Search results for: "Focus"

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  2. Creating a World of Concentration
     … One is just to give the mind something to focus on that it likes, and it’ll settle down on its own. But if it doesn’t settle down on its own, you’ve got to figure out what it’s attached to. In other words, you have to use some insight to get the mind to settle down. If you see that your … 
  3. Respect
     … How does it feel from the head down to the toes? Are there any patterns of tension? Any pains? Don’t focus on the pains right now. Try to breathe calmly. Then gradually relax the patterns of tension. You might start with your fingers, go up your arms. When you get to the shoulders, then start down at the toes. From the toes go … 
  4. The Path of Questions
     … how heavily to focus on the breath. Other questions you can put aside, because most of the other questions you would be focusing on now would simply foster doubt. The questions dealing with the mind and the breath in the present moment: Those are the ones that are relevant because you can answer them by looking right here, right now. The point of our … 
  5. The Uses of the Breath
    The Buddha taught lots of different meditation techniques, lots of different objects that you can focus on. But, as Ajaan Lee points out, the breath is the home base. In his terms, the other objects are places where you go foraging when you need special kinds of food for the mind. Otherwise, you come back home. This is because the breath has all kinds … 
  6. Self View & Conceit
     … So focus on the causes, and the results will take care of themselves. The path is something fabricated. It leads to something unfabricated. It doesn’t cause the unfabricated, but it leads you there. Without the path, you can’t get there at all. So focus on what you’re doing right now. Be really sensitive to what you’re doing right now because … 
  7. Putting Out the Fires
     … This is why, with the contemplation, we focus on the unattractive side of the body. The Buddha’s not saying the body is a bad thing. After all, if we didn’t have bodies, we wouldn’t have anything with which to function in human life. But usually we focus on the wrong things, and that provokes the lust in the mind. So first … 
  8. Controlling
     … So if you want to control things in a skillful way, this is where you focus. Develop some skill here. This will affect your sense of who you are, because your sense of who you are and what belongs to you is very closely connected to control. If there’s something you can’t control at all, you realize right away, “This is not … 
  9. Precept Meditation
    Precept Meditation October 22, 2006 Years back, when Ajaan Suwat was teaching a meditation retreat at IMS, someone asked him a question in a Q&A session toward the end of the retreat: “How do we bring meditation into daily life?” His answer was to focus on the five and the eight precepts—but a lot of people misunderstood his answer. They interpreted it … 
  10. Do, Maintain, Use
     … You made a choice about what to focus on, what not to focus on. When you can be clear about what you’re doing, and you see that you made the wrong choice, you can undo that choice and come right back. You begin to realize that you’re more involved in this than you thought. There’s so much going on in the … 
  11. All Eye
     … But any spot in the body where there seems to be a center of energy, focus your attention there. Think of the breath radiating from that spot as you breathe in. If there are any obstructions to its spreading out to fill the whole body, think of those obstructions dissolving away. Then move up to the next center of energy, and then the next … 
  12. Four Bases of Success
     … It’s the same with choosing where exactly in the body you’re going to focus. If you focus on the head, sometimes it may give you a headache, so you focus further down. Some people find that if they focus down around the stomach they start getting sleepy, so you have to notice what effect your choices are having on your ability to … 
  13. Behind the Scenes
     … You want a harmless happiness, so you focus on the source of harmless happiness: your mind. You realize that everything depends on actions, so you want to focus your attention on areas where you can make a difference. Well, this is the big place where you can make a difference: your own mind right here in the present moment. And as for the issues … 
  14. Inner Refuge Through Inner Strength
     … This is a strength because it keeps you from wandering off and losing your focus. And as you focus in on the breath, you find that your steady focus does change the quality of the breath along with the quality of your experience of the body. If it’s skillful, it gives rise to a greater sense of well-being. This is how mindfulness … 
  15. Relationships
     … You focus on your breath and that’s your only responsibility. Be with the breath. The breath is already happening. There’s nothing much you have to do. You don’t have to breathe the body. The body will breathe on its own. All you have to do is tend it, nudge it a little bit in the right direction, so that the breath … 
  16. Capable
     … The important thing about desire is that you focus it on the causes, and not so much on the results. The desire for results is there in the back of your mind, of course, but you realize if you just focus on the results, it’s a floating desire that doesn’t accomplish anything and actually gets in the way. If you focus your … 
  17. How to Feed Mindfulness
     … When you focus the mind in a certain way, what are the results over time? If you’re mindful of your actions, you can really see this for yourself. If you change the way you focus, if you change the way you breathe, what effect does that have over time? Sometimes the effects are immediate; sometimes they take a while to seep in. Only … 
  18. A Sense of Yourself
     … Or you may focus on more time to meditate: more walking meditation, more sitting meditation. Or you may make up your mind you want to do more Dhamma reading. But whatever your choice, you want to push things. Three months is not going to break you. It gives you a chance to build up a momentum. At the end of the three months, if … 
  19. Skillful Desire
     … But we take that desire, we focus it properly, and that’s how we give rise to the path. As when you’re getting the mind concentrated right now: There has to be the desire to do it. It’s not going to happen on its own. But simply wanting it to happen is not going to make it happen, either. You have to … 
  20. Lift Your Mind
     … The Buddha doesn’t say that you focus on any particular part of the body. But wherever the breath is obvious—wherever you have sensations that tell you, “now the breath is coming in, now the breath is going out”—stay with those sensations. Again, there’s no narrative here. There’s no other context, just being with the breath. Then you’re alert … 
  21. Concentration: A Balancing Act
     … So that’s one way of inducing the mind to really want to focus here: to say, “There’s got to be a way out.” The other way is to give rise to a sense of joy. The Buddha talks about seeing your mind as it develops. You begin to see that as you’ve been practicing, unskillful habits have fallen away. You are … 
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