Search results for: "Attention"

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  2. Seeing Distinctions
     … For example, there’s the act of attention, your sense of what’s important to pay attention to and what’s not. There are perceptions, the labels you put on things. And there are feelings: pleasure, pain, neither pleasure nor pain. All of these shape our intentions and all these are things you need to know. The more distinctly you can see them, the … 
  3. Universal Truths
    Universal Truths June 13, 2007 When you meditate during the Dhamma talk, 99% of your attention should be with your breath. Let the talk be in the background — because the Dhamma is found inside the mind. The Dhamma in words is just pointers. As you listen to the talk, remind yourself that the words are pointing inside your mind. If you’re inside your … 
  4. The Path Is and Isn’t the Goal
     … You’ve got to give the path your undivided attention because it’s in the developing of the path that the realization of the end of suffering is going to be found. That’s one of the paradoxes of the practice. As you’re walking the path, you have to give it all the attention that it deserves, which is why you want to … 
  5. Mindful of Karma
     … You’ve got the choice as to where you’re going to focus your attention and what you’re going to do with those potentials. Because that’s what they are: They’re potentials coming in from the past. The Buddha talks about how important it is not to let the mind get overcome by pain, overcome by pleasure. He says this is how … 
  6. Mindfulness & Effort
     … If you pay careful attention, you get even more nourishment out of it. Otherwise, the breath simply functions to keep you going and that’s about it. But if you give it space to take up all of your attention and all of the body, you find that it’s more nourishing. It gives you a good place to stay, a good place to … 
  7. For When the World Can’t Help You
     … Pay attention to this, pay attention to that, you wouldn’t believe what so-and-so did, what so-and-so said. That kind of stuff won’t give you any help. You’ll need your ability to keep the mind focused, along with strong sense that there is an awareness that’s not dependent on the body, and you want to find it … 
  8. Practice All Day
     … But your attention has to be on what your mind is doing right now. When you’re sitting and meditating, you can give one hundred percent of your attention here. Sounds outside: You don’t have to notice them. Sights: You can’t see them because your eyes are closed. Smells, tastes, the little bit of tactile sensation: Again, you don’t have to … 
  9. Precept Meditation
     … You have to pay attention to animals you may have otherwise overlooked: ants and termites, for instance. You’ve got to take their survival into account. This forces you to be very scrupulous in your behavior, very careful in what you will and will not do. This habit, too, is very helpful in the course of meditation, helping you to pay attention to little … 
  10. A Rare Gift
    When you’re meditating at the same time there’s a Dhamma talk, 99.5% of your attention should be with the breath and only half a percent with the Dhamma talk itself. The sound is here to act as a fence. If you find yourself losing touch with the breath, the sound of the talk is here to remind you to come back … 
  11. Big Things in Little Things
     … Their attention is off someplace else, not at the process itself, not where it’s being done. So the ideal way of reflecting on the world and surveying the world is doing it in such a way as to bring your attention back right here, realizing that if the problem is going to be solved, it’s going to be solved right here. As … 
  12. Right & Wrong Decisions
     … We’ll see it’s largely because we’re not paying attention to what we’re doing and we’re not paying attention to the results of what we’re doing. This is another good lesson you learn from paying attention to the breath, because you can see immediately that the way you focus on the breath will have an immediate effect on how … 
  13. Strength of Conviction: 1
     … This requires the next factor, which is appropriate attention. You ask yourself: “How does this teaching apply to me, to my suffering, to my unskillful actions? Where do I measure up? Where do I not measure up? If I don’t measure up, what can I do to make improvements?” Because appropriate attention means looking at things in terms of what’s skillful and … 
  14. More than Ordinary Heedfulness
     … This is why the Buddha said there’s another quality that takes heedfulness and makes it a quality for awakening, and that’s appropriate attention: seeing things in terms of the four noble truths and then applying the duties appropriate to the truths to what you’re actually doing. The four noble truths raise our sights as to what is possible for human beings … 
  15. Balanced Breathing
     … So focus your attention right here. Try to be very careful about how you focus your attention. Focus on the breath coming in and going out. And don’t let the breath get mechanical. Try to be sensitive to the way you breathe. There’s a lot of information about your subconscious mind in the way you breathe. We were talking this afternoon about … 
  16. Goodwill Plus
     … There are perceptions and feelings, and here the Buddha adds attention and intention: What are you going to pay attention to as you deal with other people? You pay attention to the fact that they want happiness. They may have some pretty confused ideas about what happiness is and how it’s found, so when you wish them goodwill, it’s not necessarily that … 
  17. The Noble Eightfold Path to the Deathless
     … And the nature of a magic trick is that the magician tries to divert your attention from what he’s actually doing. He gets you to focus on something far away. You think you’re paying careful attention to where he’s paying careful attention, but actually he’s doing something else. That’s the nature of consciousness overcome by ignorance. So we want … 
  18. Friends with the Breath, Friends with the Buddha
    Ajaan Fuang has a nice passage where he talks about the breath as being like a nursemaid who’s been looking after you for all your life, but you haven’t paid that much attention to her to see what kind of person she is, why she’s been so kind to you. Whether you pay attention or not, she keeps breathing in, breathing … 
  19. Sitting & Walking
     … One, the body is moving and two, you’re having to pay attention to the environment around you. As you’re sitting here, the body is still and so with each breath you’re dealing with the same territory, getting the breath energy to flow around or through the areas that are a little bit constricted because you’re sitting. So it’s the … 
  20. Factors for Stream Entry
     … This, too, is an aspect of appropriate attention: figuring out how you’re going to develop right concentration, right view, all the right factors of the path; how to recognize them when they’re there, how to develop them, and when they’re not there, how to give rise to them. Appropriate attention isn’t just about dividing things into four noble truths; it … 
  21. Delight in Persistence
     … You’re learning the skill from using your concentration, both to make the mind quiet enough so that you can detect things you didn’t detect before, and also to focus attention on the steps in the process of getting the mind to settle down. You’re focusing your attention on the breath. You’re maintaining an intention to stay with the breath. You … 
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