Search results for: "Focus"

  1. Page 126
  2. Ask the Right Questions
     … you pick up the questions of not-self? When do you not want to do much analysis at all? When do you want to just maintain things with a sense of focus and solidity? These are skills you have to learn. You learn them from trial and error, and from keeping in mind the fact that meditation progresses. It is a skill. It’s … 
  3. Dedicating Goodness, Spreading Goodwill
     … Whether they can take it or not, that’s up to them.” That giving attitude is what you really want to focus on. So with the dedication of merit, once you’ve done it you’re no longer responsible, you don’t have to follow up. However, when you spread goodwill, you’re actually taking on a responsibility. You’re not just sitting here … 
  4. Freedom & Security
     … You don’t get into debt, and you learn to focus your energies in areas where the Buddha says you can’t rest content until you’ve developed some good qualities in the mind. These qualities are also a form of wealth. You can think about wealth in the external sense. What do we like about it? It gives us security and it gives … 
  5. Self-starting
     … Then you take those desires and you focus them on the causes. What helps you maintain the precepts? What helps you develop concentration? What helps you sharpen your discernment? Try to give rise to those things. For example, with concentration, you can’t just order the mind to be still, but you can find something you find interesting in the present moment—something that … 
  6. Living Forward, Understanding Backward
     … You want to focus on those. The trick with all these emotions is learning how to develop them when you need them. All too often our attitude toward our emotions is that they’re a given. But, as the Buddha pointed out, you’re already shaping your emotions, which means you can change the way you shape them. This is an important skill: that … 
  7. Jhāna & Discernment
     … So learn how to use these fabrications skillfully—the way you breathe, the way you talk to yourself, the images you hold in mind, the feelings you focus on. And in talking to yourself, use whatever sense of self is helpful; drop whichever ones are not. As you engage in these fabrications, you finally develop a sense of dispassion for them. In other words … 
  8. Meditation Prep
     … To get an idea of what these attitudes are that you need to bring to the meditation, it’s good to look at what the Buddha taught his son, Rahula, prior to teaching him how to focus on the breath. There are two main sets of instructions. In the first set, the Buddha started his meditation instructions not by telling Rahula to sit and … 
  9. The Karma of Meditation
     … If the breath is tight and constricted, ask yourself, “Is there another level of breath?” You can leave this level of breathing and focus on a level of breath that’s a lot more comforting, soothing. It’s there. After all, this is the force of life. Open your mind to new possibilities of what sensations in the body are actually breath sensations. Maybe … 
  10. A Pure Happiness
     … This is why we focus on the breath: to bring ourselves as much into the present moment as possible. When you’re with the breath, you know you’re in the present moment. The more fully you are with the breath, the more fully you are in the present, and you don’t have to hold anything back. Just allow yourself to fully sense … 
  11. Neither Here nor There
     … The other approach is to have people focus right on what they’re experiencing right now. This is usually in the case of someone who’s gained right concentration. You look at what you’ve got in that right concentration: the five aggregates, each of which you’ve been clinging to, and the clinging is suffering. Think of the questionnaire that the Buddha would … 
  12. As Days & Nights Fly Past
     … So the next step is to focus on your breath, because the breath is a good anchor for keeping the mind in the present. It’s also what makes the present livable in terms of getting the mind to settle comfortably into the body in the present moment. The breath is the part of the body that’s most changeable and lies most under … 
  13. The Power to Transcend Suffering
     … Again, it’s just one of those things that’s part of life, but if you turn your attention to the breath and really focus on it, you begin to realize that there are comfortable breaths and uncomfortable breaths. And why on earth would you want to breathe an uncomfortable breath? Nobody’s forcing you. It’s just something you take for granted. But … 
  14. Guardian Meditations
     … All you have to do is look inside a little bit and you see all kinds of stuff that can kill the lust if you really allow yourself to look at the body as a whole, and not just at the few parts you tend to focus on as being attractive. The fourth guardian meditation is recollection of death. For most people this is … 
  15. The Buddha’s Wisdom
     … The Buddha gives you new things to keep in mind, not just the precepts, but now you’re going to focus on, say, just the breath in and of itself, or feelings or mind states just in and of themselves. But it’s good to start with the breath because everything else revolves around that. You’re ardent, alert, and mindful. Ardent in trying … 
  16. Slowing Down to Look
     … yourself—but before he does that, he’s going to give you some training so that you can really can rely on yourself. He says, “This is how you do it. Focus the mind in the four establishings of mindfulness”—that formula we went through this morning: staying focused on the body in and of itself—ardent, alert and mindful—putting aside greed and … 
  17. Tranquility & Insight
    Focus on your breath. Breathe as deeply as you can. And notice where you feel the breathing process in the body. Let that be your anchor. If deep breathing feels good, keep it up; if not, you can change. You can try shallower breathing, faster, slower, shorter, longer. Ajaan Lee recommends sometimes trying in short, out long, or in long, out short: whatever way … 
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