Search results for: "Focusing"
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- Ekaggata… One is to broaden your sense of awareness, so that even when the breath gets very subtle, you’ve got a sense of the whole body to stay focused on. This is your frame of reference. You want to keep it large. It has a tendency to shrink, so you have to keep reminding yourself: “whole body” as you breathe in, “whole body” as …
- Success Through Maturity… You want to make your desire focused, and focused properly on the steps that act as the causes. As for effort, realize that there are many kinds of right effort. There’s the effort to prevent unskillful qualities from happening, the effort to get rid of them when they’re there, the effort to give rise to skillful qualities, and the effort to maintain …
- A Basis in Well-being… So if focusing on the breath doesn’t get you started in that direction—if you find yourself focusing on the breath or on the body in and of itself and after a while you get what the Buddha calls a fever, which could be a mental state of discomfort, distress, dis-ease—switch your mind to an inspiring topic, something related to the …
- Beyond Duality… When you’re practicing concentration, the immediate issue of skillful and unskillful deals with what ways of focusing the mind, and what objects of focusing the mind on, are conducive to getting the mind to settle down and which ones are not. You have to be very clear about this. Otherwise, you may focus on things that aren’t helpful, or in ways that …
- Leaving Distractions Alone… Meditation is a matter of focusing in and just learning to stay focused despite all the distractions around you. Or take the music school I visited to Seoul one time. A friend of mine had been studying there with a living national treasure, so she invited me to go visit the treasure. The music school was not divided off into nice little rooms like …
- The Fires of Sensuality… People often ask, why is Buddha focused so much on the negative side of these things? It’s because we’re so addicted to what we see as their positive side. We need to be reminded that there’s a lot of negativity going on here, so that the part of the mind that’s going to say Yes, there are these drawbacks, can …
- Sending Happiness… Staying focused on the tightrope is like staying focused, say, on the breath or whatever meditation is necessary right now. The thought that you could fall is there only when you start wandering away. In other words, that’s when you remind yourself, “Death could come at any time. Why are you wandering away?” That gets you back to work. So try to be …
- Right Next to Ignorance… There’s that other analysis which is that ignorance is kept going by the hindrances, which means that if you understand the processes by which the mind gets distracted, the steps by which it changes from being focused on the breath to being focused on, say, a desire for a certain food, or a desire to see justice done here or there, to see …
- Virtue, Concentration, Discernment… What you find that as you make it more subtle is that you’re focusing more and more attention on this commentator inside. What are its values? And how harmless is the commentator? The commentator will learn how to focus on other parts of the mind—as you’re going through the day, as you’re sitting in meditating—but also, it has to …
- Thoughts with Fangs… He wasn’t focused on making himself a better person; the point was to learn how to respond to situations in a more skillful way. That’s something you can evaluate, something you can learn from. If you make a mistake, you learn from the mistake and learn how not to repeat that mistake. If you do something well, remember that, take joy in …
- Three More Recollections… Whereas you remember, the Dhamma keeps you focused on this question: What, when you do it, will lead to long-term welfare and happiness? What when you do it, will lead to long-term harm and suffering? The Dhamma keeps you focused on what you’re doing right now, and the importance of what you’re doing right now. So having that kind of …
- Get Out of Yourself… He then proceeds to write a novel of hundreds of pages about some very, very unhappy families, focused on the particulars of why they were unhappy. The implication seems to be that the things people have in common when they’re happy or unhappy are of no interest. What’s of interest is the particulars of our own suffering, or other people’s suffering …
- Purity… So remember to stay focused right here, focused on what you’re doing, no matter what else the world does. Because the world has to go its way in line with its karma, in line with the karma of each individual being. Your best way to influence the world is by working on what you’re doing right now, to make it as pure …
- Fully Absorbed… Everything should be focused in here right now. So if you think of somebody—somebody’s face appears in your mental eye—wish them goodwill. Remind yourself, if you really have goodwill for that person, you really have goodwill for yourself, you come back here to the breath. Because giving the breath your total attention is the path to finding a happiness that causes …
- Quiet in Every Way… And there’s a way of focusing in on that stillness so that it seems to spread throughout the whole body, radiating out from those points. Now, the only way you can notice these very subtle breath sensations is to make the mind as quiet as possible. Just watch, like a hunter. The hunter has to be very still so as not to scare …
- Lessons in Happiness… The rest of the day was spent focused on the body, focused on the breath. It was a seamless practice. So when you find yourself wanting to run away from the body or away from your feelings, remember that you can’t escape from them until you’ve thoroughly developed them, until you’ve mastered them and have learned the lessons of happiness they …
- Simplify… So even though it may seem simple-minded, we’re sitting here focusing on what? The breath coming in and out. It may not seem all that profound or intellectually stimulating, but it’s one of the essentials. Not only the breath in and of itself, but the habits we develop as we keep the mind focused on the breath: mindfulness, alertness, persistence, clarity …
- Meticulous… That’s the important news of the day because it’s an area where you have some control, and yet all too often we relinquish control because we’re focusing on other things. So it’s really important that we focus in on here because this is really where you can make a difference. When the mind chooses to focus on the breath or …
- Restlessness & Anxiety… Ideally, he’d have you get past that, but still, if the person happened to die in the course of that contemplation, the fact that the person was focused on deva sensuality is better than being focused on worry. So when you’re meditating and find yourself overcome by restlessness and anxiety, you’ve really got to do something about them, because they’re …
- Keeping Your Head… As the Buddha said, the sign of a wise person is realizing the duties that fall to you and focusing on those duties, and not taking on duties that don’t really fall to you. And one of your main duties is to get your mind in order. It’s telling to note that when the Buddha talks about being in the present moment …
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