Search results for: "Focus"

  1. Page 121
  2. To Discern Suffering
     … But we sit here with our eyes closed so that we can focus on what the mind is doing, how the mind is adding a lot of unnecessary burden on itself. The Buddha gives a long list of different ways in which we suffer. We suffer around aging; we suffer around illness; we suffer around death. Not getting what we want; getting what we … 
  3. Can All Beings Be Happy?
     … That’s when you have to develop equanimity so that you can focus on other areas where you can be of benefit. So again, it all comes back to your motivation. You keep reminding yourself again and again, “May all beings be happy.” And then you ask yourself, “Are my actions in line with that wish?” In that way, it becomes a test, a … 
  4. A Handful of Leaves
     … It seems to be a very narrow, almost selfish kind of concern for people to try to put an end to their suffering, and to focus on that as the main issue in the practice. But the Buddha was pointing to something that each of us is responsible for. We can’t be responsible for other people’s actions, and we can’t go … 
  5. Restraint
     … All I care about is right now.” The popular misconception that the Buddha teaches you, “Well just focus on right now, and don’t think about the future, don’t think about the past,” gives fuel to that idea. But the Buddha never taught that. He basically taught the distinction between what’s skillful and what’s unskillful. Our basic motivation for doing what … 
  6. Therapy for the Mind
     … This is where you actually have to focus on doing genuine therapy, and that requires some analysis. After all, the Buddha’s talking about cause and effect. If you sit and watch, you can see things arising and passing away. But if you sit there passively, that’s all you know: arising, passing away. That knowledge of arising and passing away doesn’t count … 
  7. Observant & Ingenious
     … Ajaan Fuang wanted me to focus more on my meditation, so I looked after the people who were coming, sunning their pillows and blankets, making sure the bathrooms had water. I would pitch in with the construction, though, whenever I was needed. We learned a lot of lessons. One was in the blasting for the foundation of the chedi. Ajaan Fuang had chosen a … 
  8. Rites of Passage
     … It’s hard to focus on your own mind when you’re running up against the contents of other people’s minds all the time. You’ve got to get away. You’ve got to get out — which is what we’re doing as we come here: finding a place of seclusion. We’re not totally cut off from other people here, but at … 
  9. Your Highest Aspiration
     … Oops, there it goes.” When it comes, you try to see how you can keep it in focus, how to stay as still as possible without squeezing the pleasure out of that stillness, without squeezing the fullness out of that stillness. This requires time and it takes effort, but it’s a skill that we can master, that we can develop. Once we have … 
  10. The Need for Agency
     … Be clearer about what you’re doing and the results you’re getting.” He gives you some advice as to where to focus your actions, what kinds of actions to master. But then he says that a lot of it is up to you. This is why he asks for students who are honest and observant. It’s also why he said that the … 
  11. Mindfulness as Refuge
     … That means you focus on an aspect of the body like the breath and you stay there. You hold on. You don’t let any thoughts of the world come in right now. If they do come in, you don’t pay them any attention. Or if you pay them attention, you’ve got to let them go. You put them aside again and … 
  12. Maybe the Buddha Knew Something
     … They just make you focus on the question of, “In what does your humor lie?” There’s a lot of really good humor in the world that’s based on telling things as they really are. So there’s no need to make things up just for a laugh. So, on the one hand, you’re strict in observing your precepts. That’s pleasing … 
  13. Trust in Heedfulness
     … In other words, when you see that the way you’re focused on your object is causing stress, learn to focus in a way that’s less stressful, that causes less disturbance to the mind. You can pursue this principle all the way through the various levels of concentration, even to the objectless concentration of awareness, where you’ve let go of the oneness … 
  14. Goodwill & Heedfulness
     … In fact, I was reading recently a Dhamma teacher saying that most people don’t have enough time when they’re on weeklong metta retreats to think about anybody else, so they should focus all of their goodwill on themselves as a healing process. If you have trouble wishing for your own true happiness, then you may want to spend extra time here. But … 
  15. Wisdom for Dummies Revisited
     … In other words, you focus on the practical details of making right effort, even if they seem mundane—that’s what the smelter stands for—and the gold will appear in your mind. There’s a lot in the meditation that you can’t anticipate. You can’t plan too far ahead. But you know: These are the steps. We’re lucky that we … 
  16. Desires Rightly Directed
     … You’ve got the form of the body as you focus on the breath, the feelings of pleasure you create as you play with the breath, the perceptions you hold in mind as to where the breath flows in the body, where it can flow in the body, and where you want it to flow in the body. As for fabrications, they include the … 
  17. Anxiety
     … Either that, or you lose your focus and get into what’s called delusion concentration. So you’ve got to do something with that comfort. The act of evaluation tries to figure out what that is. Mindfulness helps. You’ve heard the directions about spreading the comfort around. Think of the breath energies going down the spine, out the legs, down the arms, out … 
  18. Limitations
     … You can choose what you’re going to focus on doing in training your mind. Although you may run into old habits that come from who-knows-where, and although you’re dealing inside with a whole committee of people who have lots of different opinions about where true happiness can be found, still there’s a way out. So, on the one hand … 
  19. Not What You Are, What You Do
     … You can focus purely on what you’re doing, what you can do to train yourself to be more sensitive and more effective in bringing about an end to suffering, and what you can do to master activities that lead more and more to true happiness. After all, the issue is not what you are, it’s what you do. And if what you … 
  20. Mindfulness of Death
     … You have to ask yourself, “Well, what needs to be done?” Look at the breath as bodily fabrication; the way you talk to yourself as verbal fabrication; and the perceptions and feelings you focus on as mental fabrication. What needs to be worked on in those three things? What insight can you gain into the process of fabrication as you work with them? That … 
  21. Asalha Puja
     … Usually, the first focus is developing the path, like we’re doing right now. We’re trying to develop right concentration, taking themes of right mindfulness in terms of the body, feelings, or mind states, focusing on these in and of themselves, not worried about the world outside—just focusing on what it’s like to have a body, what it’s like to … 
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