Search results for: "Focus"

  1. Page 112
  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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.
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. The Whole Story
     … This way, you can focus in on the real troublemaker: the part of the mind that wants to lust, the part of the mind that wants to be angry, that wants to get worked up about some issue. Where does that come from? That’s the real troublemaker. The body itself is not a troublemaker. The world outside is not the troublemaker. The troublemakers … 
  14. Safety in an Uncertain World
     … the labels you put on things and the feeling tones you focus on. Your emotions are composed of these things, and you want to learn how to see them that way. They may be old habits. We may say that something we’ve done since childhood is really going to be hard to dig out, but it’s not just since childhood. A lot … 
  15. Getting Familiar with Concentration
     … simply to deal with whatever comes up. If a skillful quality hasn’t arisen yet, you try to give rise to it. Once it’s there, you try to foster it. Focus on the things that you can work on. In other words, you’re responsible for the causes. As for when the results will ripen, you can’t determine that ahead of time … 
  16. Suffering Comes from What You’re Doing
     … Look for causes, focus your desire on the causes, and the results will take care of themselves. So we’re watching ourselves in action. This is why, as we said earlier, there are certain questions the Buddha put aside, things that were not related to what you’re doing that’s causing suffering and how can you stop. You put them aside either because … 
  17. W.W.B.R.
    There are times when you sit down to focus on the breath and the mind is right there, and it takes to the breath. Ajaan Fuang would say that the mind takes to the breath in the same way a kite takes to the wind. You spread your awareness through the body and it stays there. You get interested in how the breath energy … 
  18. Pleasures & Pains on the Middle Way
     … So you’ve got to bring it back and focus on finding a comfortable breath. Once the breath is comfortable, start thinking of how that comfortable energy can spread through the body. When we talk about the breath, it’s not just the air coming in and out of the lungs, it’s the flow of energy in the body as a whole: the … 
  19. Alighting on the Dhamma
     … Singleness of mind in the sense that your focus is right here on one thing. You’re with the breath, and the breath fills your awareness. That’s another way in which it’s single. Singleness of heart in that you try to do this as well as you can. You feel inspired by doing this. So, you’re single-minded and you’re … 
  20. Three Virtues for the Mind
     … For instance, as you focus on the breath, try to make it really comfortable, until you can show to yourself that happiness doesn’t have to depend on a lot of things outside. There’s a strong current of thought in our society—even with the recession and all the exposure of what greed has done for us over the past who knows how … 
  21. Insight Is a Judgment Call
     … You begin to focus in on your object and you adjust it here, and you adjust it there. Is it quite right yet? Well, no, it’s not quite right. Well, keep adjusting. There’s always a bit of doubt, and a bit of uncertainty in the directed thought and evaluation. But finally you decide, “Okay, I’m going to settle in,” and you … 
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