Search results for: "Focusing"

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  2. What Are You Doing Right Now?
     … For the time being, your consciousness is focused on the breath. You want to be focused on something positive, but the fact that you’ve got that seed, that nucleus, that spot where you’re focused: That’s important, because this is how your mind moves around from thought world to thought world. The same process happens when you die. As you leave this … 
  3. Sweat the Small Stuff
     … This is why focusing on the small things is not a distraction. I once encountered a person who had been trained in a Zen center who complained about our obsession with minutiae, as he called it. He saw it as a distraction from the big wide open emptiness, the big wide open liberation that’s waiting when you stop focusing on little things. But … 
  4. Patience & Urgency
     … being very clear, very focused, very observant of what you’re capable of handling right now. The path isn’t a matter of simply hoping for the goal, and pushing, pushing, pushing in the direction where you think it lies. It’s a matter of focusing on what you have to do right now—and in being very focused on each step as you … 
  5. Whatever It Takes
     … So it’s simply a matter of learning how to stay focused on one thing in the midst of all the other stuff that’s going on around you. That’s the art of concentration. In the Pali, it says, “secluded from sensuality,” but this doesn’t mean being so secluded from sense impressions that you don’t hear them, or that you don … 
  6. Ardency
    Notice where you feel the breath, and stay focused on those sensations, the sensations that tell you now the breath is coming in, now the breath is going out. Stick with them. Keep watching them. The Pali term for this anupassana, which literally means “following and looking.” In other words, you keep track of the breath to see what’s going to happen. The … 
  7. Why It’s Good to Know Why
     … And the nature of complex systems is that they’re focused on some things, but then, in the areas where they’re not focused, they tend to be pretty random. When we get on the path, we’re focusing ourselves in a particular direction. We’re trying to get all those random threads of the mind to work in that direction. We can make … 
  8. Talking to Yourself
     … So you realize that when you’re sitting here having problems getting your mind focused on the breath, you’re not the only one. Your situation isn’t hopeless. That’s one step, getting a larger perspective, then putting yourself within the larger perspective. The second step is to give yourself something to talk about in the present moment. As long as the mind … 
  9. Mindfulness Gets Intimate
     … You’re focusing on the breath. But you’re not totally without reference to the terms of becoming, because if you look at the way the Buddha describes how you talk to yourself while you’re focused on the breath, on feelings around the breath, on the mind states you can develop around the breath, or on the mental qualities that either get in … 
  10. Observing the Mind at the Breath
     … And the way to gauge how the mind is doing is by how well it’s staying focused with the breath. When the breath grows still and your awareness fills the body, that’s when you see the mind directly. But even then, you’ll be focusing it on other subtler topics—space, consciousness. The mind will always need an anchor like that for … 
  11. A Heart & Mind of Goodwill
     … You want it to be clear enough so you can keep your attention focused on it. Sometimes heavy breathing feels good, it’s energizing. Other times you want something lighter, longer, shorter, faster, slower, deeper, more shallow. Try to find what feels good right now and then keep your attention focused continuously. One of the ways of making the breath more comfortable is to … 
  12. Imperturbable
     … This is where you have to clean things out in the body a bit, because when you start focusing in on the body, the power of your focus tends to push the blood around, interrupting the flow of energy and getting very restrictive. It can be very uncomfortable. So the natural reaction is to run away, to leave the focus. You find yourself bouncing … 
  13. The Karma Snake
     … Does it lead you to do skillful things? And the teaching on karma is very much one that focuses on the power of your actions right now. And the same with rebirth: That allows for your actions to have lots of ramifications and reverberations throughout time, so you want to be extremely careful about what you’re doing. At the same time, when you … 
  14. Walking Meditation: Stillness in Motion
     … Instead of focusing on the in-and-out breath, try focusing on the subtle breath energies that flow through the blood vessels, flow through the nerves. They’re a very subtle form of the in-and-out breath. Then there’s a more subtle energy that goes very fast. As soon as you start thinking of breathing in, it’s already gone around the … 
  15. Three Stages in the Practice
     … Like focusing on the breath: That’s the beginning of concentration. Focusing on the body in and of itself: That’s the beginning of mindfulness, the beginning of concentration. If you find that you’ve been away from the breath, just come back and re-establish your mindfulness. That’s the beginning, the establishing, the giving-rise-to. Then from the next second on … 
  16. Strategies for Happiness
     … As we’re meditating here, what are we focusing on? We’re focusing on the body, focusing on the breath. We’re learning to maximize the feelings of pleasure that come from the breath. We’re learning ways of perceiving the breath energy in the body that create stronger and stronger states of concentration. We’re learning to direct our thoughts and evaluate the … 
  17. Right Resolve
     … At this point, you want to maintain a sense of being focused primarily on one spot in the body, but aware of the whole body. It’s like looking at a painting. Your eyes may focus on one spot in the painting, but you can see the whole painting, even though you’re focused on one spot. And here you have it: right resolve … 
  18. The Adventure in the Present
     … But you notice that we train the mind by focusing on the breath. It’s because you can’t, in the beginning of the practice, look directly at your mind. It’s like a light beam. If the light beam doesn’t reflect off anything, you wouldn’t know that it’s there. So we focus our attention on the breath as our reflector … 
  19. A Connoisseur of the Breath
     … You try to remain focused on the body in and of itself, ardent, alert and mindful, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world: That’s the process we’re working on here as we’re focused on the breath. It’s the first of the establishings. To remain focused is termed *anupassana *in Pali. You choose something that you’re going … 
  20. A Safe Harbor
     … Then right mindfulness, in the establishing of mindfulness, becomes the theme for your concentration as you’re focused on the breath, focused on the body in and of itself, developing these qualities of ardency, alertness, mindfulness: That becomes a theme of your concentration. The Pali word for “theme” here is nimitta. Sometimes people talk about the nimitta of concentration as being a light or … 
  21. Choices in the Present
     … The idea that you simply sit with whatever comes up obscures the fact that lots of different things could be coming up right now, and that you do have the choice as to what’s worth focusing on, what’s not worth focusing on. Simply the act of focusing on a particular topic encourages it. But then you have to ask yourself: This particular … 
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