Search results for: "Focus"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. Unlimited Compassion, Limited Resources
     … So you need to have equanimity for the cases you can’t help in order to have the strength to focus on the cases where you can. And even with each individual, there are some symptoms you can’t help, but there are others you can, so you focus your goodwill and energy on the ones that you can. You don’t let yourself … 
  7. Guardian Meditations
    The Buddha talks of times when you meditate, you try to focus on the breath or any of the other topics in the body, but there’s a fever—a fever in the body, a fever in the mind. It doesn’t allow you to settle down. In cases like that, he says, try to find another theme that’s inspiring. Focus on that … 
  8. Responsible
     … And again, no one else can do this for you, which is why you really have to focus on the areas where you are responsible. Make sure you take care of those. This is one of the reasons why the precepts are limited in their focus. You’re not going to be asked to go out and prevent all killing, or to ban all … 
  9. Not Getting What You Want
     … What he meant was that you don’t sit here going through the motions of the path with your mind down at the end of the path, saying, “When is that going to come?” You focus here on what you’re doing, getting really involved in the breath. As you focus here, the end of the path will appear right here. As the Buddha … 
  10. Life in the Buddha’s Hospital
     … The point of restraint is that you don’t make those things the main focus. The process of how the mind reacts to the seeing, how it directs the seeing, and so on with the other senses: that should be your focus. If issues come up and aggravate the illness in the mind, how are you going to deal with it? The Buddha laid … 
  11. Shaping Your Breath, Shaping Your Life
     … When you tell someone to focus on the breath, immediately those pictures get kicked into action. This is why one of the important parts of learning how to focus on the breath is also learning how to skillfully picture the breath to yourself. Ajaan Lee recommends some ways of imagining the breath energy moving through the body. This doesn’t mean moving the air … 
  12. Conviction & Focus
     … So focus on the state of your mind, realizing that this is your most valuable possession. The world can be swept away, but you want to make sure you’re not swept away with it. It does not endure, but you can find something of enduring value by holding to this practice, by following this path, to the last breath and beyond.
  13. Grounded in the Elements
     … If things are too hot outside, you don’t want to focus on the heat inside the body. Ask yourself: Where in the body is the coolest spot? Or when things are cold outside, where is the warmest spot in the body? Focus there. And then think of that warmth spreading through the body. If you’re feeling lightheaded, think about earth and the … 
  14. Why the Breath
     … All too commonly when we focus on one thing, we try to close off as many other things as possible just to maintain that focus. That puts huge areas of our awareness in the shadows. Sometimes that’s necessary and sometimes it’s not. But to unlearn the habit, we have to be very persistent. Once you get a sense of the whole body … 
  15. The Equanimity of a Winner
     … So instead of focusing on trying to change things that can’t be changed, you try to develop the insight that sees which is which—which things can and which cannot be changed—and then you focus on the things that can be changed. In other words, you choose your battles. Even a doctor has to act like a warrior. The equanimity of a … 
  16. Tapping into the Breath
     … In fact, you’ll find that there’s no one spot where the breath starts—it starts from many—but you can focus on one and make the most of it. Say, for instance, that you’re going to focus at the tip of the breastbone. You have to relax around that spot in order to allow the breath to spread from there in … 
  17. Karma & Not-self
     … When you focus in one way, what results? You focus in another way, what results? Learn to be sensitive to the movements of your mind, and the sensations they create. That way, you become more and more skilled as a meditator. One of the things you begin to notice as you meditate is that thoughts come up in the mind totally unintended. It’s … 
  18. Contentment
     … We’re moving our focus in the direction where it shouldn’t be going; it should be coming back in, because relationships, like things, end. And just as with things, our culture has a lot of pressure to go for relationships. We’re not doing our duty as members of our culture if we’re not looking for a relationship, and we don’t … 
  19. Do You Want to Stop Suffering?
     … This is why we focus on the breath. It’s right here all the time. It’s coming in, it’s going out, it’s very intimate with the mind. In fact, it’s through the breath that the mind influences the rest of the body and can sense the rest of the body. The breath is like a threshold between body and mind … 
  20. Isolating the Aggregates
     … We start out trying to focus on the breath and we put a lot of pressure on it, for fear that if we don’t, the mind’s going to slip away. Of course, a lot of the pressure on the breath has an effect on the circulation of fluids and energies in the body. You can create a lot of tension, a lot … 
  21. The End of the World
     … And so, like King Pasenadi, you focus in on your actions right now. As things get swept away in the world, you want to make sure that you focus on what’s really important, what you really are responsible for, which is what you’re doing right now, what you’re saying, what you’re thinking right now. You also focus on the skills … 
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