Search results for: "Attention"

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  2. A Meditator’s Environment
     … This relates to a quality called appropriate attention—paying attention to the right questions and having a sense of what the right answers are. Years back, I happened to be sitting next to a Zen teacher at a gathering. He was commenting on how he liked to read the Pali Canon. He said, “It’s full of koans, like, ‘What is the end of … 
  3. Calm & Insight into Pain
     … We’re doing this in ignorance because we’re paying attention to other things and so we let a subordinate part of the mind take care of business. And if it does a sloppy job, well, it’s to be expected, because you’re not giving it your full attention. When you’re multitasking, a lot of tasks may get done but they don … 
  4. Mindworms
     … One is simply to tell yourself, “Okay, that pattern may be going on, but I don’t have to get into it.” It’s your attention to the pattern that keeps it going. You can learn how to tell yourself that not all your thoughts are interesting, not all your thoughts are worthy of attention. And no matter how much the member of the … 
  5. Eeeels
     … Pay close attention to how the breathing feels. It’s really a shame how we let the breathing process go to waste, because if you pay attention to it, you can get so much out of the breath. There are ways of breathing that are good for your heart; there are ways of breathing that are good for your lungs, your liver, all the … 
  6. Don’t Just Do It
     … Give it your full attention. This is not a task you do while you’re multi-tasking. This is a mono-task, because you’re going to be observing your mind and the breath at the same time. The more you can have your whole mind and whole heart right here, at the whole breath, the more you’re going to see. After all … 
  7. Concentration & Insight
     … In other words, you know it’s there, but you’re just not going to pay it any attention. It’s like something in the background. You keep the breath in the foreground and just make sure you don’t get involved in that other thought. You don’t pay attention to it, because by paying attention to it you’re feeding it. So … 
  8. Explore & Experiment
     … Name covers, among other things, acts of intention, attention, and perception. If you’re ignorant of these things as they function in your mind, it’s going to lead to suffering. But here, as we focus on the breath, we’re playing directly with them. Your intention is to stay here. Your attention: You pay attention to the breath. As for perception, you can … 
  9. You Can Make a Difference
     … what it pays attention to, what it doesn’t pay attention to, how it pays attention, what’s the skillful way to pay attention to pain? In other words, look for the cause. Particularly, look for the cause of pain that’s felt in the mind. So, what we’re doing right now is getting practice in how to minimize the effects of past … 
  10. Trustworthy Intentions
     … In other words, instead of thinking that there’s a blank slate or just a state of bare awareness or bare attention that you can bring to the present, realize that your attention is shaped by your intentions, and your intentions are shaped by your understandings. Then look for them. This is one of the reasons why we meditate. We’re given a good … 
  11. Conditions for Concentration
     … the internal factor, which is appropriate attention; and the external factor, which is admirable friendship. With the internal factor, you look into your mind and you see that there are unskillful things going on there and yet you don’t give in to them. You’re able to pull yourself out a little bit and remind yourself: “This is an unskillful habit here. And … 
  12. The Center of Your Life
     … And appropriate attention is the primary one. In the Buddha’s discussion of the factors for awakening, each factor for awakening is fed by appropriate attention. So whatever the situation, you can ask yourself, “What’s going on here? Which of the four noble truths am I dealing with right now?” If there’s stress, if you can identify the stress, then try to … 
  13. How to Talk to Yourself
    Focus your attention on the breath. Take a couple of good long, deep in-and-out breaths. And notice where you feel the sensation of breathing in the body. Focus your attention there. And then ask yourself if it’s comfortable. If long breathing feels good, keep it up. If not, you can change. Make it shorter, deeper, more shallow, heavier, lighter, faster, slower … 
  14. Taking Responsibility
     … One is the voice of another, and the other is appropriate attention. This parallels another teaching where he said that the most important external factor for awakening is friendship with admirable people; the most important internal factor again is appropriate attention. In other words, sometimes something you’ve seen or heard from another person inspires you to think in new ways, to question things … 
  15. Keeping the Buddha in Mind
     … He meant for people to pay attention, and Pali didn’t have a word for paying attention, so he had to use the word for remember.” That’s not the case. Pali has a perfectly good word for attention: manasikāra. Every time we chant one of the Buddha’s sermons where he addresses the monks, he says, “Pay attention.” The word he uses there … 
  16. Catch Yourself Lying to Yourself
     … One is simply not paying attention. The other is trying to hide something from yourself. So you’ve got to catch yourself in both kinds of activities: when not paying attention to things you should be paying attention to, and when actively lying to yourself about something, pretending that you don’t know something you do know or that you do know something that … 
  17. Mistakes
    Focus your attention on the breath and look after it: both the breath and your attention. Looking after the breath means noticing where you feel it, how it feels when it comes in, how it feels when it goes out, and checking to see if you can figure out what kind of breathing feels good, what kind of breathing is best for the body … 
  18. Mindfulness the Seamstress
     … And that requires mindfulness, because mindfulness is what stitches different moments of attention together. Otherwise, there’s just a moment of attention and it’s gone, a moment and it’s gone. If they’re not connected, there’s no understanding. You can’t remember what you did. You can’t follow the effects of what you’ve done and make the connections unless … 
  19. Training for Happiness
     … It’s simply a matter of where you focus your attention, and how consistent your attention is, how consistent your focus is. Once you see the moments you’re making the choices, then you have a better chance of making wise choices. That’s why the mind, when it’s trained, brings happiness—because only when it’s trained can you catch it in … 
  20. A Light in the Darkness
     … We’re not attentive enough. We don’t focus our attention in the right places. We don’t ask the right questions. As a result, we don’t see, even though everything’s happening right here before our eyes. So you have to be very, very careful, very, very still, and then ask the right questions. The Buddha gives instructions on this: the questions … 
  21. Informing the Whole Committee
     … You want to bring your full attention to the breath. You want to bring your full attention to this issue of getting the mind gathered in a comfortable place. And the more the different factions, the more the different committee members are there, then when the message comes and they’re all in a mood to listen, that’s when it has a very … 
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