Search results for: "Focusing"

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  2. Seclusion Through Mindfulness
     … Now, you do that as you’re trying to stay focused on the breath. The way the four frames of reference are listed, sometimes it sounds as if you can either be focused on the body or feelings or the mind or mental qualities, as separate exercises. But the only time the Buddha talks about keeping watch over feelings, mind states, or mental qualities … 
  3. Dependent Co-arising in Fifteen Minutes
     … What are you focusing on? Are you focusing on the air? Are you focusing on the contact at the nose? Are you focusing on the movement of energy in the body? Where does that energy begin? Does it begin outside? When it comes into the body, is it fighting to get in or is the body welcoming it in? And if the energy comes … 
  4. The Noble Path to Happiness
     … You might start out by focusing on the tip of your nose, and after a while decide that you don’t like that spot. Well, you can move to any other part of the body where it feels comfortable to stay focused, stay centered. Stay there, and make it feel like you really can settle in and feel at home. You might try focusing … 
  5. No Happiness without Restraint
     … This is how we learn about things, by paying careful attention to a limited range that we’re focusing on, and exercising our ingenuity in making something enjoyable out of it. In fact, you find as you get more and more focused on the breath that the more limited your range, the more you can make of the breath. So focus your attention on … 
  6. Comfortable With the Truth
     … to see how hard it is to stay focused on something simple like this. But it’s an important lesson. There are lots of currents flowing through the mind. The Buddha calls them asavas or fermentations, effluents, things that come flowing out, and if we’re not careful they become floods overwhelming the mind. You’re sitting here telling yourself you’re focusing on … 
  7. What Focus? What Breath?
     … So give yourself a pleasant place to stay and give yourself some interesting questions to ask about staying here with the breath, learning both about the object you’re focusing on, and about the activity of focusing. This is what sampajañña, alertness, means: having a sense of what you’re doing and the results of what you’re doing. When you learn about the … 
  8. Worlds Inside & Out
    The classic phrase for establishing mindfulness in the body is that you “stay focused on the body in and of itself, ardent, alert, and mindful, putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world.” That last phrase is interesting: “putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world.” They don’t have definite or indefinite articles, they don’t have an “a … 
  9. Consciousness, Awakened & Not
     … Because when the Buddha focused on actions, he wasn’t just focusing on the fact that you do act. He also wanted you to see the impact of your actions, the extent to which your actions shape your awareness of reality, what’s going on around you in the world, what’s going on within you inside. And you have to be sensitive not … 
  10. Don’t Worry, Be Focused
    Don’t Worry, Be Focused December 27, 2011 In several passages in the Canon, the Buddha says that the main thing to keep in mind if you suddenly find yourself approaching death is not to worry. Now, he’s not saying don’t worry about the state of your mind; or don’t worry, everything is going to be okay; or don’t worry … 
  11. A Load Off the Mind
     … How is the breath while you’re focusing on goodwill? How is the breath when you’re focusing on compassion or on recollection of the Buddha? As soon as you tell yourself to stay with the breath, what happens? What did you change? That’s one way of catching yourself adding unnecessary stress and suffering. It should be a perfectly normal, natural process right … 
  12. Transparent Becoming
     … It’s something we do all the time, both on the cosmic level, as we go from one life to the next, and also on the immediate level, as we’re sitting here focusing on one object, losing interest, and then focusing on something else. And, in the focus, we create a world or a very particular experience of the world. There’s an … 
  13. The Graduated Discourse
     … That right there gives you some idea of how the singleness of mind that you have focused on the talk gets converted into right concentration. After being focused, you’re now focused on something that’s not sensual, and you’re beginning to develop right view. We talk about the graduated discourse leading from mundane right view—the principle of kamma, the goodness of … 
  14. Full, Focused Attention
     … He focused in on his breath, saying that he had to get to know this one thing really well—the mind focused on the breath—and then develop all the skills that go around that. As for you, you develop this not only by focusing on the breath, but also by focusing on any activity you have to do in the course of the … 
  15. Stay Centered
     … You’re focused on the breath, and a thought not related to the breath comes up, and before you let go of it you try to figure out what it’s about. Sometimes you feel committed to finish the sentence, to see where it’s going. But then, at the end of the hour, when the bell rings, you just drop the meditation without … 
  16. The Carpenter’s Adze
     … As he’s focused on his skill, the handle wears down on its own. The difference, of course, is that focusing on the breath is not just make-work—in other words, something to give yourself to keep busy as you’re working on awakening—because you’re not just doing just any old thing. You’re focusing on the processes of fabrication. You … 
  17. Allies
     … One is that we improve the blood-flow to the spots where we’re focused, but in order to keep our attention focused, we tend to squeeze the blood flow off in other parts of the body. Another way is actually the other way around: We squeeze things off in the part that we are focused on. The second one is not the kind … 
  18. Focus on One Thing
     … So one of the things you can do this evening, in addition to focusing on the breath, is to give some time to thinking about what you want to do over the course of the next three months to improve your practice. Any areas where you’re weak, you can focus right on them. As I said, as you’re focusing on the practice … 
  19. One Point, Two Points, Many Points
     … Whatever was necessary for putting an end to suffering, he focused on that. Whatever wasn’t necessary, he might know it but he didn’t let it clutter up his mind. As he said in describing his Awakening, he learned the equivalent of the leaves of the forest. What he brought out to teach — in terms of focusing on the issue of suffering, its … 
  20. Exploring the Basics
    Try to stay focused on the breath. In the beginning it sounds pretty simple, and it is. It’s a very simple activity, but our mind is very complex. Often we have to clear away a lot of complex issues before we can actually settle down with the breath and be able to stay focused. First it’s good to understand what the breath … 
  21. What You’re Responsible For
     … You want to be able to keep it focused all the way through the end and out the other side. So you talk to yourself, you encourage yourself in this direction. That kind of thinking is not a problem. It’s part of the meditation. Any thinking that keeps you focused is a friend. Any thinking that will pull you away is not a … 
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