Search results for: "Attention"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. Start with Goodwill
     … Where do you feel the energies that are related to the in-and-out breath right now? Focus your attention there. Try to get that spot comfortable. Then notice how the energy there relates to the energies you feel elsewhere in the body. If you can connect them all, so much the better, because you’re aiming at a stable, focused awareness in the … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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