Search results for: "Focusing"

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  2. Practicing Your Scales
     … He focused on the big issue in life: Why is there suffering? Why do people create suffering for themselves when they want happiness? What can they do to learn to put an end to that suffering? And he focused on that issue in a way that’s still very relevant thousands of years later. As for the Sangha, he instituted an order where people … 
  3. Values
    When you focus on the breath and try to stay focused on the breath, it’s partly a matter of technique and partly a matter of your values. The technique can be explained in just a few pages—Ajaan Lee’s seven steps take just two or three pages. And they cover a lot of the territory in the technique: focusing on the breath … 
  4. What Should I Do?
     … Of course, right now, while you’re meditating, the answer to the question, “What should I do?” is to meditate—stay focused on the breath. You’re following one of the duties of the noble truths, which is to develop the path. But even there, there are choices. And the choices, as the Buddha lays them out, are useful not only for when you … 
  5. Family Ties
     … You can learn to be more alert, more mindful, more focused, more discerning, to develop greater powers of endurance. So when the Buddha talks about being a warrior, this is where the battle is fought—because this is where you can do the most good. Sometimes we think that a warrior is someone who is willing to take on any battle and doesn’t … 
  6. Up for the Challenge
     … Then beyond that, if the person can get his mind focused on the Brahma realms, then the Buddha says, “Well, remind him that even in the Brahma realms there’s a sense of self-identity. You’re identifying with things, which means that there will be suffering, but it’s possible to let that go.” This is a big challenge, letting go of this … 
  7. Gratitude to Things
     … Appreciation is for the things; gratitude is for the actions, because that focuses you on your actions, what you’re going to do in response. That’s how gratitude keeps you focused on the practice.
  8. The Boundaries of Mindfulness
     … He has to stay focused right there on his bowl of oil. In the same way, when you’re focused on the body, you really want to stay with the body and not let yourself get dislodged from it. You want that to be your frame of reference. The Buddha talks about mindfulness of the body as a post to which six animals are … 
  9. What to Keep in Mind
     … It sets out the whole description of right mindfulness and then it simply focuses on one question: What are the different frames of reference that you can use as you’re practicing right mindfulness? It never asks any questions about what it means to be ardent as you’re doing this, or what it means to put aside greed and distress with reference to … 
  10. You Can Make a Difference
     … The unskillful approach while you’re sitting here and the breath gets comfortable, is that you settle in and you fall asleep because you’ve dropped the breath and you’re focusing on the comfort—the comfort has overtaken your mind. The right way is to create a sense of comfort and then to realize that the comfort’s going to depend on maintaining … 
  11. A Safe Haven Through Alertness
     … Some people have found that it helps, if focusing on one spot is not working, you say, “Okay, I’m going to focus on two spots at once.” That puts the mind in a position where it has to connect the two. Say you focus on the middle of your head and the tip of your tailbone, and you’re right in the middle … 
  12. Little Things
     … For example, focusing on the breath: Be really precise about any tiny little bit of tension or discomfort or dis-ease in the breath. Don’t slough over it, because paying attention to the little details is what brings you more and more into the present moment. If you’re sloughing over the details, you’re sloughing from the past into the future and … 
  13. Ugly Body, Happy Mind
     … You’ll notice when you’re focused on the body as being attractive, you usually focus on certain details that set you off. You have to narrow your vision to a really narrow tunnel vision to do that, because the things you find so attractive are right next to things that are not attractive at all. Just go down beneath the skin a tiny … 
  14. Making an Effort
     … The potential for true happiness is right here, staying focused on the breath. Once you get skilled at it, you realize it’s much easier, it takes much less effort, much less frantic energy, and the results are more lasting. You’ve got a skill inside that you can depend on. With the normal skills we have in terms of looking at this thing … 
  15. A Multilingual Mind
     … You notice that when the Buddha summarizes the essence of his Awakening — at least the part that’s worth teaching, worth passing on — he focuses on the principle of causality, the connection between things. In particular, he focuses on the connections between what he calls name and form on one hand and consciousness on the other. Starting with this connection, he points out how … 
  16. Thoughts, Wanted and Unwanted
     … This is what contemplation of death is all about – getting you focused back on realizing that there’s work to be done in your mind, and that meditation is the best way to do it. So this training in learning how to gain control over your thoughts – thinking what you want to think, and not thinking what you don’t want to think – involves … 
  17. Refreshing
     … When a camera focuses, though, there’s no tension in the camera. There’s no weight to the light. It just gets focused. Try to have the sense of just-rightness in your focus here—light but steady—and the body and mind will respond.
  18. Subduing Greed & Distress
     … And the mind is the awareness that you’re trying to keep focused in the body with one focal point, but at the same time with a sense of the whole body around that focal point. These are the components of concentration. Focused on the breath, when there’s a sense of ease and well-being, you let the breath and the ease fill … 
  19. The Right Focal Length
     … Otherwise, everything gets focused on the outside, and what’s going on inside gets totally ignored. But where *are *the causes of suffering? Inside you. There’s the clinging, the craving, the ignorance, and all those other factors in dependent co-arising that are whirling around in your mind right here, right now. It’s like taking a picture with a camera. The interesting … 
  20. Eyes in the Back of Your Head
     … Try to maintain that balance of being focused and still in your one spot and yet feeling a sense of connection throughout the whole body. It’s like having eyes on all sides of your body. Instead of just looking at one thing, you’re looking all around. The advantage of this kind of meditation is that once you have that sense of the … 
  21. Into the Cave with the Tiger
     … So, as you’re focused right here, you’re focused at the right place. It’s simply a matter of getting more and more sensitive to how you’re doing this, getting more skillful in how you’re doing this. And that’s what a lot of the effort of the practice is all about—developing your sensitivity to what you’re doing as … 
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