Search results for: "Focus"

  1. Page 112
  2. Take Good Aim
     … This is one of the reasons why we’re working on concentration—to develop that steady, constant, unwavering quality of focus that enables our discernment to do its work. And what is the work of discernment? To understand our cravings. As we chanted just now, the mind is usually a slave to craving. We’re slaves to cravings because we don’t understand them … 
  3. Training Your Intentions
     … We choose the ones we want to focus on and pay attention to, and we turn them into the actual experience of an aggregate. So we’re playing a very intentional and purposeful role in our engagement with these things—in fact, with our engagement of all our senses. It’s not the case that we’re just sitting here passively being bombarded by … 
  4. Learning How to Learn
     … But, to do it well, you have to focus on the causes. Then, based on that desire, you develop your persistence: You actually do your best. Anything that comes up in the meditation that’s not skillful, you try to get rid of it. Anything that’s skillful, you try to give rise to it, then nurture it, nourish it, maintain it, help it … 
  5. Right Speech
     … You’re reminding yourself, “Now stay here,” commenting on how the breath is, and trying to think up ways that the breath could be better, where to focus, what you find interesting, what you find useful. This inner conversation is actually an important part of the meditation. It’s called verbal fabrication: the way the mind chatters to itself. What you’re trying to … 
  6. Cause & Effect
     … This is why, when we meditate, we focus on developing a sense of ease, a sense of rapture. It’s not simply a matter of being able to do it once and say, “Okay I’m no longer attached to that, I’m no longer excited by that. I can move on to other things.” These are your basic nourishment as a meditator. You … 
  7. Gratitude & Trust
     … We’re indebted to the people who’ve made this possible, and so the best way to repay that debt is to focus on the practice. The Thai way of expressing this is that other people have started weaving something and so you continue the weaving. You don’t let the edges get all frayed. This is what gratitude is all about: It’s … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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