Search results for: "Attention"
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- 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 …
- Awakening Is in the Details… But you’re learning about the machinations of the mind, how perceptions are determined by your acts of attention: what you pay attention to, how you pay attention, what’s your framework. Try to use the Buddha’s framework. There are four noble truths. Think of them as four possibilities. Right now, we’re trying to develop concentration, and sometimes concentration gets advanced by …
- 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 …
- All-around Knowing… Their attention is centered right in the middle of their body, and then it spreads out evenly in all directions because. After all, the animals they’re hunting could be in any direction, the tracks they’re looking for could be in any direction, so their attention has to be all around. If you don’t like the image of hunting animals, you can …
- All-around Alertness… Where do you not ordinarily focus on breath sensations in the body? Have you ever spent much time with your right flank, or your left flank, or your tailbone? Give them some time, give them some space, give them some attention. They might have some potentials you haven’t thought of before. Then, from the sense of well-being in the body, it begins …
- Virtue Contains the Practice… Those actions have life-shaping consequences, so you need to pay attention to what you’re doing and to the consequences you’re creating. This leads to a series of shoulds and should-nots: actions you should do and actions you shouldn’t if you want to put an end to suffering. The if there is crucial. The Buddha’s shoulds are conditional in …
- The Long-Distance Meditator… You’re just moving your attention, changing your frame of reference, and then learning how to keep your frame of reference right here. This is why the Buddha talks again and again and again about establishing mindfulness. Once it’s established, then you’ve got to keep it established. This has a lot to do with learning how to talk to yourself, which is …
- Happy to Be Here… If there are any thoughts that go wandering off, you don’t have to pay them any attention. You’ve got lots of choices in the present moment, so make the most of them. This is an important principle to keep in mind. Some people think that we’re taught that everything we experience in the present moment is totally determined by past karma …
- A Graduated Discourse… That teaching actually downgrades the attention that we pay to our actions, and it focuses attention on getting in good with whoever’s making the real decisions. But if you realize that your actions are what determines everything, you’re going to pay a lot of attention to your actions: what you’re doing, saying and thinking. Try to be really careful about it …
- A Message for the Universe… As the Buddha said, inappropriate attention looks at the same things as appropriate attention, but it focuses on different details. The details may be true, but they’re not helpful. You’ve got to look for details that are true, beneficial, and timely. Remember the Buddha’s standards for what would be right speech, the kind of speech that he would say: It had …
- Questioning Your Unconscious Actions… Now, if you can bring awareness and appropriate attention to this process, you can prime the mind in another direction. Appropriate attention is a matter of asking the right questions. Remember, the questions are not, “Who am I?” or “Where am I?” The question is: “What am I doing?” That’s how you prime the mind in another direction. Think about the Buddha on …
- It’s Good to Talk to Yourself… Which ones are you going to pay attention to? Which ones can you pay attention to? That’s a useful question. Which ones are clear enough so that you can maintain your focus all the way through the in-breath, all the way through the out-, for many, many breaths? Search around in the body and find some breathing sensations that look like they …
- Expanding Your Skill Set… That’s the property of mindfulness, reminding yourself of what’s important to pay attention to, what’s important to remember. For the time being, there’s only one thing you really have to worry about, and that’s staying with the breath coming in, the breath going out, noticing where you feel the process of breathing, so that it’s not just the …
- Focal Points… Find some out-of-the-way spot in the body that’s been neglected and place your attention there. Whether or not you feel the breath there isn’t the issue. Just remind yourself that there is breath there, so whatever you feel there qualifies as breath. You don’t have to make it move or do anything special. Just notice it. Aside from …
- The Best Work Around… The second is through our own appropriate attention: asking discerning questions about our likes, questioning our assumptions. Dogen once described the practice as, “dethinking your thinking.” In other words, it’s not just that you stop thinking, it’s that you question your attitudes, your assumptions about, “This is good and that’s bad.” Well, look at what’s actually appearing in the mind …
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