Search results for: "Focus"

  1. Page 116
  2. Free from Animosity
     … That’s where we have to focus our attention. But first we have to understand, what does it mean to hold on to something, to cling to something? Because we also chant, *pañc’upādānakkhandā—*we’re suffering because of our clinging to those five aggregates. As a psychologist once said, your strongest sense of self is when you feel you’ve been wronged, you … 
  3. Mindfulness + Discernment = Intelligence
     … We look at our memory and ask, “What in my memory is useful for right now? What’s not useful?” Focus only on the things that are useful, and those good memories will help you recognize: What right now is skillful? How do you recognize what’s skillful coming up in the mind? How do you recognize what’s not skillful? How do you … 
  4. Goodwill, Gratitude, No Guilt
    When you focus on the breath, try to breathe in a way that feels really refreshing. Think of the breath energizing your entire torso all the way down, and then even beyond the torso down through the legs, down the back. Any part of the body that seems tired or tense, in need of a little refreshment, a little bit of soothing: Let the … 
  5. Appreciating Dispassion
     … The body seems to be a mist of sensation dots, and you focus on the space between the dots. You realize that that space has no boundary at all. It permeates the body, extends outside the body, goes through the walls of the sālā, out through everything in the world. You can maintain that perception—very spacious, very light. That’s where you go … 
  6. Fighting Spirit
     … Even if physical pain doesn’t go away, you really want to focus on the mental pain. That’s the difference between the suffering in the three characteristics and suffering in the four noble truths. In the three characteristics, the simple fact that things change leads to stress. As long as you’re experiencing a body and experiencing the human world around that body … 
  7. Always Willing to Learn
     … For appropriate attention, you avoid questions such as, “Who am I?” “What am I?” “Do I exist?” “Do I not exist?” You focus instead on questions having to do with the issue of suffering and its end: “Where is the suffering right now?” “Where is the stress?” “Where is the cause of that stress right now?” In other words, you look for these things … 
  8. The Karma Snake
     … And although it may seem as if the teachings on karma focus your attention a lot on the past and future, the Buddha would always bring the issue back into the present, because the future and past are very much intimately connected with what you’re doing in the present. It’s not as if the present is something that stands outside of time … 
  9. Ānāpānasati Day
     … way I breathe make me feel overwhelmed? How does the way I talk to myself make me feel overwhelmed? The way I image things in my mind and the feelings I focus on: How does that make me feel overwhelmed? I don’t need that. I can construct these things in a different way.” This is why we have all those texts by the … 
  10. A Legacy of Strengths
     … And these are actualized by your present karma, which is another reason why we focus in the present moment. Not only is this the best time to do what needs to be done, but this is the place where the work gets done. So we’re convinced in the fact that our actions do matter. And where do our actions come from? They come … 
  11. Over-informed
     … He didn’t tell them they could become stream-enterers, or once-returners, or non-returners, or arahants. He basically said, This is the path for putting an end to suffering. Focus on the suffering you’re doing right now. Notice that you’re doing it. You’re clinging to things. It’s not simply that you’re on the receiving end of the … 
  12. Step Outside the World
     … A lot of people focus on how horrible it was that Prince Siddhartha left his wife and his son, but they forget to notice that he came back and taught his wife to be an arahant. He raised his son, and when his son became mature, reached adulthood, he became an arahant as well. Very few fathers can do that for their family. So … 
  13. Healthy Conceit
     … You have to learn how to use conceit skillfully as part of the path to focus you on getting to the goal. Once you’ve gotten to the goal, then you abandon it. Here the skillful conceit is, “Other people can do this, why can’t I?” An important part of healthy conceit is recognizing that it’s not the case that you’re … 
  14. Thinking Your Way to Stillness
     … There’s a tendency in modern literature to focus on antiheroes, people whose virtue lies in their being frank about their weaknesses—which is a kind of virtue, but not the whole story of virtue. For the sake of the practice, it’s more useful to read about people who’ve succeeded in doing what’s difficult. They’re our friends from the past … 
  15. Endurance Made Easier
     … The first step is to focus on the mind. To what extent is the mind making it harder to endure these things? The Buddha gives the example of a person shot by an arrow. And being shot by one arrow isn’t enough: He shoots himself with more arrows. The first arrow is the actual pain; the extra arrows are all his mental flailing … 
  16. Equanimity in Heart & Mind
     … So focus on your breath, something that’s right here. You don’t have to go looking anyplace else for it. It’s about as close to the mind as you can get in the world. Of the various properties in the body, it’s also the one that’s most responsive to the heart and mind. You can tell yourself to breathe long … 
  17. The Triple Training
     … Because we’re people who practice the Dhamma, that’s where our primary focus has to be: What are we doing, to what extent are we committed to the path, and to what extent are we actually learning from it? The Buddha said there are two big obstacles to gaining the Dhamma. One is not being committed, and other is not reflecting. In other … 
  18. Mature Happiness
     … The present actions are the ones that can make us suffer, or not, so those are the ones we want to focus on. We’re here with the breath so that we get comfortably into the present moment and know we’re in the frame of the present moment. And that’s when you begin to see the mind in the present moment. As … 
  19. Look after Yourself with Ease
     … In other words, if your range of awareness is too small and the breath gets very subtle, you lose your focus—which you don’t want. You want the mind to be strongly concentrated with a lot of mindfulness and with a lot of alertness. That’s how you nourish it. That’s how you gain strength. And that’s how you show goodwill … 
  20. In Earnest
     … And the main images in the Buddha’s teaching on clinging focus on this element of feeding. On the one hand, there’s the clinging in the image of the field of karma. Every plant that grows in the field of your karma comes from the seed of consciousness and is watered by your clinging and craving. It’s feeding off of that water … 
  21. A Concentration Diet
     … So, learn how to focus on your breath in a way that gives rise to a sense of pleasure, gives rise to a sense of fullness. You can try long breathing, short breathing, fast, slow, heavy, light, deep, shallow: any combination of those. When you’ve found something that feels good, stick with it. If it doesn’t feel so good anymore, you can … 
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