Search results for: "Attention"

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  2. Getting the Most Out of Now
     … Focus your attention on the breath. The advantage of the breath is that it’s always in the present moment. You can’t watch a past breath or a future breath. And this will be a good test of your ability to stay right here. As you work with this, you find that you can stay more and more consistently. And it’s important … 
  3. Observing the Mind at the Breath
     … In other words, you pay careful, careful attention to what you’re doing, careful attention to what’s here. You’re trying to drop everything else around you. This is why one of our basic principles in daily life is that if you’re going to take on battles with other people, you want to choose your battles well. Remember that the Buddha was … 
  4. Filling in the Buddha’s Outline
     … After all, even when you’re doing work, how much of your attention really is on the work? Take the part that’s ordinarily not on your work and devote it to the breath. Some jobs require 100% of your attention so you give them 100% of your attention. Others, though, require maybe 30% or 20%, so give the remaining 70% or 80% to … 
  5. Do, Maintain, Use
     … But focus your primary attention on the comfort of the breath and keep the perception of breath in mind. Otherwise, you go slipping off into just the comfort, and things begin to blur out. When you’ve got your awareness filling the body, you’ve got the breath filling the body, and it feels good, then you can stop evaluating the breath and just … 
  6. The Water in Your Cup
     … Pay close attention. This way you get to see things you didn’t see before inside, both in the body and in the mind. Because as the mind begins to gather around the breath like this, and you give it one thing to stick with, you begin to see other movements in the mind: other intentions that may come up, other thoughts referring to … 
  7. The Language of the Heart (1)
     … She found that people who ordinarily had trouble drawing could actually do really good drawings because they were looking at something they had never really paid attention to before, so they had no preconceived notions about how the space between your eye and eyebrow should look. It’s by calling attention to these things that they began to notice what was already there. So … 
  8. More than Just Letting Go
     … But it turns out the featherbed is based on your attention to the breath. And so if there’s no attention to the breath, then it all collapses. So you’ve got to remind yourself: Even though there is ease here, you can’t let yourself get waylaid. It’s like Ulysses going to listen to the Sirens. You’ve got to tie yourself … 
  9. The Power of Choice
     … No responsibilities, nobody’s yelling at you that you’ve got a deadline, nobody else is demanding attention. Your body’s healthy enough for you to practice. So you have the choice: What do you want to do with the next hour? You could spend the next hour thinking about all kinds of things: thinking about the past, thinking about the future. But if … 
  10. Three Levels of Effort
     … So try to do it with a sense of joy in the work—because this is good work, not harming anybody at all—and with a sense of respect, a sense of when to give it your full attention, because it does repay your attention with important results.
  11. Don’t Focus on Jhana, Focus on the Breath
     … One of Ajaan Lee’s most important insights into concentration practice is that this is how evaluation starts out, paying attention to a simple question that’s very closely related to the four noble truths. “Where is the stress? What can I do to alleviate the stress?” In this case, “Where is the discomfort in the breath?” How do you breathe in? What are … 
  12. Perceptions & Potentials
     … Don’t pay attention to any vagrant thoughts that are nibbling away at the edges. When you don’t pay them attention, it’s as if you’re not feeding them. They’re stray dogs, stray cats, and if you don’t feed them, they’ll go away. The sense of concentration will get stronger. The breath will be really still, but as I … 
  13. The Triple Training
     … Were you actually practicing the Dhamma? Were you paying attention to what you were doing? What could you do to improve what you’ve done? That’s what reflection is all about. Think of the Buddha’s teachings to Rahula. He started out with the image of mirror. He said that in the same way a mirror is for the purpose of reflection, you … 
  14. Use Your Defilements
     … You use it to pay attention right here, pay attention to the right places. So this is where you’re going to learn about the aggregates, and also the extent to which you are shaping them in the present moment. This way, you don’t fall for that “insight,” quote-unquote, that says, “Well, I’ll just see things arising and passing away, and … 
  15. Cut, Cut, Cut
     … But actually, it all starts very simply: “What’s next? What’s next?” In other words, where are you going to focus your attention now? And what are you going to do with it? And when you actually see the intention or the act of attention in action, that’s when you can start asking, “Is there something else? Is there another way of … 
  16. Wisdom as a Tool
     … Similarly, when an insight comes into your mind, the first question should be, “What kind of impact does it have?” If you took that insight as true, how would it influence your actions? This comes under the principle of appropriate attention, figuring out: Is this going to help you understand suffering? Is it going to help you abandon craving? Will it help you develop … 
  17. A Good-natured Attitude
     … His meaning is that sometimes you focus most of your attention on the breath and sometimes you focus more of your attention on the mind. For example, when you’re working with the breath, if you find the breath intriguing, if you find it interesting and it’s enjoyable to work with the breath, go ahead and do it. But sometimes you find that … 
  18. Judgmental vs. Judicious
     … Part of name and form is attention, knowing what questions to pay attention to, which ones to ignore. That requires that you use your powers of judgment. As Ajaan Lee points out, this is the beginning of discernment. You’re learning to develop this faculty by success through approximation: not hoping for a perfect judgment right away, knowing that you probably will make mistakes … 
  19. The Luminous Mind
     … There’s also inappropriate attention. When looking at the hindrances, or looking at the world, we’re not really interested in the question of suffering or how to put an end to suffering. We’ve got other issues, other things we’re more interested in. This is related to the external causes that keep ignorance going. We hang around with the wrong people. We … 
  20. Mental Balance
     … All the Buddha’s teachings are meant to focus your attention right here on what you’re doing right now—both what you’re doing and the results that are coming from what you are doing. The teachings on emptiness, not-self, all of what seem to be more abstract teachings, are ultimately meant to focus your attention back here. Where’s the stress … 
  21. A Becoming Critic
     … It’s made out of intentions, your intention to stay; acts of attention, you’re attending to the breath and trying to not pay attention to other things that would distract you; you’ve got the perceptions that hold you here; and the feelings that provide some attraction to the concentration. You’re trying to put all these things together. There’s a well … 
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