Search results for: "Focusing"
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- The Reality of Emotions… Sometimes it requires focusing on the grief, focusing on the discomfort. There’s a passage in the sutta on transcendent dependent co-arising that traces all the factors leading up to suffering, but then states that from suffering you can develop conviction, and through conviction you develop the path. From developing the path, you develop joy. This is the Buddha’s analysis of how …
- Diagnosing the Mind… Leaning forward or back means you’re focusing either on the future or on the past. You want to look right in the present moment. Leaning to the left or to the right means you’re either indulging in sensual pleasures or you’re tormenting yourself with the things you’re thinking about. The point is, if you see yourself leaning in any direction …
- Dethinking Thinking… One is to stay focused on one thing in and of itself, and the other is put aside greed and distress with reference to the world. This is going to require you to put aside all references to the world while you’re sitting here. You want to be just awareness, breath, and that’s going to be becoming enough. And sure enough, the …
- Doing Meditation… Right now you’re focusing on the breath. In the beginning, that requires a lot of repeated reminders to yourself: keep focusing on the breath, keep focusing on the breath. But you often find that simply reminding yourself to do that is not enough. More is required. Use your ingenuity in figuring out ways to make the breath more interesting, more comfortable, a more …
- What You’re Choosing to Do Right Now… It talked about how some people have an instinctive ability to focus in on what is the big issue, and they’re sensitive to the way they can read a particular situation by focusing on the right things. The rest of the book had to do with the fact that this is a skill that can be taught, primarily by giving people an enlarged …
- Abandoning Effluents (3)… The first of the approaches, seeing—i.e., seeing in terms of appropriate attention—is applied to abandoning the effluents of becoming and ignorance, because you’re putting aside questions that deal with your identity, which is the kernel of becoming, focusing instead on seeing things in terms of the four noble truths. That puts an end to ignorance. The next four approaches deal …
- Circular Practice… They get focused on one thing, and they just get obsessed with it. So it’s good to have people to get you out of those loops. Of course, you want to look for the right people: people who actually have the right values, people who see the value of training the mind, the value of digging down into the mind and seeing why …
- Stretch Your Mind… So, seeing the power of the mind, seeing the power of the present moment, he then focused on his mind in the present moment in the third watch of the night. You see what he’s doing: He’s stretching his mind before he settles in. With the body, we stretch it forward, stretch it back, to the left, right. But with the mind …
- The Path of Happiness… Is this going to be a problem meditating?” My teacher’s response was, “No, we’re going to be focusing on the breath. The breath isn’t Buddhist. It isn’t Christian. It doesn’t belong to any particular religion. It’s a common property all over the world. When you focus on the breath, then you get to your own mind. Once you …
- Virtue… These are qualities you have to bring to the act of being focused on the body in and of itself, focused on feelings in and of themselves, whatever the topic of your meditation, so that when you sit down and meditate, you’re not coming totally green to the practice. You’re already developing these qualities in your daily life, in the way you …
- Investing Your Intention… Fortunately, when you’re focusing on the breath right here in the present moment, all the things you need to understand for gaining release are all right here as well. You’re at the most important point in your world when you’re focused right here, because everything comes out of this. The other things you’re aware of come into your senses because …
- The Four Jhanas… And allow the spot where you’re focusing to have a certain amount of freedom. In other words, don’t clamp down on it. Sometimes you may try to define things sharply: “This is where the in-breath begins, this is where the out-breath begins; this is where the in-breath ends, this is where the out-breath ends.” But doing that places …
- Remembering Ajaan Lee… First, it’s just the effort that you put into focusing on something, but it also develops into the effort you put into figuring it out, analyzing it. So we’re not here just accepting what’s happening. We’re trying to figure out what’s happening, look for the causes. Of course, this fits in with the four noble truths. We’re looking …
- A Sense of Space Inside… If you’re focused on one little tiny point, and the breath gets more and more refined until you lose that point, you’re off into what they call delusion concentration, where you’re still but you’re not really clear about what you’re focused on or where you are. When you come out, there’s the question, “Was I asleep?” Well, not …
- Doing… That’s why we’re focusing on the breath, trying to figure out what way of breathing feels best right now: long or short, fast or slow, heavy or light, deep or shallow; which parts of the body feel best doing the breathing, which parts should be relaxed and not have to do any work in the breathing. There are lots of things you …
- Lift Your Mind… And in the mind, of course, there are all kinds of memories, all kinds of intentions, some focused on the past, some focused on the future, and you’ve got to learn how not to be blown away by those things. The ajaans in Thailand will often say that as you’re meditating, you’re learning precisely the skills you’re going to need …
- Look Around… Each of us has his or her duties that we’ve taken on, and sometimes we get so narrowly focused on them that other things that should be looked at don’t get looked at, places that should be cleaned don’t get cleaned, places that should be straightened out don’t get straightened out. You might say, “Well, it’s no big deal …
- Equanimity on the Path… One is to apply it to anything that’s not directly related to the path—issues that have nothing to do with putting an end to suffering—as a way of keeping the mind focused. Remember that the Buddha himself would put issues of that sort aside. No matter how many people would try to force him to answer questions that were not related …
- Concentration: A Balancing Act… Developing samvega is basically a way of preparing the ground so that when you’re focused on the breath and anything else comes up, you will have already seen through it. You will have developed the attitude that it’s no place you want to go back to. This is one of the functions of the contemplation of the body. You go through the …
- Hindrances Based on Delusion… And it’s by checking your results that you can cut through your uncertainty and you see that, Yes, focusing in this way is useful, focusing in that way doesn’t work. You begin to get a sense of the skill of meditation: what yields results and what doesn’t. That’s the knowledge that cuts through uncertainty. So in all the cases of …
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