Search results for: "Attention"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. The Uncertain Present
     … For example, with appropriate attention: When something comes up, ask yourself, “Where is the suffering right here? Where is the stress?” The Buddha tells you to look inside the mind, to see what you’re clinging to, what activities you’re clinging to. There you find that you’re clinging to the activities that are putting the present moment together. Those aggregates, by the … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. 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 … 
  15. 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 … 
  16. 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 … 
  17. 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 … 
  18. 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 … 
  19. 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 … 
  20. 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 … 
  21. 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 … 
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