Search results for: "Attention"
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- Relate Everything to the Breath… Don’t give them your full attention. The breath gets the full attention. This is how you become skilled in breath meditation: going on the assumption that whatever comes up, you want to relate it to the way you breathe, the way you experience the breath energy in the body, the way you conceive the breath energy in the body. Then use that knowledge …
- Metacognition… He’s stepping back—and he’s not just engaging in bare awareness or bare attention. He’s applying appropriate attention. Observing cause and effect, he could see which thoughts deserved being held in check and which ones should be allowed to have some free rein, judging them by whether they led to affliction or not. That means you don’t hang on to …
- A Small, Steady Flame… Then you stay with it, and the consistency of your attention — as you keep that spot relaxed, without pushing it or pulling it or putting any pressure on it — is what allows it to develop a sense of fullness. The longer you stick with it, the more the fullness gains strength. Once it’s more solidly established, you can start allowing it to spread …
- Friendship… In other words, simply by noticing how the breath feels, paying attention to it, you begin to realize you’ve got a lot of potential here. Sometimes if you have a headache or stomachache, or if you feel tension around your shoulders, you can breathe in a way that’ll make the tension go way. What this means it that this is free medicine …
- Friends with The Breath… So pay attention to what you’re doing right now as you stay with the breath, paying attention also to the perceptions that come up in your mind, the images that you hold of the breath, the images that you hold of any pains that may be distracting you. Learn the extent to which you can make changes right here, right now, in the …
- Introduction: Meditation as a Skill… Your attention follows a thought, and thoughts seem to direct your attention someplace else. They’re like pointers, little arrows here in the present moment that point in different directions. But the thoughts themselves occur in the present moment. If they’re thoughts about the past, thoughts about the future, think of them as little arrows here in the present, and you stay right …
- The Wisdom of Ardency… If you’re really convinced of the importance of what you’re doing, you’re going to give it your full attention. It’s only when you give it your full attention that you begin to notice things that are not in the texts or in the teachings of the ajaans. When the Buddha is telling you, “Look here,” he’s not telling you …
- Perceptions for Training the Mind… You’re trying to settle down in the midst of outside noise and inside noise, realizing that the act of attention is what feeds your distracting thoughts. So if you don’t pay them any attention, after a while they go away. They may do and say some crazy things first to grab your attention. But again, you’re just firm in your determination …
- Victory… That’s where we focus our attention, that awareness from within. And for most of us, this is an area we’re not all that familiar with. We don’t have much of a vocabulary for this dimension in English. The Buddha talks about four elements, and to us it sounds like a kind of primitive chemistry. Actually, it’s a description of how …
- Admirable Friendship… What’s interesting is that in both of these internal and external factors — both in appropriate attention and in admirable friendship — one of the crucial factors is questioning. In other words, in appropriate attention you learn how to ask yourself questions about your own actions. In admirable friendship you ask the other people you admire about the qualities they embody. If you find someone …
- Shelter… You really want to pay a lot of attention to what you’re doing. You don’t want to just go through the motions or multitask while you’re sitting here. You’ve got one task: to stay with the breath, stay with the breath sensations in the body. And again, just as that quality of consistency is going to make all the difference …
- The Desire for Things to Be Different… As for “name,” the events of the mind, the texts talk about perceptions and feelings, again, acts of attention, acts of intention, and contact among these things. Just learn how to look at these things on these levels. A good way to do that is to say, “I’m going to set up an intention to stay with the breath. Then I’m going …
- Don’t Clap Hands with Pain… Your intentions, the things you’ve decided you’re going to pay attention to, how you pay attention to them: All of these things come prior to sensory impressions. They determine whether you’re going to suffer or not. So learn how to work on your own mind, so that no matter what comes up in birth, aging, illness, or death, you’ve got …
- Work with It… I can turn my attention away.” The third one is realizing, “If I pay attention to this, I’m exerting a lot of effort. Why don’t I just relax?” And it goes away. The thoughts that don’t go away easily come under the other two of those five approaches. There’s the one where you have to think about the drawbacks of …
- Being Responsible… And you’ve learned this through trial and error, through paying careful attention to what you do and the results you get. This is what makes your wisdom and compassion pure. Otherwise, they’re just well-meaning, but if they’re not right for the time and the place, they can actually cause harm. So be very careful, watching your actions and seeing the …
- Getting Connected Inside… Don’t focus attention right at them, focus attention just around them, and think of softening things up, being more gentle. It’s almost as if they have to learn to trust you, and it may take time. But if you’re gentle and persistent, they will begin to open up. Now, if you’ve had an injury or some other physical problem, those …
- Putting Aside the World… As the Buddha said, this refreshment comes from the attention you give to your breath, which means that you don’t have to turn your attention to the fullness or the pleasure. You know they’re there, but you don’t want to gobble them down. Otherwise, it’s like someone who gets a job, gets his first pay check, and then just runs …
- Buddhist Engineering… You can hurry up some of them by your active attention. You water them, he says, with your attention. What you pay attention to in the present moment will depend on the range of things coming in. But there will be a range. Sometimes it’s a narrow range, sometimes it’s broad, but there are some choices available. One of the purposes of …
- Basic Meditation Instructions… Beyond that, you don’t have to pay much attention to it. It’s not going to kill you. It’s not a sign that your legs are going to fall off, simply that the blood circulation is being squeezed off in certain parts of the body, and that’s going to force the blood into other parts. That’s what the pain is …
- Succeeding at Happiness… So give full attention to what you’re doing, in terms of the way you breathe, the way you talk to yourself about the breath, the images you hold in your mind about the breath, the feelings that develop in the body as a result, and then what you do with those feelings. Pay full attention to this and then reflect, use your discernment …
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