Search results for: "Focusing"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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 … 
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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.
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. Again & Again
     … There has to be that question of, “What am I doing that I’m not seeing?” Start by focusing on the breath. Do what you think is the best way of focusing on the breath, getting the mind to fill the body, getting the breath to fill the body, and having a sense of ease to fill the body. Then try to maintain that … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. 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 … 
  14. Truth in Action
     … We’re here shaping our present moment by focusing on the breath. Simply the fact that we’re deciding to stay with the breath is shaping things right there. To shape them skillfully, though, you really have to notice what you’re doing. That’s what the alertness does: It keeps you honest, it keeps you from going into denial. You stay with this … 
  15. Questions of Skill
     … You learn about craving and desire by focusing on skillful desires and putting aside unskillful desires. So you don’t have to look anywhere else. Sometimes we think that you get the mind still at the breath, and then you have to go out and do vipassanā someplace else. What is vipassanā? It’s insight: seeing things clearly; where they come from; where they … 
  16. Wise Endurance
     … What this means in practical terms is that if you’re in a bad situation—say, at work or in the family—you can look at what you’re focusing on. Try to focus on the areas where there’s a potential for well-being, where there’s a potential for strength. Don’t focus on the things that make you weak. Don’t … 
  17. Balanced Meditation
     … It focuses on certain details and blocks out all kinds of other things. If it were fair and would let in all the information, lust wouldn’t have a toehold. But it’s because we like the lust that we give it a toehold. What do you like about lust? Look at that. Exactly where is a lustful mind an attractive thing? When you … 
  18. Working Hypotheses
     … It simply means you’re not focused on it. You stay focused on the breath, and you try to stay focused on a level of energy in the body that’s more refined. It’s like tuning a radio into a more peaceful station. The radio waves are always there for all the stations, it’s just a question of which ones you’re … 
  19. Skills for Dying Well
     … Look what you’re doing as you’re focusing on the breath: You want to settle down—that’s the desire around which this becoming is going to form. And here you’ve got your sense of the body as you feel it from within—that’s the world you’re going to be focusing on. Then you’re the meditator in that world … 
  20. At Ease with the Breath
     … What’s a skillful way of breathing, what’s a skillful way of thinking, what’s a skillful way of focusing on the breath? What ways of breathing, thinking, and focusing are not skillful? From the issues of skillfulness, you move on to the four noble truths: What causes suffering? What is a path to the end of suffering? You can explain this in … 
  21. Endurance
     … Hold that image in mind and you’ll find that what you’re actually doing is focusing on one spot of your awareness that you can tolerate, where things are going well. This is why it’s so important when you meditate that you get a sense of ease, at least one spot in the body where you can stay at home, stay at … 
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