Search results for: "Focusing"

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  2. Looking Inward
     … So this is where our practice focuses. Notice where the path lies: It lies in our thoughts, our words, our deeds. Generosity may be an act of giving things to other people, but it’s primarily a development of a quality of the mind. The same with the precepts: They govern our interactions with other people, but their primary purpose is training our thoughts … 
  3. Tranquility, Insight, & Concentration
     … But then, when there’s a feeling of well-being in the breath, think of it not being confined only to the spot where you’re focused. Think of it spreading out. If you want, you can move your focus around different parts of the body. Start down around the navel. Watch that area of the body as you breathe in, breathe out, and … 
  4. Nourishing & Interesting
     … That means we have something in mind that we want, and we’re acting based on our image of what we want, so the mind always has an arrow focusing someplace further, further, further along. In the course of going to that “further,” we do pick up information from outside, but the fact that we’re already moving further, doing things for the sake … 
  5. Opening Your World
     … Some of these tools are very simple, like focusing on the breath—focusing on the breath in a way that gives rise to a sense of ease and well-being. Without that ease and well-being, it’s hard to resist the temptation to keep going back to unskillful behavior. There are basically four kinds of actions: Those that you like to do and … 
  6. Always in Training
     … So that’s one contemplation that helps keep your values straight, focuses on the importance of your actions and gives you a sense of how far human action can go, how noble it can be, so that you can inspire yourself and try to push yourself a little bit farther than you might normally want to, and that you can make choices that make … 
  7. Gratitude & Trust
     … Gratitude is more focused. It’s focused on actions: the actions you’ve benefited from and the actions you feel called on to make in response to repay your debt of gratitude and to try to continue this stream of goodness into the world, on into the future, so all of the benefits that have been entrusted to us will bear fruit. That’s … 
  8. Commit Yourself
    The easy part of meditation is focusing on the breath, because it’s right here. You don’t have to go looking anywhere else, you don’t have buy it from anybody. It’s not one of those things you have to go order from a meditation supply catalog. It comes in and goes out right here all the time. All you have to … 
  9. Strengthening Your Goodness
     … When the Buddha was teaching mindfulness of breathing to his son, he started out with some discernment exercises, in particular, focusing on inconstancy—and that includes stress and not-self—to give karate chops to your unskillful thoughts. Whatever they propose, you can say that the pleasure that comes from engaging in lust or anger or whatever is very inconstant, and yet you’d … 
  10. A Pleasure Not to Be Feared
     … Then learn how to read the spot in the body that you’re focused on, so that you can tell when you’re breathing too far out or too far in. There’d be a sense of strain, as it gets too full or too empty. So allow the breathing to stay right within the range of what’s comfortable, and see how long … 
  11. Genuine Happiness
     … So it’s good to start with that thought, so that when the mind focuses on the breath and part of it wants to wander off, you can remind it, “Where are you going? Are you looking for a genuine happiness or just looking for an ice-cream cone, a piece of candy?”—something that gives pleasure in the immediate present but doesn’t … 
  12. Vows
     … Each and every one.” That’s focusing on the causes. Whether or not you reach a particular level of jhana lies in the area of results. Without the causes, the results won’t come, so discernment focuses on the causes and lets the causes take care of the results. The next element — once you’ve decided on your goal and how you’re going … 
  13. A Happiness Without Boundaries
     … You’re sitting here focusing on the breath, learning to be more mindful, learning to put away distractions. And as you may have noticed, before we started meditation, we had that reflection on goodwill: “May all beings be happy.” It’s a good attitude to carry into the meditation, realizing that you’re doing this for your happiness and for the happiness of all … 
  14. Wandering Aimlessly
     … You make up your mind to stay focused on the breath, and two breaths later it’s someplace else. That, the Buddha said, contains a lot of the problem right there—not in the attempt to concentrate the mind, but in the fact of wandering. That’s all that samsara is. The mind wanders pretty aimlessly. It has its aims, but if you were … 
  15. Conviction & Focus
     … After all, when you meditate you’re focused on one thing. You’re not letting yourself get distracted. You’re learning how to put up with pain and not be bowled over by it, and how not to get all fuzzy and blurred out by pleasure. These are precisely the skills you’re going to need as aging comes in, and the mind starts … 
  16. Equanimity & Action
    The reflection on equanimity focuses on karma: All beings are the owners of their actions, heir of their actions, born of their actions, related through their actions, and have actions as their arbitrator. In other words, the actions that we’ve done and we’re doing are the things that lead to happiness, lead to sorrow, lead to ease, lead to difficulty. Why should … 
  17. Worth
     … You’ve got to learn how to focus your mind, keep it focused on what you know will strengthen the mind. This is why the perfection or parami that underlies all the others is determination, realizing that you want to make something of your mind. And it’s going to depend on you. So you make that determination to do what’s right, and … 
  18. Urgency & Contentment
     … When you’re focused on the breath, thinking about the breath, and evaluating the breath, the thinking and evaluation are called verbal fabrication. The breath itself is bodily fabrication. The perceptions and feelings that you develop working with the breath: Those are mental fabrications. Everything you need to understand for the sake of awakening is right here. So think about this in a way … 
  19. Rooted in Desire
     … That’s what the questions focusing on stress do, because otherwise you just go flowing through the various causal links in the chain without paying much attention to what you’re doing. It’s become so natural that you don’t see the extent to which you’re fabricating things. Only when you ask questions do you begin to notice, “Oh, there was something … 
  20. Suffering Comes from What You’re Doing
     … When it goes up a bit, ask yourself, “What did I do just now? What perception did I hold on to? What feeling was I focusing on? How was I focusing?” If the mind can’t settle down, you tell yourself, “How can I be patient with this, so that my irritation about the disturbances in my mind doesn’t add more disturbance?” In … 
  21. Determined on Goodwill
     … There’s the determination that focuses mainly on a particular goal you want to attain, and there are those that are focused on the practices that lead you there, trying to become more consistent in those practices, to put more energy into them. They’re connected, of course. You might decide in the course of the coming year that you want to attain a … 
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