Search results for: "Focus"

  1. Page 117
  2. Insight Is a Judgment Call
     … That allows you to focus on the most important of the customs of the noble ones, which is to delight in developing skillful qualities and to delight in abandoning unskillful qualities. In other words, you want to make yourself want to do these things. Sometimes it doesn’t happen naturally, even when you’re practicing. There are times when the momentum begins to wear … 
  3. The Wisdom of Merit
     … He wants us to focus on that element of choice each and every moment. And so on what do we base our choice? What motivates us to give? Realizing that it’s going to be for our own welfare, both now and down the line. Notice that he doesn’t tell us to give because it’s our innate nature to be nice, or … 
  4. The Fetter of Perceptions
     … Can you see the difference? If you can, then you can just stay with those four properties as your object of focus. Let the pain be on another channel or another frequency. Or you can try other questions: Does the pain have an intention? Is it out to get you? Will the pain spread if you allow it to? In other words, there can … 
  5. Faith in Karma
     … After all, what are you doing as you meditate? You’re making up your mind you’ll do something—you’re going to focus on the breath. And then you want to make sure that no other intention comes in to divert you from where you really want to be, what you really want to do. And so you have to become more and … 
  6. A Greater Happiness
     … You focus on the breath in such a way that you relate easily to the breath. It feels comfortable being with the breath coming in, with the breath going out. Allow yourself to stay there. After all, stillness is the essence of happiness. There’s another passage where the Buddha says, “There is no happiness other than peace.” What he means is that the … 
  7. The Challenge of Right View
     … See them all as breath, look at their breath aspect, make that the perception you focus on. As you apply the perception of breath, it’ll actually highlight the breathy side of every sensation in the body—if you apply it consistently enough, if you apply it thoroughly enough. That’s one way of applying perception. The other way is that once the mind … 
  8. Infinity
     … Just focus on the common animals, he says, and you realize how variegated they can be: everything from tiny, tiny insects to whales and whale-eaters, and everything in between. Not only the creatures we know of now, but all the creatures that have been in the past that we know only through fossils. He says to think about how variegated the animal world … 
  9. Skills to Make a Difference
     … do other things that would put an end to the suffering, that would actually overcome that lack of skill. ** So the Buddha’s truths are active, and they ask you to focus on areas of life where you really can make a difference. **Basically, this comes down to the fact that you’ve been unskillful in the way you run your mind. You don … 
  10. As Days & Nights Fly Past
     … That will encourage them to focus, at that moment, on the right things, and not get **distracted by things that will pull them down.
  11. The Dhamma Wheel
     … That’s where the suffering is, so that’s what we’ve got to focus on. Knowing the suffering or knowing that first noble truth is one level, then there’s knowing the duty with regard to it, which is to comprehend it. This doesn’t mean just understanding the words. It means understanding the actual suffering that you find in your heart to … 
  12. Talking Among Your Selves
     … So, focus on the breath. Talk to yourself about the breath. How does it feel right now? I noticed that when Ajaan Fuang was teaching his students, he would have them describe how they were feeling the breath. Then he would use their vocabulary to talk to them. There was one guy who had had trouble getting the mind to settle down with the … 
  13. To Strengthen the Path
    Focus your desires on staying with the breath. All too often we hear that the Buddha bad-mouthed desire, calling it the cause of suffering. But not all desires cause suffering. Some desires are part of the path, like the desire to get the mind in a good state with a sense of well-being with the breath. Breathe in a way that feels … 
  14. Self-Reliance
     … So focus on your breath. As for the thoughts that come in and out of your head, let them come in and out simply as events. You don’t have to pay any attention to their meaning, don’t have to get involved with them. Just give as much attention as you can to the breathing. This way, you’re giving less food to … 
  15. Desire
     … You learn to be more and more skillful in your desires, to focus them more precisely in places where they really do benefit you. Again, there’s a strong desire, a strong wanting in this, but it’s tempered by the knowledge that you’ve got to learn how to give up a lot of things that you may have been holding on to … 
  16. An Island in the Flood
     … Recently, I’ve been running into a group of doctrinaire people who say that you have to focus on the tip of the nose and nowhere else. Otherwise you’re destroying the religion, they say, which is pretty extreme. The thing is that the tip of the nose doesn’t give you much in terms of pleasure or pain as you breathe in and … 
  17. Frame Your Questions Well
     … You focus your attention on the breath, and try to breathe in a way that’s comfortable. Then you try to spread that comfort so that it fills the body, so that your sense of breath fills the body, and your awareness fills the body. You want all of these three things to come together, each filling the others. That’s the world of … 
  18. Teachings to Rahula
     … When you choose to breathe in a certain way, choose to focus in a certain place, or choose to hold a certain perception, these are choices that are going to have an impact on how you experience the present moment. And how do you know which ones are skillful? You stick with them. This is why mindfulness practice has to shade into concentration practice … 
  19. Trustworthy Intentions
     … This is why, when the Buddha gave instructions to his son when his son was seven years old and just getting started in the practice, he said to focus on your intentions. Before you do anything, before you say anything, before you think anything, ask yourself, “Why am I doing this? What is this going to lead to?” He didn’t say just to … 
  20. Outside the Box
     … There are lots of different topics you could focus on right now. As the Buddha said, there are times when you try to settle down with the body sitting right here, and there’s a fever. It could be a fever in the mind, a fever in the body—not so much a physical fever, just an antsiness. Okay, what’s the problem? What … 
  21. Two Guardian Meditations
     … In the same way, you want to focus on people’s potential to change their ways. There are a lot of people who don’t want to change their ways. They’re perfectly happy doing whatever stupid and heartless and cruel things they’re doing—in which case your goodwill has to be backed up by equanimity. But you remember that you’re doing … 
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