Search results for: "Focus"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. Leaving Distractions Alone
     … You have to learn how to maintain your focus, ultimately, in all kinds of situations, peaceful and not. One of the reasons we come into physical seclusion like this is so that we can deal with the distractions in the mind—learn how not to be pulled away by thoughts of the past, thoughts of the future, or thoughts of other places right now … 
  18. The Fires of Sensuality
     … As you focus on the drawbacks of whatever object it is you’re desiring, it makes it easier to look at the desire itself. Do you really want to stay involved with this desire? Look at the physical side: You’re just sitting here desiring. Look at the way the mind burns. This is not the flame of jhana. This is the flame of … 
  19. Respect for the Mind
     … You focus on an object when you meditate. The Pali word for object, arammana, means support. The image is of a place where you put the mind. Think of the mind as something valuable. It’s like having gold in your house. You want to put the gold in a very good place where it’s safe. Or if you have an expensive heirloom … 
  20. Pain Is a Noble Truth
     … Pain is one of the things we focus on. Of course, we don’t go jumping right into the pain. Nobody, without the proper mental skills, can stay with it long enough to see it clearly. Our usual response to pain is that we want it to go away. Either we run away from it or we try to push it out of where … 
  21. The Buddha’s Conventions
     … As the Buddha said, you can focus on any one of these activities and try to understand where it’s coming from, how it’s causing suffering, what its allure is—why you like doing it—and then compare the allure with the drawbacks until you really see there’s no worth to what you’ve been clinging to. The allure is often just … 
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