Search results for: "Attention"
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- 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 …
- 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 …
- Everything You Need… The most important internal quality, he said, in addition to having an admirable friend, is appropriate attention. What this means is approaching each present moment in a skillful way. Sometimes you hear that the Buddha said that each present moment is something new and totally fresh unlike any other moment ever in the past, and you should approach it as a mystery. But that …
- Monotasking… In other words, it demands your full attention. The Buddha gave 16 instructions for how to stay with the breath. There was a time when a monk told the Buddha he was already practicing breath meditation, and the Buddha asked him, “What kind of breath meditation are you doing?” And the monk said, “I just let go of any thoughts of the past, put …
- A Mirror for the Mind… The big issue is your mind, and you now have the time to focus total attention on the mind. There’s nowhere else you have to go, nothing else you have to think about. The mind at this moment doesn’t have to be a servant to anybody. All too often we have to serve the needs of the body, serve the needs of …
- Protection Through Mindfulness… If he doesn’t notice, if he just keeps on fixing whatever he wants without paying attention to whether the person eating likes it or not, he’s not going to get rewarded. So listen to the message of the image: You protect yourself by paying attention to what works and what doesn’t work. You have to be observant. You may have read …
- Endurance… In the beginning, you want to pay most attention to the breath, and pay attention to the mind mainly when it’s not with the breath. When it’s wandering off, bring it back. Try to breathe in a way that will make the mind want to stay with the breath. What kind of breathing would feel good right now—really good? Down through …
- Fourth Truth, First Duty… He calls it that because he wants to call attention to the fact that there’s an intentional element in how you breathe. That’s going to play a huge role in the rest of the breath meditation, because you can then intentionally train yourself to breathe in a way that feels refreshing, train yourself to breathe in a way that feels pleasant, train …
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