Search results for: "Attention"
- Page 17
- Toward Release… one is to develop appropriate attention, the ability to ask the right questions; and the other is to practice breath meditation. And it’s not as if these were two things to be done separately. You do them together. You focus on the breath, applying the right questions to the breath and to your mind’s relationship to the breath. We’re here looking …
- A Pervasive Well-being… Don’t pay attention to anything else. If you’re going to focus on the tip of the nose, stay right at the tip of the nose. If you’re going to focus on the middle of the head, stay right at the middle of the head. He has the image of sitting at the gate to a cattle pen, watching the cattle as …
- Feeding While You Work… This requires a lot of attention, a lot of concerted intention. The best parallels are with manual skills: playing music, creating a piece of carpentry or joinery like a set of drawers. You work and you pay attention to the results of your work at the same time. It has to be a continuous, back-and-forth process. As when you’re planing a …
- Disenchantment & Dispassion… You’re aware of the six senses because you direct your attention there. Sometimes you direct your attention to the eye, sometimes the ear, nose, tongue, body, or mind. Wherever your attention is directed, that starts beginning to proliferate. So this is the problem, that because of our desire we create suffering. And that principle goes a lot deeper than you might imagine. We …
- The Joy of Monotasking… If you were sewing a shirt but not paying careful attention to the thread going through the machine or the way the needle is going into the cloth, then when the shirt comes out and doesn’t look right, you don’t know exactly where to make a change, because you can’t remember what you did. But if you pay careful attention to …
- The World of the Body… Try to focus as much attention as possible on those sensations and keep your attention continuous. You’ll begin to see that little tendency to move off. As you learn to look for it, you can learn to say No to it. As you learn to say No to it, you start learning lots of important lessons about the mind. This is why concentration …
- The Psychology of Virtue… In the Dhamma textbook for the first level of the exams that these books were designed for, they defined virtue as “restraint of body and speech.” Someone brought this to Ajaan Mun’s attention, and he said, “That’s wrong. It doesn’t mention the mind at all. The mind is the important part of the virtue.” When you look at the training rules …
- Solid Inside… So here’s a very immediate, very accessible, totally inexpensive way to bring a sense of comfort and ease to the mind, by paying careful attention to how you breathe. In doing this, you’re expressing goodwill not only for yourself but also for other people, because as I said, when you act and speak, it comes out of your feelings in the present …
- The Skills of Stillness… Wherever you feel it most clearly, focus your attention right there. Then try to notice if long breathing feels good. You can experiment for a bit with shorter breathing, more shallow, faster, slower, heavier, lighter; or in long, out short; or in short, out long, until you find a rhythm and texture of breathing that feels good for you right now—energizing if you …
- The Five Strengths… So try to focus more attention on the breath. Notice how it feels when it comes in, how it feels when it goes out. You can focus your attention on the breath at any spot in the body where it’s clear: now the breath is coming in; now the breath is going out. Allow that spot to be relaxed and comfortable. Notice what …
- A Tradition of Ingenuity… There it’s associated with attention, intention, perception, and contact. What are you paying attention to when you’re suffering from a physical pain? Could you change that? Pay attention to something else? Pay attention in a different way? What are your intentions around the pain, and what intentions do you think the pain has toward you? That, again, is an issue of perception …
- Events as Events… feelings, perceptions, intentions, acts of attention, and contact among these things. You want to learn how to be with these things just on their own terms, instead of thinking of this as “my body” or “my mind” or “my awareness.” It’s just awareness, mental events, and physical phenomena right here. When you look at them on those terms, it’s a lot easier …
- The Positive Side of Heedfulness… For example, with this one breath here, what’s the opportunity right now? Well, you’re meditating formally, where you can give the breath your full attention. Work at that. Make the most of what you’ve got. Make the most of this breath and then this breath. Really give your full attention to each breath. As for other moments when you’re not …
- Focal Points… After all, it is a spot where you’ve tended to deposit a lot of your pain in the past, so it’s not going to open itself up to direct attention right away. You have to sidle up to it. Another spot where there tends to be a lot of pain is that area around the sternum, around the heart. I know in …
- The Making Of… You’ve got name, which includes attention and intention. You’ve got your intention to stay with the breath, and the act of attention, where you’re actually paying attention to what’s going on, asking questions to help solidify your concentration. And there are more perceptions and feelings. So you’re learning how to think in terms of dependent co-arising as you …
- The Brightness of Life… That’s why he talks about not bare attention or bare awareness. He talks about appropriate attention, where you come into the present moment armed with some knowledge about the questions to ask to get happiness out of the present moment. Appropriate attention starts with the distinction between skillful and unskillful qualities. The Buddha lists them. His list helps you figure out how to …
- Finding Balance… Then, when you’ve found that the mind does get a sense of being refreshed, inspired, or energized by the contemplation, focus your attention back on the breath and see how the breath is going when you’re more refreshed, inspired, and energized. Try to maintain that way of breathing. This gets you back into your proper frame of reference. That brings you to …
- Mindfulness of Breathing: Four in One… You simply don’t pay attention to anything aside from your four frames of reference. You try to develop something good right here: right concentration, which the Buddha said is the heart of the path. The other factors, he said, are its requisites—things that help nurture right concentration—but the right concentration is the central factor. You can read about the Dhamma, and …
- Elemental Normalcy… Even though the ease may not be much to begin with, you can protect it and pay careful attention to it. It’s the paying careful attention that’s going to make the breath comfortable because you get more sensitive. And as you get more sensitive to the kind of breathing that you would ordinarily put up with, you decide you don’t like …
- Good at Thinking… And no matter whatever interesting thoughts, fascinating thoughts, or important-seeming thoughts may come up in the mind as you try to get it to calm down, you don’t have to pay them any attention. You can think those thoughts any other time. Right now is a good time to practice this new skill: the skill of bringing the mind to stillness, to …
- Load next page...
