Search results for: "Focus"

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  2. The Positive Side of Heedfulness
     … You can focus on developing powers of patience and endurance, or you can focus on your discernment—because work does require discernment. We had a question today about whether creativity was in line with the Dhamma as you work. Well, it’s an exercise of your discernment. Again, all too often, we think of discernment as simply observing things as they’re happening. But … 
  3. Mindfulness of Death & the Deathless
     … This is one of the reasons why the Buddha says if someone is on their deathbed, you try to get them to let go of human sensuality, to see the drawbacks of human sensuality, and at the very least focus on deva sensuality—something better. Of course, even that has its drawbacks. Ideally, get them so they can see that any kind of construction … 
  4. Acceptance Without Suffering
     … The one problem is that sometimes, when you focus on the comfort, you forget about the breath, and the mind just loses focus. You’re here, you’re at your ease, but you don’t really know where you are. That’s not what you want. You want to be alert. This is why the Buddha tells you to be aware of the whole … 
  5. Focal Points
    When you focus on the breath, it’s important that the breath feel very refreshing: that it feels really good to breathe in and then breathe in again, breathe in again, that there’s a part of the body that feels really gratified, really nourished by the breath. Part of this involves choosing your spot to focus on, what Ajaan Lee calls the resting … 
  6. Skillful Desire
     … So as you’re meditating, even though you may want to gain nibbana, gain jhāna—that’s why you’re here, you don’t deny that—you don’t focus on those things. Jhāna is not the object of jhāna. The object of jhāna is your breath. So focus all of your desire on the breath, to get to know the breath. Learn to … 
  7. Desire Is Part of the Path
     … Give it something simple to focus on, something that gives you a sense of well-being. As for any thoughts that would go in any other direction, you subdue them, as the Buddha said. You put them aside because you’ve got something better to focus on. In the description of right mindfulness, which is basically the Buddha’s prescription for how you do … 
  8. A Foundation for Restraint
     … If you want to focus on the breath, think of a picture of how the breath flows. Remind yourself that it can flow in a lot of ways that you might not expect. This gives you something to be interested in the present moment—to be interested in the body. Or you can focus on the different parts of the body: hair of the … 
  9. The Karma of Ideas
     … Or you can focus on a particularly difficult part of the body where you hold tension, where there seems to be a blockage. Focus directly on that and see what happens. Think of it opening up, and the breath can come in from any direction—front, back, top down, coming up from below—and see if that helps open up the blockage. Sometimes the … 
  10. Potentials Past & Present
     … Sometimes what feels good for the body is a little bit too subtle and you begin to lose your focus. So breathe in a way that’s good both for the body and for the mind. This is a potential that we very rarely make full use of. The breath comes in, goes out, keeps us alive, and for most people that’s it … 
  11. Developing Discernment
    When you focus on the breath, it’s important that you want to stay here. You’ll find that the committee of the mind has some members who are happy to be here, and other members who are not. This is why the Buddha says there are two duties that you *do *as you get the mind to settle down with right mindfulness and … 
  12. Choosing Freedom
     … We focus on the important issue in life, which is that we’re causing unnecessary suffering to ourselves. Even around pleasures, we can create suffering. You want to learn the skills that, no matter what happens—good, bad, indifferent—you don’t have to suffer from it. You know where to focus your attention. You know what to do. If you want to put … 
  13. What You’re Responsible For
     … So don’t focus there. Wrap yourself up warmly and tell yourself that that’s been taken care of. For the rest of the hour, no comments on how cold it is or how wet it is outside. Just focus on the mind and the breath right here, right now. Is the mind staying with the breath? If not, is the problem with the … 
  14. An Island above the Flood
     … So you undercut sensuality by making sure that your focus stays where it should be, as when you’re here with the breath, the breath in and of itself. You focus on this aspect of the body; you’re not concerned with how your body looks to yourself or to other people. You’re concerned with how it feels from within, what the Buddha … 
  15. A Rare Gift
     … Are you ready to go? What unfinished business do you have? Well, focus on doing what needs to be done. Focus on what has first priority so that the night won’t be wasted, so that if death does happen to come in the night, you won’t be all tied up with regrets. Sometimes what has to be done is related to our … 
  16. Painful Feelings, Hurtful Words
     … You learn how to take your strength there, because the trick to endurance is that you don’t focus on the things that are hard to endure. You focus on what is still there that you can depend on. If you can’t depend on things outside, at the very least learn how to depend your own mind. Move into whatever part of the … 
  17. Physical Pains & Painful Words
     … You don’t focus on the knee. You try to focus on the parts of the body that can be made comfortable. Ajaan Lee’s image is of eating a mango. If there’s a rotten spot in the mango, you don’t eat the rotten spot. You cut that out and you eat just the rest. Let the worms have the rotten spot … 
  18. Wisdom for Dummies
     … There may be pain in the body, there may be undesirable thoughts coming up in the mind, but as you focus more carefully in the present moment, you begin to realize that you choose where to focus and how you want to shape the situation. You could let yourself suffer, fall victim to these things, or you could make a change. This point is … 
  19. Seclusion
     … So this requires focus—which is why we come to a place like this, to get cut off from things outside, to give the mind some space so that it can see what its priorities are. This is a basic principle that goes way back. Even in the time of the Buddha, when they didn’t have mass communications, it was still necessary for … 
  20. Focus on What You’re Doing
    You probably notice that as soon as you focus on the breath, the chattering classes in your mind start in, commenting on the breath, commenting on how well things are going, or commenting on whether you should continue meditating. Some of the comments are useful; a lot of them are not. An important part of the meditation is learning how to sort these things … 
  21. Selfing & Not-selfing
     … His focus is on actions, even when he talks about insight. There’s a word, yatha-bhuta-ñana-dassana, which is sometimes translated as, “knowing and seeing things as they really are,” but it really means, “knowing and seeing things they’ve come to be, as they function, as they act.” For instance, the main teaching is dependent co-arising, and it’s all … 
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