Search results for: "Focusing"
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- Focused on Your Duties… This is why, when the Buddha teaches about being in the present moment, focusing our attention on the present moment, it’s always in the context of mindfulness of death, with the realization that there are duties that need to be done before you die, and you don’t know how much time you have to do them. You could die at any time …
- Clinging… You can focus on something and disperse the tension wherever you’re focused. It may be because of this reason that some people object to the idea of calling samadhi “concentration,” because they think concentration has to be tense. It doesn’t. It’s centered. The trick is to focus on something and disperse the energy there at the same time. Wherever you notice …
- In Times of Danger and Fear… In other words, you become more sensitive to what you’re doing—less focused on the notes, more focused on playing them well. And in being focused on playing them well, you begin to notice a lot about the mind as it engages with the music. Well, it’s the same with the meditation. You learn more about your mind as you get better …
- Be Observant… Focus on the sensation of breathing anywhere in the body that feels convenient, that feels natural for you to stay focused on. Some people find it natural to stay focused on the nose, others on the chest or at the abdomen. Focus anywhere where there’s a sensation that tells you now you’re breathing in, now you’re breathing out. And allow that …
- Fourth Truth, First Duty… So stay focused on the breath. You don’t even have to think about right mindfulness or right concentration. Just be focused on the breath, making it comfortable, allowing that sense of comfort to spread throughout the body, then maintaining that as best you can. Your mindfulness and concentration will develop without your having to think about them. Then everything else you need to …
- Eight Principles… Here, in the heat, you’re open to the suffering of being hot, if you take possession of the body, if that’s what you’re focusing on. But remember: You have the choice to focus or not. One of the ways to content yourself is to focus on things that are easy right now, things that are convenient. So you can focus on …
- Joyous Endurance… No one else is harmed by the fact that you’re here focusing on your breath. You’re not out there trying to straighten out the world in line with your ideas. That’s one of the big ways that we get pulled off the path: a sense of righteous anger that then develops into a sense that this person should be punished, that …
- Harmless & Clearheaded… If you find that simply focusing on the breath is not compelling enough or forceful enough, give yourself a meditation word. Buddho is a common one: bud- with the in-breath, dho with the out-. It means awake. Or you can use any word that helps keep you focused on the breath. If you have trouble focusing on the breath, you can start with …
- Bases for Success… But of course, for desire to be properly focused, it has to be focused on the causes. If you focus simply on the results, you can sit here and think for hours about how much you’d like to have the results, but they’re never going to come. They won’t have any foundation. So you’ve got to focus on your efforts …
- Freedom through Restraint… With the mind focused in the present moment, you see the mind a lot more clearly than you would if you just followed it as it wandered around. This is why even though the focus may be a little bit narrow in the sense that you’re not going to be thinking about any old thing that comes into your head, still you get …
- Filling in the Buddha’s Outline… In other words, it’s not focused on the right thing. You’re supposed to be focused on the causes, and as for your desires for the results at the end, you can put them aside. You know that they’re there but you don’t focus on them. You focus on what you’ve got to do. The same with the other bases …
- Skillful Effort… The desires that are focused around that are actually skillful desires—especially when you’re focused on the causes. If you spend all your time focusing your desires on what you want to gain out of the meditation, without paying any attention to the causes, it’s like driving down a road toward the mountain. If you spend all your time looking at the …
- The Fangs of Conceit… Before he focused in on analyzing the present moment, first he got his mind into a state of concentration. He started wondering about his past. And he saw that it stretched way back—lots of narratives. You think you’ve got a lot of narratives coming here today. The Buddha had eons of narratives that he could have focused on. But instead of focusing …
- Tools of Perception… By focusing on which aspect of our experience are we causing suffering, and which aspect, when we focus on it, helps alleviate the suffering? Like this sala here: You can think about all the effort went into building it, you can think of how it still leaves a lot to be desired, you can think about how it’s perfectly adequate for our needs …
- The Larger Picture… Then, from seeing the larger patterns, he focused on the present moment to see how he could undo those larger patterns as they played out in the kamma of the present moment. That was the insight that finally awakened him: focusing back on the present, after having taken that larger view. So as we go through our own practice, it’s good to try …
- The Limits of Old Kamma… Those two factors—thinking of the breath or focusing on the breath, and being inquisitive—count as directed thought and evaluation, two of the factors of jhana. Use them to see how you can stay with the breath in a way that feels comfortable, giving rise to feelings of refreshment and pleasure. And as you probe and explore, you begin to realize that there …
- Mindfulness of Death… focused on inconstancy, focused on dispassion, cessation, and then letting go. So whatever pains come up, approach them this way, not with the thought that “This is my pain” or “I am in pain,” but simply seeing that the body is one thing, the pain is something else. The body as a cause is inconstant, so the pain’s got to be inconstant, too …
- Assumptions… This is what the Buddha focused on again and again: the unnecessary stress we cause ourselves. All too often we think we have to do the things that cause stress, for one reason or another—whatever the reasons are we’ve picked up from our families, our schools, TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, the Internet. There are all kinds of crazy assumptions out there about …
- Meditate Because You Have To… You just keep focused on the path. When the goal is going to come, it’s going to come without any forewarning. But it’s going to appear right at this point where you’re paying full attention to the path, where you’re putting together all the right causes, being mindful to stay with the breath, being alert to how the breath feels …
- Three Levels of Effort… Keep focused on the path. If you stay focused on the path, the goal will come because the path leads you there. This means that you give your full attention to what you’re doing right here, right now, because everything that you need to know is happening right here, right now. And the goal, when it comes, will open up right here, right …
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