … where you should focus your attention, and what the main priority should be — which is to keep on the path. In this way the Buddha doesn’t leave you high and dry, for no matter what the situation, this is how to look at it: in terms of the four noble truths. Your intention should be to try to comprehend the suffering, the stress … 
  12. What It All Comes From
     … That came from his determination, focus, strong honesty, and strong willingness to do whatever was required to get out. So: strong desire, strong awareness—those qualities of a conscious agent, just raised to an nth degree. And that takes you out. When you get out, then you don’t need to be a conscious agent anymore. Being a conscious agent is this role that … 
  13. The Duty to Understand
     … the directed thoughts that focus your attention on the breath, and the evaluation that looks at it to see where it might be improved, or where it’s already pleasant, and what can be done with that sense of pleasure. We can spread it around. And we try to maintain our awareness of these things. So we’re still holding on, but we’re … 
  14. A Dhamma Bucket List
     … And the way to get there is to focus on the causes: conviction, virtue, generosity, discernment, and learning the Dhamma. Make that your bucket list, too. You’ll leave good things behind, you’ll take good things with you, and there will be good things to greet you on the other side.
  15. Separate
     … This is why we focus on our awareness in the present moment, directing it first to the breath, so that we can leave thoughts of past and future, and get all the mind gathered around one thing. Try to expand the breath—your sense of the breath—so that it fills the whole body and feels good throughout the whole body. They talk about … 
  16. The Practice is Wherever There’s Mindfulness
     … This is your main focus. So the ability to keep in mind what’s skillful and unskillful, and to notice whether you’re actually doing it or not, and if you’re not doing it, making the effort so that you can do it and, if you are doing it, making the effort to keep doing it: All of this counts as the practice … 
  17. The Buddha’s Medicine
     … If you focus on their bad points, it just aggravates your own diseases, aggravates your own thirst. Other people’s good points are like water for you. You need it. So the breath helps a lot. It’s not the total medicine in the treatment but it’s one of the very helpful medicines. It has to be allied with a proper understanding of … 
  18. Feeding on Open Wounds
     … When you don’t gobble it down, you can be more discriminating, more discerning in what you do eat, what you do focus on. That way, you don’t have to gobble down poison along with what’s good. As the Buddha said, nibbāna is true health. When you think of the health of the body, you realize how precarious it is. But the … 
  19. Abandoning Effluents (2)
     … You’re very careful not to let the mind focus on anything in a way that would give rise to greed, aversion, or delusion. In other words, you look at the sensory process not as one in which you’re simply passive, reacting to things coming in at you. You realize you’re out there looking for something. And the question is: Who’s … 
  20. Dhamma in Vinaya
     … If the mind is unwilling to settle down with one perception, what other perceptions can you try? Is the breath what you want to focus on right now? That’s the third question, which is the object. Maybe the mind needs some contemplation of the parts of the body to settle down. Maybe it needs goodwill to settle down. Maybe it needs a little … 
  21. A Basis in Well-being
     … Learn how to focus on that, get the most out of that, so that your practice has a good solid foundation. And so that the insights that are coming from your practice are not neurotic breakthroughs. Instead, they’re a natural opening up that comes when there’s a sense of well-being and balance. Things suddenly become clear because your gaze is steadier … 
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