Search results for: "Focus"

  1. Page 117
  2. Dispassion Isn’t Depression
     … This is why we meditate—and why, when we meditate, we focus on the mind. In other religions, they meditate on God or some abstract principle, but here we’re meditating on what the mind is doing, because what the mind is doing is going to make all the difference between suffering and not. What you’re doing right now is shaping your experience … 
  3. Unentangled Compassion
     … Notice where you sense the breath or the process of breathing most clearly, and focus your attention there. Then allow the breath to find a rhythm and texture that feels good. That’s it. Those are the basic ingredients. The important thing is that you keep them together as continuously as possible. You’re taking your raw materials here and you’re trying to … 
  4. The Wisdom of Equanimity
     … If you let go of that memory, you lose your focus. You lose your purpose. And the integrity of the mind begins to get frazzled. The mind loses its vitality, just like a plant whose quiescent center has forgotten that it’s supposed to be quiet. You’re here to remember that you want to be quiet. So even though there is a little … 
  5. Acceptance & Equanimity
     … You may be inspired to want to see everybody happy, but as for your efforts to help other people to be happy, you have to focus them on places where they would be well used. And for that, you need equanimity, a more all-embracing equanimity. You can develop that through the practice of concentration, or you can develop it through insight. When the … 
  6. Breath Energy
    When we focus on the breath, it’s not so much the air coming in and out through the nose. It’s the feeling of energy in the body. Some people say, “Where is the energy?” It’s in your sense that you have a body. You sense that through the breath, through the breath energy. If you were to hold your hand out … 
  7. Question Your Perceptions
     … So perception is a good aggregate to focus on, because it’s key to a lot of our defilements. There are perceptions that provoke the defilements, and there are defilements that provoke certain perceptions. When you can call the perceptions into question, you can call those defilements into question as well.
  8. The Self-correcting Mind
     … What kind of breathing can the mind stay with? What kind of breathing feels good for the body? What kind of breathing feels good for the mind? What kind of breathing is clear enough so we can focus on it but soothing enough so that it’s actually calming, allows the mind to settle down? Then once the breath feels good, what do you … 
  9. The World of Conviction
     … So why bother trying to define yourself? But if you focus on developing a general sense of yourself as capable, as willing to take responsibility for your actions and to learn from mistakes—simple things like that, which involve a quality of integrity: That kind of self can actually take you to the point where you don’t need it anymore. Because, after all … 
  10. Imagining Freedom
     … If we get too tied up in our efforts to imagine it, we get deflected from what we’re supposed to do, which is to focus on developing the path. That’s only that way that the goal can be experienced. But it is useful every now and then to try to stretch your imagination: There is a happiness that’s not limited in … 
  11. To Have a Purpose
     … That means you’ve got to focus on **that **desire and all of the desires in harmony with that. As for the desires **not in harmony with that, you want to let them go. That way, this life can be used to accomplish something. After all, you’re born with a human body. You’re born with a human mind. And the Buddha’s … 
  12. The Humble Way to Awakening
     … If, through our compassion, we could save other beings, then that would be a useful topic to focus on. But the problem is that each of us suffers because of our own lack of skill in dealing with pain. If we’d be willing to learn from the pain, then each of us could take care of our problems and there wouldn’t be … 
  13. A Victory that Matters
     … This is why the Buddha said that it’s better to focus on the battles inside, battles over your own defilements, greed, aversion, and delusion. Those are the battles that can be won, and when you win, you don’t create any bad kamma. As for whether the people outside will acknowledge your victory, that doesn’t really matter. In fact, as Ajaan Lee … 
  14. Nothing Wrong with Right & Wrong
     … For example, in dependent co-arising, the Buddha said to earn to focus on any one of the connections. He’s setting out a range of possibilities. You’ll find that once you get one connection that hits home for you, everything else opens up. So in some cases he’s saying, “Okay, this is right; this is wrong.” In other cases he’s … 
  15. Shelter
     … It’s up to you to decide where you’re going to focus and how you’re going to perceive these potentials. The feeling tones in the body will change; the feeling tones in the mind will change. These are things you need in order to develop that desire, that sense of patience and persistence, so you want to pay them really close attention … 
  16. Complaining Rights
     … So you focus on the breath, try to make breath as smooth as silk, so that it feels good coming in, feels good going out, and there are not a lot of bumps or distractions, so that the mind can get used to being with something smooth and continuous—and so that it can get used to being smooth and continuous itself. It’s … 
  17. Samvega & Pasada
     … You can focus it here. There’s a lot to learn about this breath energy in the body. Ajaan Lee sometimes talks about six different kinds of breath energy in the body. The Buddha mentions different aspects of the wind element in the body: There’s the up-flowing breath, which Ajaan Lee interprets as a sense of energy that’s constantly flowing up … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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