Search results for: "Focus"

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  2. Changing Your Mind
     … For instance, as you’re trying to get the mind to settle down, where in the body is the best place to focus? What kind of breathing is best? How can you get the mind to be happy to settle down and be still? Because the well-being that comes from a still mind is a lot more rewarding and a lot more blameless … 
  3. Only Natural
     … I’m going to focus on the breath for five minutes and I really want to settle down.” That way, you learn pretty quickly where your spots are in the body, the spots where you’re most sensitive. As you get good at settling down right there, right then, you have the tool you need when emotions come up, because they come up very … 
  4. Work & Play
    Focus on the breath and try to adjust the breath so that it feels comfortable. Then allow that comfortable breath sensation to spread throughout the body so that you fill it with a sense of ease, fullness, refreshment. We call that both playing with the breath and working with the breath. It’s work in the sense that it does require effort and we … 
  5. Strength of Conviction
     … What’s causing suffering? What’s not? And as you focus on these things, you find that the mind gets greater and greater strength to make the right choices because you see very clearly that if you make the wrong choices, you suffer. Not only you, but people around you suffer as well. This way, regardless of what worlds of possibilities are presented by … 
  6. The Desire for Things to Be Different
     … At the very least, the surroundings are not detrimental to your practice, and that gives you the opportunity to focus inside. This is where the real victory is to be found. All too often, we want to gain victory over other people outside, but as the Buddha noted, that kind of victory always leads to karmic results that you’re not going to want … 
  7. Don’t Clap Hands with Pain
     … As she told me, it got to the point where there was no place in the body where she could focus her attention without running into pain. It was like being in the house on fire. No matter which room you went into, all the rooms were up in flames. But then she thought of space. So she held that perception in mind and … 
  8. Broaden Your Range of Choices
     … You need to focus on their goodness even if it means getting down and slurping up the water out of the footprint. In other words, look for the goodness in people who, otherwise, you find really hard to deal with because there’s a part of the mind that says, “Well, they’re so awful. Why should I go to the indignity of looking … 
  9. Inconstancy
     … Even though your focus is on the breath, you can’t help but notice that there are times when the mind is concentrated on the breath and times when it’s not. You’ve got to learn how to figure out both sides of the question: which things are helping to foster concentration, and which things are getting in the way of concentration. And … 
  10. Wild Horses
     … If your concentration and mindfulness are strong enough, you can focus on the perception of space, and you realize that you don’t have to keep focusing on the body. The body is there if you want to create a sensation of the body again out of those dots of sensation. You can do that. But you also have the choice of going for … 
  11. Dissolving Narratives
     … What’s the ignorance, as the Buddha said, that gives rise to the craving that makes us forget that a lot of our actions are causing suffering? We focus on other things, have other agendas, and start creating other narratives, but the real issue is: Why are you making yourself suffer? When you make yourself suffer, it’s very easy to spread out and … 
  12. The Mind Like Water
     … It’s easy to focus on the extremes that he went to and say, “Well, he was trying too hard, pushing himself too much.” Which is true, but then the question is, how much pushing is just right? As he says, for some people, just right will be a pleasant path. Other people will require a more difficult path. The stronger your defilements, the … 
  13. A Decent Education
     … How do you use pleasure? Focus on the breath right now and see how it feels. Then experiment with the breath to see how the way you breathe can produce either pleasure or pain. It may be subtle — the difference between the two — but it’s there. We’ve learned to desensitize ourselves to this aspect of our awareness, so it’s going to … 
  14. Practicing Your Scales
     … What you’ve got to do is notice, “Which part of the effort is necessary, which part is not? Where’s the excess energy that’s being expended on this that’s making it more difficult than it has to be? What’s the most efficient way of staying with the breath? What’s the most efficient place to focus? The most efficient way … 
  15. The Buddha’s Filters
     … It’s there to focus you on what really needs to be done. We can’t approach life without any filters at all. There’s just too much coming in through the senses. There are people who talk about how amazing it can be to be fully sensitive all at the same time to what you hear, see, taste, touch, feel. But it’s … 
  16. The Five Aggregates
     … It’s happening all the time, so you focus on that. Say, “I want to make this a path, an object of right concentration.” That changes your intentionality toward the body. And the same with feelings as they arise: When you’re working on concentration, your intention is to nurture the feelings of pleasure you can create from the path, but to let other … 
  17. Trust in the Power of the Mind
     … You seclude yourself from your ordinary sensual fantasies and any unskillful thoughts, and you focus attention on one thing. You think about that one thing, i.e., the breath. You work with it so that it gives rise to a sense of ease, a sense of well-being, a sense of refreshment. You energize the body. You energize the mind. Then you allow body … 
  18. Contentment vs. Initiative
     … You keep asking yourself, “Is this as comfortable as I can make the mind right now staying here with the breath? Or can I breathe in a different way? Can I focus in a different way? Can I think about the breath energy in a different way? Would that make it better?” For instance, with the breath energy: If you feel that you’re … 
  19. The Power of Present Kamma
     … We focus on a topic and then we make comments about it. So here the breath is the topic. And we’re commenting on the breath. In this way, we’re putting bodily fabrication and verbal fabrication together. We do this by evaluating how the breath feels and, if it doesn’t feel good, asking ourselves how to change it. If it does feel … 
  20. Up for the Challenge
     … s not going to handle this, someone’s not going to handle that. You tell the person, “Look, you’re dying. This is not the time to be worried about that. Focus on what your real duty is right now, which is looking after the state of your mind.” If the person who’s dying is concerned about leaving the sensual pleasures of the … 
  21. Buddhist Engineering
     … For the time being, the Buddha said, “Start with the breath,” because when you focus your mind on the breath, you’ve got all four of those frames of reference in one spot. The breath, of course, is an aspect of the body. When you’re breathing comfortably, there’s a feeling. When you’re paying attention to the breath, there’s a mind … 
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