Search results for: "Focus"

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  2. 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 … 
  3. 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.
  4. 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 … 
  5. 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 … 
  6. 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 … 
  7. 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 … 
  8. 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 … 
  9. 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 … 
  10. 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 … 
  11. 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 … 
  12. 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 … 
  13. Renunciation
     … Ultimately, as you focus on the breath, the breath gets more and more refined, to the point where you don’t even have a sense of the in-and-out breath, and the shape of the body begins to dissolve away. The body begins to feel just like a mist of little dots. If you focus in on the space between the dots, that … 
  14. Feelings of Pain
     … You don’t focus in the knee. You don’t focus in the hip. You focus on parts of the body that you can make comfortable with the breath. For instance, say you focus on the middle of the chest. It feels good breathing in, it feels good breathing out, right there at the middle of the chest. You breathe in a way that … 
  15. Breathing Skillfully
     … How does it feel in your feet, in your legs, in your torso, in your head? When you focus on these parts of the body, are you putting too much pressure on the focus, or not enough? You can talk to yourself about these things. And you can change the way you breathe to make it more comfortable—more energizing when you want energy … 
  16. An Auspicious Day
     … Some pains can lead to unskilful states in the mind, too, so that’s a kind of pain you want to not focus on—or you have to learn how to focus on it in the right way. Instead of identifying with it and seeing that you’re made to suffer by it, you can ask yourself, “How am I making myself suffer around … 
  17. Name & Form
    Name & Form January 24, 2020 When you close your eyes and focus on the breath as you feel it, you’re moving from the level of sensuality to the level of form. It’s a step up. The pleasures that can come from the level of form are much more refined and much less likely to lead to unskillful behavior than the pleasures of … 
  18. Smoothing It
     … You sit here right now and there are parts of the body that you can focus on in certain ways and make them very painful. You could focus on the same parts of the body in different ways and make them very pleasant. For the sake of concentration, for the sake of giving the mind a place to rest, you take the second option … 
  19. Nuts & Bolts
     … It may be in an unexpected place, but wherever you feel it, focus your attention there. The breath is potentially a whole-body process. In the beginning, you want to focus on the parts that are obvious. If long breathing feels good, keep it up. If it doesn’t feel good, you can change. Make it shorter, more shallow. Try in long, out short … 
  20. Seeing Distinctions
     … So we focus the mind on holding to one intention because the best way to get to know intentions is try to keep one going. Then you’ll detect all the other intentions coming, trying to knock the first intention off course. Otherwise, it’s like floating down a river where two different currents converge. You don’t know which current you’re on … 
  21. Perception
     … Another teaching from the ajaans is that when you focus on the five aggregates—form, feeling, perception, fabrication, and consciousness—you can start out with any one of the five and it will give you insight into all the rest. For instance, you can focus on the body, analyze your attachment to the body, and it will start spreading around to feelings and perceptions … 
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