Search results for: "Attention"

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  2. Commit & Reflect
     … They thrive in a mind where you’re not paying much attention. When you turn your spotlight of your awareness on them, they shrivel up. But there are other causes of suffering, other unskillful habits of the mind, that when you stare at them, they stare right back. They’re not the least bit intimidated. In that case, the Buddha said you have to … 
  3. The Power of Present Karma
     … In a way, he asked the obvious question—if action is what makes a difference, then focus on action; if the way you pay attention makes a difference, focus on the way you pay attention. Try to get down to the nuts and bolts of how the mind puts experience together, and you find that you can put something really good together with those … 
  4. The Graduated Discourse
     … The other two qualities are singleness of mind and appropriate attention. Singleness of mind starts out, of course, by being focused totally on the talk. How do you move from that kind of singleness of mind, say, to the singleness of right concentration? Part of the answer has to do with appropriate attention. Appropriate attention usually means seeing things in terms of the four … 
  5. What You Bring to the Moment
     … The act of attention comes before contact. We’re predisposed to look at certain things and to ignore others. So of course our perceptions are going to be skewed. One of the things I noticed when I was staying with Ajaan Fuang was a certain skepticism in him. He’d watch people for a long time before he trusted them. Sometimes he actually seemed … 
  6. Just One Person
     … So focus your attention here. Bring the heart and mind to the breath and watch it very carefully. If there’s anything disturbing the mind, just let it go. As the Buddha said, try to be committed to relinquishment because it’s so easy to follow a thought as it “sprouts,” you might say. Little thoughts come sprouting up here and there. You want … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. The Buddha’s Filters
     … The Buddha has a long discussion of appropriate attention in Majjhima 2. He talks about the kind of questions that are not worthy of attention. A lot of those questions already slosh around in our minds. They’re the gunk in our current filtration system: “Who am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going?” As the Buddha said, “who you are … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. It’s Up to You
     … But they have to be augmented by what the Buddha said was the most important internal factor for awakening—and that’s appropriate attention: asking the right questions. Questions such as: Where does suffering comes from? It comes from within. Where does the cure come from? Well, it comes from within as well. So as we go through life, we have to keep looking … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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