Search results for: "Focus"

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  2. Strong-hearted
    When you focus your attention on the breath, you’re focusing on something that only you can know—how you feel the breathing from inside, how you feel your awareness from inside—because this is where the problem is, and this is where the solution will be found. The problem is that we act in unskillful ways. We let greed, aversion, and delusion take … 
  3. Kind & Happy
     … So focus on the breath. How does it feel when it comes in? How does it feel when it goes out? Keep watch on the breath. And keep the breath in mind. In other words, don’t forget the breath. It’s so easy you focus on the breath once or twice and then go wandering off to tomorrow, wandering back into the past … 
  4. Oneness
     … After the fourth jhana, you drop the perception of the form of the body — the still breath allows you to do this — and you can focus on the sense of space permeating the mist of sensations that remains. After that perception of space is unwavering, you turn to focus on what’s aware of the space. That puts you into the dimension of the … 
  5. A Good Place to Not-Self
     … So you want to turn around and focus on the source. Make sure the source is creating something good, and everything else will get taken care of. The source is right here, which is why we meditate right here. We don’t meditate on big abstractions. We focus on something simple like the breath. It’s right here, right next to the mind. When … 
  6. Coming into the Present
     … What are you going to do with them? Are they useful to focus on or not? As Ajaan Lee pointed out, you can really get the mind into a good state of concentration if you focus on them as “breath” as well. In other words, you change your perception. You change the way the mind thinks of the breathing process and labels the different … 
  7. Wise about Pain
     … In the very beginning, you don’t focus on them. Try to focus on the parts of the body that you can make comfortable by the way you breathe. But the question sometimes comes up: To what extent do you work with pains or try to get rid of them? This is where one of the basic principles of wisdom comes in. As the … 
  8. Stay Tuned
     … So let’s focus on the body in and of itself, the sensation of having a body here right now, the sensation of warmth, coolness, motion, solidity. Try to stay focused on that level. Any images or sensations or notions from other levels, just let them go, let them pass. They are going to be here, but you don’t have to focus on … 
  9. Outside of the Box
     … They can sit down, focus on the breath, and stay with the breath with no problem at all. The other type of tree is one in the middle of the forest whose branches are entangled with the branches of the trees around it. If you want to cut that one down, you’ve got to use a lot of strategy: learn how to cut … 
  10. Exercising Discernment
     … Once you’ve determined that this looks like a road that’s going to go to the mountain, you focus your attention on the road. Check every now and then to make sure that the mountain isn’t suddenly appearing in your rearview mirror. But otherwise you focus your attention right in front of you, on the road. The road doesn’t lead you … 
  11. Anchored in the Present
     … In fact, when the Buddha talks about the best way to develop all four of them, he says to focus on the breath. He doesn’t say that when you’ve had enough of the breath, then you drop the breath and focus on feelings or mind or whatever. You basically stay with the breath all the way through. It’s part of the … 
  12. Hobo Mind
     … You can focus your awareness anywhere you like in the body. The important thing is that you stay grounded in the sense of the body and try to find an area where it feels comfortable, where you feel at ease. If you tend do have headaches, you might want to focus further down in the body below the neck. Then see what happens when … 
  13. Clearing Your Space
     … You just don’t focus there. You focus on some other part in the mind. Your attention to these thoughts is what feeds them—the fact that you find them interesting. This is our problem: We start thinking, and all of our thoughts become interesting. You have to realize that some of your thoughts are not all that interesting after all, especially the obsessive … 
  14. Present-Moment Intelligence
     … You’re learning to shift the focus of your desires away from sensual pleasures, sensual fantasizing, and more toward noticing which thoughts are skillful, which thoughts are unskillful, and getting a sense of the long-term consequences of your actions. That’s a shift in focus, but it requires desire as well. Then we see: Acting on these desires, what happens? In other words … 
  15. Honest & Observant
     … The instructions he gives to Rahula about examining your actions before, during, and after you do them are basically instructions on how to be observant and honest, and where to focus your powers of observation. They also focus you on where it’s especially important that you be honest with yourself: one, in terms of the intentions behind your actions, and two, in terms … 
  16. The Raft of Concepts
     … So you focus there. That’s why we’re focused on the present moment: to look at our intentions. When you have right view, you realize that that’s why we’re here. This helps give focus to your meditation. Once the mind is still, you intend to keep it still. That’s a skillful intention. Then you can start looking at the process … 
  17. Calm & at Ease
     … The Buddha says there are times when you’re trying to focus on the breath but it feels like there’s a fever in the breath; you focus on feelings, there’s a fever in your feelings; you focus on the mind, there’s a fever in the mind. Okay, you drop those topics and think about the Buddha, the Dhamma, or the Sangha … 
  18. The Fangs of Conceit
     … See how long you can keep the focus there. If you lose focus, well, get back into focus. Don’t count the times that you lose focus. Just deal with distraction each time as it comes—one by one by one. The important thing is that you don’t let yourself get discouraged. The mind has lots of habits that go against the meditation … 
  19. Eyes in the Back of Your Head
     … You focus just on one spot and you tend to blot out everything else. You can feel very centered, very secure while you’re in it, but it makes discernment difficult. Full-body awareness without a center, though, doesn’t have the depth, doesn’t have the heft of a centered concentration. It can get very vague and sloppy. So you’ve got to … 
  20. Fixing the Present
     … Don’t focus on the pains in the body. Focus on the parts of the body that seem okay. Those can provide raw material for a place for the mind to settle down. There is that choice here in the present moment. If there were nothing but pain everywhere in the body, you’d die. There’s got to be something pleasant, some part … 
  21. A Mind Bigger than Pain
     … You have the choice of what you’re going to focus on and how you’re going to focus on it. If you’re going to focus on the pain, it’s useful to focus on it as if it’s going away, going away, going away. The pain may be there and it may be appearing repeatedly, but each time it comes, tell … 
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